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.)

Discusses how writing can be used as a learning tool in language classes where oral production is stressed. (Text is in French.) (PMP)

Some of the difficulties of developing a student's ability to write in aforeign language are discussed, and specific suggestions are made of ways to teach this skill. (RM)

Current research has fragmented educators' vision of both written language and development. A more integrative vision, one that preserves the integrity of written language as a symbol system, is based on five principles that characterize written language development: (1) the establishment of equivalences; (2) exploration and orchestration of the…

How can classroom spelling programs be structured and organized to fit current approaches to language? Ten major considerations can be identified: (1) spelling is a skill of writing; (2) spelling is best learned as a component of writing, and not as a result of studying isolated skills; (3) not all children will pick up spelling as a result of…

During the late 1970s, English studies journals began to include various versions of, and proposals built upon, the Great Leap theory of literacy. Advocates of this theory claimed that literacy itself actually caused a "great leap" in human cognition and that the language of literate persons was essentially different from the language of…

A study analyzed how freshman composition students handled an assignment that forced them to perform an act of sophisticated literacy which was a variation between spontaneity (present) and repetition (past) with a focus on how novice writers borrow language, whether through quotation or misquotation. The assignment involved two masterpieces of…

"Text and Performance Quarterly" (TPQ) is the new name (beginning 1989) of a journal that started in 1980 under the name "Literature in Performance." This partial (promotional) issue of "TPQ" consists of a single article from the January 1989 issue that briefly explains the background and scope of the re-defined…