The article describes a secondary-level curriculum for written expression based on a linguistic model. Directed toward learning disabled adolescents, the method teaches sentence and paragraph construction based on verbal and written models presented by the teacher. Writing good sentences, paragraphs, and essays is presented as a logical extension…

Suggests that an analysis of spontaneous speech collected in a simulation can provide insight into the way messages are produced and understood. Describes an experiment which used this technique to study the linguistic performance and communication strategies in anglophone children learning French. (SED)

Discusses difficulties in perception of English /r/ and /l/ and concludes the error pattern is not predictable on the basis of contrastive phonological analysis but might be the result of acoustic-phonetic factors. (EKN)

Discusses the tendency in second-language (L2) pedagogy to make fallacious comparisons between multicompetent L2 learners and monoglot speakers of the target language. The article describes the principal elements of multicompetence and presents a number of their implications for the construction of syllabi and examinations and the development of…

The relationship between the conversational competence of mildly retarded children (two speakers) and acceptance by regular education students was studied. Ninety-four students in grades four through six responded more positively to videotapes of mildly retarded children who managed conversations well and less favorably to those with…

The acquisition, fostering and further development of literacy in bilingual situations has been widely studied but similar issues in bidialectal settings where nonstandard and standard languages coexist have not attracted sufficient attention. This is the second of a series of studies investigating the use of nonstandard languages or dialects in…

The meanings of the words grammar and linguistics have undergone a multitude of changes in the last years, but teachers should continue to teach linguistics and formal grammar in the schools. (JH)

Current patterns of Patois (introduced by West Indian Creoles) as used by young Jamaicans in England is presented. Forty-five British-born individuals, aged 16 to 23, whose parents were Jamaican immigrants, participated in a study structured to elicit a wide range of speech patterns. Subjects differed greatly in educational background and in…

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

Four papers are included in this document concerning the structure of linguistic input to children. Dan Slobin's paper, "Questions of Language Development in Cross-Cultural Perspective," suggests that children everywhere acquire basic grammatical competence in the first five or six years of life, regardless of social milieu or linguistic…

This paper reports on a study in which the speech and the writing of college freshmen were compared. Spoken samples were gathered from classroom discussion; written samples were taken from pieces written on the discussion material in a later class session. Spoken and written samples from an "A" student, a "B+" student, a "B" student, and a "C"…

Problems related to the structure of the mental lexicon are considered. The single access assumption, the passive memory assumption, and the heterogeneous memory assumption are rejected in favor of the theory which assumes several active memories, each able to store expression based on only one homogenous set of abstract primitives. One lexicon…

Comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences was studied with 48 Japanese children between the ages of two and six. Four types of sentences were constructed using passive and active structures and two word orders: subject-object-verb (SOV) and object-subject-verb (OSV). The basic order of elements in a simple sentence in Japanese is…

Speech performance data, including hesitations in the stream of speech, fragmented words or phrases, retracings, and the use of intonation contours for noncommunicative purposes, are examined. It is proposed that these types of speech phenomena are indicative of underlying hypothesis testing and utterance planning strategies. Data produced by 48…

Thirteen manuscripts and extended reports on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications of research are presented in this status report on speech research for the period of July-December 1979. The topics dealt with include speech perception, children's memory for sentences and word strings in relation…