Intended for use by students at any level above grade one, this practice book is designed to familiarize students with the basic elements of a sentence. The practice book then proceeds to nouns and verbs, and then to capitalization and punctuation. The book is self-paced so that students may use it independently, and answers are provided for…

The properties of presupposition were investigated in Japanese and English. The investigation examined how the presupposition is preserved under different syntactic structures, and identified presupposition in terms of the transitivity of factive verbs. Japanese was seen as more clearly manifesting "presuppositionability" than English in…

Structures in which nouns modify nouns have raised questions about the form and functioning of generative grammars. By applying and extending Jackendoff's X-bar theory of phrase structure, the syntactic properties of two types of pre-noun modifiers, adjectives and nouns, can be examined. X-bar analysis correctly predicts many features of noun-noun…

This collection contains three papers addressing the instructional aspects of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS): (1) "Some Experiences with Two Intelligent Tutoring Systems for Teaching Computer Programming: Proust and the LISP-Tutor" (van den Berg, Merrienboer, and Maaswinkel); (2) "Some Issues on the Construction of Cooperative…

Preliminary evidence indicates that children begin to generalize knowledge in a new way at approximately 3 years of age. Forty children between 1.5 and 3.5 years of age were given two tasks of graded complexity. The first and simpler task used four nonoverlapping classes, each composed of four identical objects. Two of the classes were tagged with…

A recent wave of linguistic research has attempted to demonstrate empirically that in learning the syntax of a second language, adults re-access their universal grammar (UG). However, the conspicuous lack of success of second language learners has caused researchers to seek evidence in experimental data. The most expedient source of this data is…

A three-stage lesson sequence that used story grammars to teach plot development has been proved successful with a group of eight above average third grade students reading Deborah and James Howe's "Bunnicula." The first stage was a training unit designed to familiarize children with a typical story grammar's parts: a theme and plot…

A study compared the effectiveness of two methods of teaching the passe compose and imparfait of French verbs. Sixty community college students were randomly assigned to two treatment groups, one taught with the traditional method focusing on rules governing tense application, and the other taught by the aspectual method, which treats the…

Twelve lessons in Igbo, the major language of Nigeria, are provided. The lessons are designed for use with a native speaker serving as a model. They cover pronunciation, major grammatical patterns, and limited practical conversation. The tonal aspects of Igbo pronunciation are emphasized. Suggestions are offered to enhance students' understanding…

A collection of three papers written at a workshop on discourse grammar in Philippine languages is presented. The aims of the workshop were to (1) focus on discourse level grammar in the languages studied; (2) identify contrastive discourse types (genre) in the surface grammar; (3) identify the semantic constructions encoded by the different…

A teaching guide containing 24 lessons in intermediate- and advanced-level Hausa contains materials developed in a U.S. Department of Education sponsored Advanced Hausa Institute. The lessons contain teacher notes, a dialogue, and notes on related grammar and vocabulary. (MSE)

To test the effectiveness of using the error correction method of teaching grammar rules, a study compared two methods of teaching English grammar and usage. Average and above average sophomore English students in a Sioux Falls, South Dakota, public school examined English grammar and usage rules and worked accompanying exercises on subject-verb…

Punctuation contributes substantially to the effectiveness of a piece of writing, and its successful use calls for an awareness of the sound of written language. For centuries, debates have existed over whether punctuation is determined by grammar, or whether its primary function is to signal the "prosody"--the patterns of pitch and…

A collection of articles on the kinds of variation in English that one finds within the language of one group or one person includes: "The English Language as Rule-Governed Behavior" (Timothy Shopen); "The English Language as Use-Governed Behavior" (Joseph M. Williams); "Styles" (Ann D. Zwicky); "The Organization…

The use of guided imagery meshes with recent insights into right and left brain learning. Guided imagery engages the right brain processes such as imagination, emotion, creative, and intuitive activities. While much instruction is concerned with left brain activity, that is, the processsing of information through words, the addition of right brain…