This collection of 17 articles dealing with community college education begins with Marvin Feldman's discussion of the origins and future of the community college. Then, Faye Lenarcic examines the relation between sexism and language. Next, Mary Loomba discusses the problem of burnout in relation to librarians. Howard Himelstein outlines the…

Discussions in speech and language pathology often contain references to language differences and the ways these differences compare with speech and language disorders. There is ongoing research on the regional varieties of English, and within the past decade, information on social and ethnic variation in language has been accumulating. Based on…

An investigation was undertaken to assess student attitudes toward learning and using French and their reasons for studying it. It was felt that a more thorough investigation of these issues might help to broaden knowledge of some of the non-educational, social consequences of immersion programs. English-speaking students in sixth and eleventh…

An editorial and articles are presented on a European unit/credit system for modern language learning by adults. The contents are as follows: "A European Unit Credit System" by J. L. M. Trim; "The Analysis of Language Needs: Illusion--Pretext--Necessity" by Rene Richterich; "Learning a Language Is Learning to Communicate" by D. A. Wilkins; "The…

This study investigates the ways adult second language learners deal with errors and trouble sources in their conversations with one another. Specifically, it describes the repair work done by the second language learners, the extralinguistic features accompanying these repairs and the differences between repairs made by speakers at different…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the language in a Spanish bilingual reading classroom; (2) the early stages of language acquisition of black children; (3) the dependency relation between oral…

This study describes certain communication strategies used by Anglophone children learning French as a second language as well as by children whose mother tongue is French. Three groups of children in the third and fifth grades participated in the study: French native speakers, Anglophone children learning French in an immersion setting, and…

This is a report on a child's English and French speech before, during and after a summer vacation in France. The findings are based on recorded samples of her speech in both languages elicited at three times: (1) immediately preceding the trip at age 3 years, 8 months; (2) 2 and l/2 months later; and (3) again 2 and l/2 months after her return to…

The patterns of moves in one type of teaching setting is very fixed: the teacher sets the stage for the learning, then sets tasks or asks questions for others to respond to and then comments on the performances. The problem with this pattern in language classrooms is that language is used differently in non-teaching settings. If students are…

After a critical examination of four assumptions of current procedures in language assessment, it is argued that the pragmatic domain of language ability should be the first to be assessed. A study designed to determine the usefulness of language variation (the number of different structures a child can produce or comprehend) as an alternative…

Three similar experiments were conducted to assess language variation and politeness in the speech of English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children, and in Armenian children learning English as a second language. Each experiment elicited request strategies from the children with the use of puppets in a structured conversation. While…

During 1966-1967, Negro and Spanish-American pupils in grades 1 and 2 of seven Milwaukee elementary schools received a program of intensive assistance from trained speech therapists. The goals of the program were (1) to increase the verbal ability of disadvantaged children to enable them to compete with middle-class children of the same age, and…

Operant conditioning techniques were used to modify verbal behavior in 18 institutionalized, trainable mentally handicapped mongoloids with chronological ages from 4-6 to 7-10 and mental ages from 2.0 to 2.10. Two instruments were constructed to evaluate language: a language test and a speech rating scale. Project leaders had no prior knowledge of…

Data on language competence and language use were obtained for 99 Spanish/English bilingual elementary school children (kindergarten through fourth grade) from Albuquerque. The children's language skills were assessed by teachers, interviewers, and the children themselves. The teachers and the children also estimated the extent to which the…

This article deals with the issue of gaining proficiency in oral expression in a second language. A functional approach to teaching oral proficiency is outlined, an approach which focuses on the audience as a determining factor in the speaker's linguistic output. Claims in the article are based on an experiment in the teaching of oral proficiency…