Findings of a 2-year study of school-community communications are presented in this report, which analyzes the content and style of district-to-community written communiques and offers suggestions for improvement. Methodology involved document analysis of 594 written communiques from the central office and one elementary, middle, and high school…

Ease of language processing varies with the nature of the language involved. Ordinary spoken language is the easiest kind to produce and understand, while writing is a relatively new development. On thoughtful inspection, the readability of writing has shown itself to be a complex topic requiring insights from many academic disciplines and…

Both language students and language teachers can be troubled by new words, expressions, or usage in Chinese. A new use of an old word or expression is particularly difficult for a more advanced or experienced speaker, less so for a beginner. The growing popularity of abbreviations is another kind of change creating problems. Two kinds of…

Concludes that a substantial number of children in inner-city early grades do not comprehend the basic nature of the writing system, even at the end of one year of reading instruction with a phonics-oriented method. (RB)

The following are discussed as the main reason for English spelling mistakes among non-native speakers: interference from the native writing system, lack of auditory discrimination, misapplying analogy and direct translation. Techniques for handling spelling errors are also discussed. (AG)

The evolution of writing systems of the Aramaic languages is discussed, stressing the importance of looking beyond simple character forms as they occur in space and time to the interaction of scripts with languages, and the interactions of writing systems with minds and civilizations. First, the invention of the alphabet is discussed from a…

Within the field of composition, classical rhetoric was re-discovered in the early 1960s; that interest has been for the most part confined to the first three of the five parts of classical rhetoric--invention, arrangement, and style--with memory and delivery being ignored or, at least, neglected. Recent interest in "the speaking-writing…

The presentation examines information on the issue of language-reading dependency and the roles that speech language pathologists (SLPs) can play to address both skills. The relationship of oral language and reading development is examined in terms of models (such as the Top-Down/Bottom-Up model) and hypotheses and research etiology. Studies on…

One way to elicit good writing from students is to expose them to great literature and have them write about the attributes they share with a character, or about the experiences they have had that parallel those in a work of fiction, or about how a work of fiction compares with real "life." Using James Joyce's "Dubliners" as a…

Different conceptions of literacy and its relationship with oral communication are examined, and a new approach that separates literacy and orality rather than representing them on a continuum is criticized. The methodological and theoretical assumptions underlying the work of proponents of the new approach are questioned, including: (1) a narrow…

In the traditional classroom, written reports assigned to students are generally returned as poorly written, reworded collections of facts taken from single sources. Cross-curriculum writing is a way of circumventing this and encouraging learning and thought development by the student. Writing is usually considered a communication skill, but…

The prevalence of writing errors made by third-year medical students from the class of 1981 at a large midwestern medical school was studied. The papers of 253 students taking family medicine were evaluated for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Four types of grammar errors and seven punctuation errors were analyzed, and each word…

Intended to provide for the reader a new road to study India, the booklet encourages students to experience the languages of India as an avenue to learning something about its people. The workbook introduces the reader to the languages of India; shows through activities and research the contributions of Indian languages to English; and provides a…

A study investigated the relationship between cognitive style and coherence in discourse. The primary hypothesis was that coherence would vary bimodally by cognitive style classification. Forty-four freshman composition students from three west coast colleges completed the Culture Fair Intelligence Test, the Group Embedded Figures Test, and the…