A study of spontaneous language use by elementary school children and teachers in a wide range of classroom activities used a combination of observation, audiotaping, videotaping, and interviews to examine more closely the role of dialect diversity in elementary education. The study provides a more accurate and complete record of classroom life…

A study examined the role of talk in the writing act. The study utilized participant observational techniques in an attempt to discover how talk was implicated in all stages of writing. Subjects were three fourth, fifth, and/or sixth grade informants, with one student emerging as the key informant in the study. Results indicated that talk appeared…

Part of a larger project to design a production curriculum and measure the impact of this production activity on children's writing, visual thinking, and problem solving skills, a project developed an effective but inexpensive video for use in teaching animation processes to students at the elementary school level. The project used "cutout" or…

This book is an update and explanation of "The Seven Laws of Teaching," written by John Milton Gregory in 1884. The teaching laws are clear and simple statements of the important factors governing the art of teaching. They are: (1) The teacher must know the lesson, truth, or art to be taught; (2) The learner must show interest in the lesson; (3)…

Research on communicative processes in classroom second language use is reviewed, and exercises for developing interactive skills and culturally appropriate conversational behavior are suggested. The inability of students to actively participate in the second language classroom is related less to deficient knowledge of form than to inability to…

Reports an investigation designed to determine if using programmed textbook units in rather typical courses improved student test performance and enriched student interaction in class discussion. (PEB)

This study presents a dramatistic analysis of the language used by four teachers, all of whom were considered excellent by their department directors, by their students, and by the parents of their students. Regular freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior literature classes were videotaped. Dialogue was then transcribed, and nonverbal activity,…

A study was conducted to determine the degree to which teachers and students share perceptions of the use of power in the classroom. The study defined five bases of power: coercive (implied or explicit punishment), reward, legitimate (assigned), referent (identification with the person in power), and expert (perceived competence). A total of 156…

The fifth in a series of annual volumes published by the International Communication Association, this yearbook provides reviews, overviews, and syntheses of developments in the evolution of the science of communication. The 40 articles in the volume are categorized as follows: (1) communication reviews and commentaries, including issues in…

This compilation includes the following essays: (1) "Conversational Inference and Classroom Learning" (John J. Gumperz); (2) "Persuasive Talk--The Social Organization of Children's Talk" (Jenny Cook-Gumperz); (3) "Ethnography--The Holistic Approach to Understanding Schooling" (Frank W. Lutz); (4) "Triangulated Inquiry--A Methodology for the…

In the first of two experiments, positive and negative expectations about a teacher were induced in a student who was about to be taught by that teacher, and both verbal and nonverbal measurements were taken. Results showed that subjects responded quite directly to the experimental manipulation. In the second experiment, a student simulated some…

Three characteristics of school writing activities that may make it difficult for students to learn to write with skill and enthusiasm are identified in this paper. They are: the solitary nature of most writing tasks, a lopsided emphasis on low-level details of text such as grammar and spelling, and the isolation of writing from reading in the…

The first article in this journal issue offers a diffuse definition of instructional communication, the theme of the issue, and reviews literature that points out the ill-defined parameters of communication and the classroom. The following articles discuss the development of a rhetorical perspective on teaching, the parental role in facilitating…

A sociolinguistic study of pupil interpretations of the functions of teacher praise in lessons involved 165 pupils in six classes in a single multiethnic, lower socioeconomic status, elementary school. Procedures involved videotaping six language arts lessons in each classroom. After playbacks of videotapes, pupils were asked individually, "What…