A genre approach to teaching the argumentative essay in composition classes has been developed. The need for this approach emanated from problems associated with the other methods of teaching persuasive discourse, such as the logical/analytic, content/problem solving, and rhetorical/generative approaches. The genre approach depends on the…

Three experiments examined children's ability to perceive two of the elements of textual cohesion--personal reference and conjunction. The first experiment investigated the ability of 76 eight-year-old children to process anaphora in order to distinguish those children who were becoming fluent readers from those who were not. The children were…

This monograph is the fourth in a series of semiannual reports of research related to reading in secondary schools. The five papers in the monograph are concerned with the pedagogical and research implications of reading comprehension. Specific topics dealt with include (1) a phenomenological perspective on the reading process, (2) the role of…

Each of 31 sixth grade students read and recalled two texts with different content and structure in a study of structural factors contributing to recall. The subjects' immediate and delayed (one week) recalls were categorized into propositional text bases for a comparative anlaysis of the effects of different text's recall proportions, recall…

The theory of the coordinated management of meaning (CMM) describes the structural relationship between a conversation as it appears in a verbatim transcript and as it appears in the meaning-system of the participants. The five essential features of CMM theory are: a set of four propositions about the nature of communication and human behavior, a…

THIS REPORT DISCUSSES HOW NOUNS AND THEIR ADJUNCTIVES ARE USED IN MANDARIN SENTENCES IN DENOTING THE RELATION BETWEEN SETS AND THEIR SUBSETS. LANGUAGE HAS SOME MEANS OF SPECIFYING SETS OF OBJECTS, ACTIONS, OR ABSTRACT UNITS IN VARIOUS WAYS, IN ORDER TO HAVE SUCCESSFUL COMMUNICATION. LANGUAGE DOES NOT BEAR THE ENTIRE BURDEN OF SPECIFYING A CERTAIN…

This research evaluated the total-time hypothesis for the learning of connected discourse--that in verbal learning "a fixed amount of time is necessary to learn a fixed amount of material regardless of the number of individual trials into which that time is divided." Learning material consisted of two sets of connected discourse for each of the…

The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that thematization affects the probability that a probe word will produce meaning-preserving recall of a sentence that is part of a discourse. Sentences were constructed along the lines of subject-verb-object and were presented in three experiments: free recall of isolated sentences, prompted…

The author discusses the impact of the "computer revolution" on the field of rhetoric and public address in terms of the potential applications of computer methods to rhetorical problems. He first discusses the computer as a very fast calculator, giving the example of a study that probably would not have been undertaken if the calculations had had…

The creative, purposeful departures from standard English used by advertisers are a worthwhile object of study in English classes. (JH)

Much difficulty in teaching composition stems from the erroneous assumption that thought precedes writing. (JH)

Investigates the language comprehension of elementary school children and the factors that affected acquisition of knowledge from connected discourse. Factors examined included oral and written language, message structure, characteristics of the learner, and conditions of the learning situation. (AA)

Examines the nature of thematization and thematic progression in children's narrative styles, in order to draw some conclusions regarding the acquisition of textual skills. (AM)

Looks at a group of politically knowledgeable college students and assesses changes in perceptions to the messages of Ford and Carter during the course of the 1976 Presidential pre-election debates. Notes statistically significant differences between pre-debate, post-debate, and delayed post-debate ratings on sets of semantic differential-like…

How a child answers questions provides information about how he or she processes input. A child's early responses to questions at age one year, three months, were compared to her responses at one year, seven months, when she was in the two-word stage. (SW)