This study investigated the possibility that direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelations could enhance children's organization in story writing. It also investigated whether the special instruction might affect quality, coherence, use of temporal and casual relations, and creativity in writing. (Author/JAZ)

Story structure instruction, focusing on forming a mental picture of a story's structure and understanding of story parts, improved poor-reading fourth-graders' (N=20) story writing skills in terms of organization and overall quality but not coherence and creativity, indicating that instruction in story parts can improve some children's writing.…

Suggests tools for dealing with the seeming complexities of teaching the subjunctive mood, including thoughtful organization, objective analysis, and comparison with the students' own language. Continued use of unfamiliar vocabulary (nomenclature) and claims of language-specific subtlety serve only to increase anxiety among learners. (MSE)

Provides evidence for the development of grammatical sensitivity across grades one, two, and three. Shows that grammatical sensitivity is significantly related to reading skill level. (FL)

Compares grammatical phrases to dance patterns and suggests exercises for students that will strengthen and develop their understanding of those concepts. (DF)

Discusses the work of D. Smith, who wrote "Fifty Years of Children's Books,""Instruction in English," and Selected Essays," that largely document the history of English instruction in the U.S. for the last 50 years. (SRT)

Discusses the historical evolution of four types of grammars in the English language as well as some causes of the problems people experience in using modern grammars of English. Contends that grammars are a "text type" that rests on quite specific text structural principles and on several textual levels. (SED)

Discusses the advantages of presenting the negatives and partitives together as a unit when teaching French and describes communication activities that reinforce and elaborate on negative and partitive constructions. The activities are designed to promote fluency and generate original responses and include material that lends itself to cultural…

Offers a practical model for teaching the extended modifier that is economical and linguistically sound, based on the insights and methodology of transformational generative grammar. Five transformational rules are given for generating extended modifiers from relative clauses. Examples of transformations and two class exercises in German are also…

Examines the nonstandard constructions in Caipira Portuguese, a dialect spoken in southeastern Brazil, which illustrate a tendency to reduce morphological redundancy at the noun phrase level. This is accomplished by restricting plural markers to only one of the elements of the noun phrase--not the noun, as might be expected, but, rather, one its…

Discusses the production of anomalous sentences by non-native students of the Japanese language and suggests that the primary cause of various errors indicated in such sentences is the confusion with English "when." In addition, it is suggested that error analysis can help clarify the nature of grammatical problems and facilitate learning of…

Describes a study of how the verb-form variables of tense, aspect, mode, person, number, and stem and suffix irregularities interact for lower-level students of Spanish to determine if performance can be improved by asking students to monitor an individual variable when many of such variables must be integrated in a particular exercise. (SED)

Presents an abbreviated version of a large scale investigation of second language attrition covering 50 years. Results yield benefits to teachers and students of foreign languages by leading to an understanding of how various procedures of acquisition affect the rate of loss and ultimately minimize the potential for later attrition. (SL)

Discusses and analyzes the Bosco/DiPietro descriptive framework for the analysis of foreign language instruction. Refines the psychological and linguistic features originally presented by Bosco and DiPietro. Proposes the creation of two new features--analytic and communicative--to replace the functional feature central to Bosco and DiPietro's…

Discusses methodological implications of a proficiency orientation focused on speaking, placing proficiency in the context of grammar, communicative competence, and functions/notions. Discusses repercussions in foreign language teaching of the varying emphases on these contexts. Asserts that a proficiency orientation allows tailoring of teaching…