Differences between reporting and classificatory functions in writing were examined in the responses of grade 10 and grade 12 students: 60 who were successful English students, and 60 on the borderline of passing in each of the grades. The reporting tasks required students to write compositions describing their first day in a high school or some…

This international research report consists of five papers discussing five different topics in education. "Views on the Implementation of the Curriculum--Experiences of the Finnish Practice" (P. Kansanen) analyzes research results regarding the national curriculum for the Finnish comprehensive school system and compares them with a…

Issues in preparing a review form to detect item bias in tests are discussed and the first draft of an item bias review form is presented. While stereotyping is the consistent representation of a given group in a particular light, bias is the presence of some characteristic of an item that results in differential performance of two individuals of…

A collection of essays on aspects of pragmatics in non-Western cultures includes these papers: "Social Rank and Tunebo Requests" (Paul Headland); "The Use of Reported Speech in Saramaccan Discourse" (Naomi Glock); "An Analysis of Illocutionary Verbs in Walmatjari" (Joyce Hudson); "Please Be Specific: A Functional…

Taking the lexicogrammatical resources (i.e. the vocabulary and syntax) of English as a starting point, this report explores the demands those resources put on the design of the part of a text generation system that supports the process of lexicogrammatical expression. The first section of the report notes that a reason for using the lexicogrammar…

Using data consisting of descriptive and expressive-narrative essays written in 1969 and 1979 by black 17-year-old students in the stratified probability sample from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a study investigated which language patterns differentiated the NAEP essays written by black students in 1969 from those…

Designed primarily for the middle-level literacy worker, this monograph is intended for use as a training manual in preparing literacy teachers. The book is a general introduction to linguistics that discusses the following topics: defining the scope of linguistics, choosing the language for literacy, developing a written language, producing…

The great majority of poor readers in urban schools are members of an ethnic minority, a low social class, and a poor family. The simple recognition of these factors, however, is of no help in characterizing the specific sources of language norms among urban minority students or in determining the ways these distinctive norms interfere with…

Language development and dialect are measures of influences upon a student's ability to learn to read. It has been observed that students whose language differs from that used in schools and in the materials of instruction are often found in remedial reading classes. Their difficulty lies in attempting to learn to read a language which is…

This monograph represents the results of an attempt to construct at least one portion of a theoretical framework for describing and analyzing the performance routines used by the native actor to realize his competence to make culturally appropriate decisions. In general the concern is to describe in theoretical terms the structure and operation of…

This paper explores the implications of presumed language universals and language particulars for second language teaching and learning. It is felt that an awareness of the universal features of language design builds confidence in the student who can concentrate on features which distinguish the target language from the native language. Examples…

An understanding of dialect differences goes beyond the recognition that people talk differently; it concerns the way dialects differentiate themselves, the main differences in the patterns, and the method of discovering the patterns of various dialects. This booklet is intended for those who need to know more specific information concerning the…

This paper proposes a tentative notational or marking system which attempts to provide more information on the sociolinguistic constraints upon the use of linguistic features than has been the case in other systems. A review of other studies in language variation, particularly those of William Labov, suggests that much can be done toward…

Native speakers of Egyptian Arabic make errors in their pronunciation of English that cannot always be accounted for by a contrastive analysis of Egyptian analysis of Egyptain Arabic and English. This study focuses on three types of errors in the pronunciation of voiced and voiceless "th" made by fluent speakers of English. These errors were noted…

This study attempts to assess the developmental psycholinguistics hypothesis that language acquisition strategies are universal. Four types of statements were focused upon: (1) true affirmative statements (e.g., "You are a child"), (2) false affirmative statements ("You are a baby"), (3) false negative statements ("You aren't a child"), and (4)…