This workbook, written in simple English with pictographs, helps adult learners of English in British Columbia (Canada) deal with biological and medical needs and hospital patient visits. Lessons include parts of the body, nurses' and doctors' examination and instructions, general health problems, hospital items, hospital admissions, and pre- and…

This guide reviews a number of ways that written text has been used in the classroom to help develop enriching classroom activities, using French examples, in modern European language instruction and examines ways in which text can reinforce and extend what students are learning to say and write. The text deals with teacher and learner creativity,…

Despite Stanley Fish's assertion that the interpretive communities basic to his theory of literary and legal interpretation are "engines of change," it seems clear that in Fish's conception of change, "plus ca change, c'est plus la meme chose." In particular, Fish denies that the legal profession can achieve the more…

Presenting activities, facts, and illustrations, this book takes learning the alphabet to a new level. After an introduction and a brief cartoon look at the history of the alphabet, the book presents 26 four-page mini-chapters (1 for each letter) that include a brief visual history of the letter; trivia tidbits; project ideas; a list of people,…

The ability to write in Chinese often takes longer to develop than the ability to speak among overseas Chinese. Due to the difficulties involved, many foreigners learning Chinese also stay away from writing. A method is presented here that suggests that students should be free to write in a manner based on what they are able to speak. The approach…

The 1986 report by the Canadian Task Force on Aboriginal Languages, which recommended that the writing systems used for the northern Dene languages be standardized within 10 years, resulted in the 1987 Dene Standardization Project. The mandate for the project was to make recommendations on orthography standardization as the first step in the…

The introduction to discourse analysis is intended specifically to inform second language teachers about aspects of discourse analysis that can be helpful in instruction. It presents the principles seen as relevant to the language teaching context and illustrates them with real spoken and written language data. The first chapter gives a historical…

Native American language communities have had four choices regarding the adoption or change of a writing system in recent years: to adopt or not to adopt a system, or in the case of an existing system, to alter it or not to alter it. The paper also examines the criteria of orthography choice and functions of literacy. Bilingual education issues…

Problems in determining the origins of Sumerian, an ancient language, are described, and an alternative approach is examined. Sumerian was spoken in southern Iraq in the third millennium B.C. and later used by Babylonian and Assyrian scribes as a classical language. While early texts in Sumerian are considered a better reflection of the original…

The works of women African writers such as Bessie Head, Mariama Ba, Buchi Emecheta, and Flora Nwapa have become increasingly familiar to North American college students during the past decade, largely through their inclusion on feminist reading lists. Because the pedagogical value of these texts lies in their presumed ability to speak for African…

"Autonomous" and "ideological" models of literacy are discussed in the context of the literacy-culture-politics relationship. Assumptions underlying literacy, nationalism, assessment, and the links among them are questioned, and approaches to alternative assessment procedures are considered. Arguments about the formation and…

Common problems encountered in teaching Chinese that involve classical, intentional malapropisms (learned errors) are discussed. Three aspects unique to Chinese are addressed: (1) since Chinese writing is logographic, some malapropisms occur because of similar graphs; (2) since many expressions come from classical Chinese, and instruction in…

This article considers the acquisition and command of written language and how it is affected by brain damage. The aim is to show the close connections between psychology, linguistics and medical brain research. (Text is in German.) (TL)

The object of this investigation was to demonstrate whether or not the predictabilities of the individual letters of words influence recognition of a word. The results indicate that letter predictability influences both accurate word recognition and letter recognition. (DE)

(Text is in French.)