Constructed on the premise that the teacher with a written assignment to evaluate seeks procedures and activities for remediating the errors present in that assignment, this handbook is designed as a tool for the teaching of remedial composition in grades five through twelve. The handbook is composed of a checklist and a diagnostic grid, followed…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the nature of synonyms by using multidimensional scaling. The selected concept was "pig" and three of its synonyms--"hog,""boar," and "swine." These terms vary in their frequency of use in English, which makes it possible to explore a behaviorally based theory of…

The study reported in this paper addresses the problem, "What makes an answer appropriate?" The claim is made that an appropriate answer must address the goals of the question either directly or indirectly. The conditions of the experiment were dialogues between an expert and an apprentice who were repairing an appliance. In the…

As an initial step toward discovering whether a separate genre of women's rhetoric exists, this paper analyzes rhetorical forms used by Mary Daly in the book "Gyn/Ecology." The paper first outlines criteria for determining whether a form has rhetorical significance and traces the historical background of the contemporary feminist…

The ordering of morphemes is examined in group cross-sectional studies of second language learner performance. It is studied in terms of ordering by internal frequency (i.e., the relative rank number of obligatory occasions supplied by the subject) and external frequency (i.e., the native adult frequency ordering of morphemes). There are…

A study was undertaken to examine how the variables that comprise the construct social situation (interlocutor, setting, and topic) influenced which language variety--standard English (SE) or black English (BE)--was chosen as a means of communication within a black English-speaking community and how that language variety was used to elaborate…

This booklet is one of a series of teacher-written curriculum publications launched by the Bay Area Writing Project, each focusing on a different aspect of the teaching of composition. Methods are illustrated for teaching students to recognize dishonest language and to write honestly themselves and include cliche/euphemism avoidance techniques,…

THIS STUDY OF LANGUAGE PRESENTS A SPECIFIC, SYSTEMATIC DESCRIPTION OF THE WAYS IN WHICH A SPEAKER ADJUSTS HIS MANNER OF SPEAKING ACCORDING TO THE CONTEXT IN WHICH HE EMPLOYS LANGUAGE. FOUR USAGE-SCALES OF "NATIVE CENTRAL ENGLISH" ARE INTRODUCED--AGE, BREADTH, RESPONSIBILITY, AND STYLE. A KNOWLEDGE OF THESE FOUR DIMENSIONS HOPEFULLY WILL OVERCOME…

In response to the growing awareness of the impact of sexist language in society, many writers and educators have begun to use either noncontrived "inclusive" pronouns ("he or she,""s/he," or "he/she") or contrived inclusive pronouns ("tey") in place of the traditional "exclusive" pronouns (male referents only). A study was undertaken to discover…

Intended for classroom teachers, this book suggests some approaches to assessing children's language, describes some practices, and advises teachers of some of the problems in child language assessment. Chapter one provides illustrations of assessing child language usage, including looking at a piece of writing, administering a reading test,…

As Labov points out (1971), language is a social phenomenon, and therefore must be studied in its social context; sex based language differences, being part of language, must be studied in the same way. Specifically, sex based language differences can be studied by modifying the sociolinguists' notion of speech community and speech continuum, and…

Heterosexism, as defined in this paper, designates those central social structures that advocate heterosexuality as the only natural sexual interest. The cluster of social mores that constitute heterosexist attitudes is defined and described, with illustrations from various contexts showing both the subtle and the overt ways in which these…

Two speeches by Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique" and first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), are examined in this paper. The first speech analyzed, "Tokenism and the Pseudo-Radical Cop-Out," was delivered at Cornell University in January, 1969, and the second, a "Call to Women's Strike…

Linguists of various theoretical backgrounds have likened second language (L2) acquisition to pidginization (Ferguson 1971, Richards 1971, Bickerton 1975a). This paper examines these two processes and suggests areas where a study of the process of second language acquisition in a natural setting might contribute insights to a general theory of…

This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet contains five papers that are concerned with the ways in which writing changes under the influence of who it is for and what…