In a survey of commercial braodcasters, 80% of the respondents felt that university communications majors seeking on-the-air, nonnews jobs were unqualified for their chosen profession. Because teachers of oral interpretation possess the performance expertise that broadcasters need, they must be more actively involved in teaching broadcast…

The frequencies and co-occurrence distributions of some of the prosodic features in the speech of children are discussed. The emphasis is on the determination of systems and structure of non-segmental lectal variability in the children's speech without primary reference to function. The primary data consisted of selected episodes of connected…

Intended for teachers, authors, and publishers of children's educational materials, this book presents a list of words used by elementary school children in their creative or uncontrolled writing. The list is based on the writing samples of approximately 3,000 children, grades one through six, that were collected during a one-year period.…

This paper reports an investigation on the educational impact of warning labels on cigarette packages on adolescents. Subjects were asked to identify the locations of warning labels on cigarette packages and advertising and to restate the warning label. Results indicated that official warnings may be well known in general terms but poorly known in…

Students learn, understand, and retain knowledge best when they discover it themselves. In the area of semantics, the study of how meaning is conveyed through language, explicit knowledge may appear to be obvious once it becomes conscious, but unless people are explicitly aware of their implicit knowledge and assumptions, they may be at their…

Readers are "dumb" because they are not privy to the mind and intentions of the writer; and the failure of the unsuccessful writer is a failure to forecast what it is going to be like to be a dumb reader of the document. Sample sentences from students' writing illustrate the following types of writing problems, which force the reader to examine…

Racist language is more pervasive than sexist language. Not only are there obvious racial slurs, but also most English black and black-oriented words have negative meanings. One study found over 134 synonyms for whiteness, 44 of which were favorable, and only 10 had any semblance of negative connotations. In the same study, 120 synonyms for…

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is far more anxious to promote the First Amendment premise that broadcasters should air controversial programing than it is worried about the occasional use of "four-letter words" by broadcasters. The FCC and Supreme Court decisions in the "Pacifica" case affect only the broadcasting…

A study of one speaker's intuitions about and performance in Black English is presented with relation to Saussure's "langue-parole" dichotomy. Native speakers of a language have intuitions about the static synchronic entities although the data of their speaking is variable and panchronic. These entities are in a diglossic relationship to each…

Data on English article usage, based on a new classification system ("a,""the," and null article), were obtained from 20 adults and 20 two- and three-year-old children. An oral sentence completion technique was used with the child subjects, and the same items in written form were used with the adults. The results for the older…

Since language largely derives from social interaction, preschool children should be provided many opportunities to converse, question and play with words. In this way children learn what to do with language in order to communicate effectively and appropriately. Recently begun investigations of language as it is actually used may produce findings…

The variation seen as deviation among the nonstandard styles of English does not represent a decay of the language, but rather, is necessary for simplification and other changes of English structure. The modern-day English pronominal system resulted from the incorporation of Scandinavian forms in the North and East Midland dialects of Middle…

THIS TEST--"VARIETIES OF ENGLISH"--WAS DESIGNED BY THE OREGON CURRICULUM STUDY CENTER FOR A SEVENTH-GRADE LANGUAGE CURRICULUM. IT IS INTENDED TO ACCOMPANY THE CURRICULUM UNITS AVAILABLE AS ED 010 149 AND ED 010 150. (MM)

This is the first in a series of self-instructional modules dealing with common English idioms, and is intended for use in the learning of English as a foreign language. The idioms were selected for frequency and usage in up-to-date usage in North America. The situations in which the idioms appear are in authentic conversational English, many of…

Puppetry has potential for illuminating many aspects of human life. One of these aspects, the system of language and speech, is explored here. An examination of the widespread use of a voice-modifying instrument to provide the puppets' voices demonstrates that traditional puppeteers act both as folk linguists and as folk sociolinguists. The study…