An oral-skills lesson is proposed having three dimensions: (1) contextualization, where the students are shown the function and use of a language pattern; (2) drills which stimulate student thinking during mechanical manipulation; and (3) communication, which enables the student to use what they have been practicing. (Author/PJM)

Twenty-seven teachers rated 196 retarded workers with respect to the frequency of maladaptive behavior and the 28 items of a language behavior rating scale with respect to the probability that a given behavior would result in termination of employment. (Author/SBH)

The same semantic strategies for requesting are available in Spanish and English. Bilingual children use more polite strategies in speaking Spanish and more neutral ones in speaking English. (PMJ)

The effect of auditory free recall on four lists of monosyllabic word ensembles was studied in 10 learning-disabled and 10 nondisabled first grade boys. (Author/PHR)

Examines why learners of Mandarin use overt nouns and pronouns to a greater extent than native speakers. Findings indicate that no single syntactic structure is a significant contributor to the different rates of optional ellipsis but that some learners use ellipsis only in syntactic contexts permissible in English and most use it in a narrower…

Examines the effects of vowel height and place of articulation in interlanguage devoicing patterns of final voiced stop consonants (b, d, g) in words such as "cab,""bad,""bag" in the acquisition of English as a foreign language by Mandarin, Japanese, and Portuguese speakers. Results display a combinatory effect of…

Seeks to link the rapid pace of societal change in Hong Kong over the past 50 years with changing patterns of language use there. Shows how the country has changed demographically, economically, politically, socially, and technologically. (16 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the variations of 17 grammatical variables (verb tenses, voice, and form) within the communicative function of 51 medical English scholarly papers. Three axes of variable distribution are revealed that help categorize the papers as case reports, editorials, or research papers. Pedagogical guidelines for preparation and use of reading…

Presents a survey of English usage for various communication purposes in different types of Brazilian business organizations. The objectives of the survey are to identify the major uses of business English/Portuguese in international/national settings, to identify the varieties widely used in transactions, and to study the types of documents used…

Discusses strategies for enhancing vocabulary acquisition in first- and second-year Italian courses. The first part reviews the research on vocabulary acquisition; the second incorporates the implications of Danesi's model of neurological bimodality; the third part focuses on techniques for vocabulary elicitation; and the fourth presents examples…

Examines what linguistic devices speakers use to make an entity salient in a discourse and how they re-refer to discourse entities moving in and out of focus. Speakers' center of attention was manipulated via a videotaped basketball game. Speakers referred to prominent entities as subjects; when they referred to them as objects, they repeated the…

Examines differences in the rhetorical structures of English and Japanese newspaper editorials by (1) measuring and describing textual features; and (2) conducting an experiment in which native English speakers and bilingual English-Japanese speakers reordered the scrambled texts of editorials. Results indicated that certain rhetorical patterns…

Four ideas for classroom French instruction are described, including a lesson in the use of indicative and subjunctive moods; creative writing exercises; a comparison of the text styles of letters with different purposes; and a beginning French geography lesson. (MSE)

Words in English often have multiple meanings, causing concepts to be paired with incorrect signs when working with deaf students, such as the concept of "made up" meaning either "invented" or "decided." A method called "sentence chains" is recommended as a drill to learn to link concepts with their appropriate signs. (JDD)

To determine whether men dominate language in a mixed-gender adult classroom, 4 lessons were observed and recorded at a training course for 10 supervisors in London. Men helped maintain women's silence by the competitive nature of their discourse. Men's linguistic domination is related to research on children's classrooms. (SLD)