Taboo communication is examined in relation to its distinctive characteristics and its significance in inhibiting social change involving birth control in Asian and other countries. Taboo communication tends to occur between very high homophilous individuals, which poses problems for communications research. Research is inhibited when researchers…

This study attempted to evaluate the effects on pupil performance of three and four years of intensive oral language instruction in English or Spanish. The subjects were disadvantaged third and fourth grade Mexican-American children who had been members of experimental classes since first grade in the San Antonio Language Research Project. The…

Among the papers presented at the 15th Annual Convention of the International Reading Association were the 16 included in this volume. The papers, all dealing with relationships between language and linguistics and reading, reflect both a wide range of opinion on the subject and considerable variety of focus. The six research reports are all…

A program for the development and production of basic oral English lessons for the non-English-speaking, Spanish-speaking adults is discussed. This program is conceptualized incorporated animation, choreography, and other entertaining elements coupled with the instructional features of the lessons. Steps were taken to develop a total educational…

Evaluation of a bilingual's proficiency in a second language (S) should consider the extent to which his performance is influenced by his competence in his native or primary language (P). An evaluation of proficiency in an S language should reflect the intuitions of S's native speakers. It is found that native speakers do not regard all instances…

Focuses on arguments among White American children in a small town in New England, Black American children of migrant harvesters, and rural Hindi-speaking Fiji Indian children. Findings suggest that, while repetition, inversion, and escalation are common to all three cultures, there is considerable variation as to how they are used. (EJS)

Describes a pattern of verbal disputing frequently engaged in by children in Hawaii who have some Polynesian ancestry. This pattern, which is characterized by the forceful use of "not!" as an outright contradiction of one speaker by another, is traced from early childhood into adolescence in the context of relationships in which it develops. (EJS)

Discusses "proper intake" (intake that contains certain designated features of informal communication) in the classroom, when the goal is for students to be able to use language in informal communication. (Author/HP)

Describes a teaching technique using a non-language-teaching film in French as a stimulus for aural comprehension practice, discussion and composition. (Text is in French.) (MLA)

An attempt to introduce assessment in a program of microteaching for pre-service Saudi-Arabian teaching led to the formulation of prescriptive categories of teacher behaviors. Behaviors involving "warm-up,""revision and linkage,""situational presentation,""modeling," and "class practice" were…

This paper discusses the viability of the communicative syllabus approach in four different language learning situations: (1) English as a Second Language; (2) English as a Foreign Language; (3) English for Special Purposes; and (4) English for the foreign student attending a university in an English-speaking country. (CFM)

Describes how a teacher used planned observations of classroom interactions to lead to role playing, class discussion, and changes in seating arrangements. The strategies resulted in marked improvements in classroom interactions and in academic work. (SKC)

Since listening comprehension presupposes an orderly conversion of running speech into discrete linguistic units, certain restoration processes must apply. An approach is provided to explain the metamorphosis that language undergoes from dynamic speech representations to citation form strings, under listening conditions. Some performance…

Twelve learning-disabled children, aged 8-11, were compared with normal peers on various discourse errors. No significant quantitative differences were found in the total number of discourse errors between the disabled and normal groups, but the errors were qualitatively different. Male subjects made significantly more errors than female subjects.…

Identifies indicators of register or style in selected portions of two lectures presented in American Sign Language, and in the interpretations of each made by two interpreters. The indicators used are speaking rate, pausing, syntax, intonation, and lexical choice. Transcripts of data are included in Appendix. (Author/LMO)