Looks at research and practice in the area of idioms and offers suggestions for teaching them effectively. (FL)

Surveys communications theory and discusses its application to educational organizations. Topics examined include definitions of communication, the evolution of communication models, concepts of language and semantics, interpersonal communication, and organizational communication. Finally, analytic techniques and conceptual frameworks are…

Examines the role of organization in adults' processing of stories. Canonical stories were better recalled than noncanonical stories by all three age groups (young, middle-aged, and old adults), and a variety of measures indicated that older adults' recall was both quantitatively and qualitatively similar to that of young adults. (SL)

Points out that children must master a great deal of information about form classes, written conventions, and word referent relationships in order to understand what teachers mean when they use the term "word." (FL)

Suggests that written-oral dictation is an efficient way to simulatenously process a number of language codes, and that the multi-sensory presentation and processing of English language codes during one school year helped lead to their acquisition by groups learning English as a foreign language. (EKN)

Reports on 5 experiments investigating the effect of blocking words according to semantic category on ordered recall in adults and young children. (Author/RM)

Three experiments were conducted to examine the relations between retrieval and encoding in a levels-of-processing framework. (Author/RM)

Language appears at multiple levels of representation in memory. In most cases, languages have a particular system of sounds (phonology), meaning (semantics), form (orthography), and common usage (pragmatics). For a bilingual speaker, these appear for two different sets of concepts. Sometimes, these concepts overlap, as is the case for…

A study examined (1) the decision-making processes used by Korean learners of English as a second language (ESL) to make requests in different situations, and (2) how the learners describe those processes. Subjects were 30 Korean students, 15 males and 15 females, enrolled in an intensive English program at a midwestern university in the United…

Highlights a research study indicating that children can spontaneously impose linguistic structure on their communication, even in the absence of a conventional linguistic environment. Subjects (16- to 50-month-old deaf children) had normal social environments but severely restricted language environments because of their disability. (JN)

The speech/language pathologist's role in planning and executing a program for autistic children that emphasizes the development of communication and interaction skills is addressed. Journal Availability: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. (SEW)

A study of children's structuring of complex sentences requiring mood choices is reported. The objectives were to provide data for an understanding of sentence construction problems and to form a better idea of the acquisition of the intrinsic linguistic contrasts in the Spanish modal system. (MSE)

Presents the results of a study in which reading-retarded children aged 8-to-12, whom previous research had shown to be deficient in their knowledge of pronomial reference rules, received oral presentations containing three kinds of adjective complements. The performance of the test group relative to a control is discussed. (Author/JL)

The results of two experiments serve to extend the processing-time explanation of content effects and to indicate that context effects are greater when reliance upon phonological input is increased as compared to predominant reliance on the direct visual access route to the lexicon. (FL)

Reports on research intended to determine whether easing the cognitive processing load by having writers deal with contextually familiar material improves fluency, grammaticality, and complexity of the writing. Overall results tend to indicate that writing does improve when the material is culturally familiar. (EKN)