The study evaluated narrative production in seven severe to profoundly hearing impaired adolescents in an attempt to determine whether syntactic prowess would predict which subjects would be more adept at narrative production, in terms of the story grammar conventions used, and the cohesive devices used when narrating a story to a naive listener.…

The staged performance of oral history narratives scripted by interpreters/ethnographers has significant potential for instigating social change. Recent articles by Dwight Conquergood and Kristin Langellier provide the basis for merging ethnography, oral history and social action projects. Narratives from a 1984 farm crisis project illustrate this…

Storytelling, a creative art form with a long history and considerable instructional potential, is increasingly regarded in schools and communities as literature. Recent papers and articles in the ERIC database discuss the use of storytelling in the classroom to develop language abilities, literature appreciation, critical thinking and…

Practicing psychologists use a variety of knowledge acquisition techniques and multiple knowledge structures when working with clients. Narrative knowing is one kind of knowledge, in which individual events are related by connecting them to a theme or a plot of which they are a part. Theme or plot is needed to unify the discrete events. A…

Sentences produced by children and adults in telling stories are analyzed, with particular emphasis on developmental trends in sentence length, the degree of cohesion between clauses, and the internal coherence of sentence content. Subjects for the study were 10 adults and 60 Japanese children in six different age groups. Each subject was…

This paper reports on a usually unrecognized potential benefit of measurement instruments designed for research in instruction: the effectiveness of these instruments when used as instructional procedures. Two studies were involved in the development of this concept. In the first study, an extensive instrument was designed to measure changes in…

Although first enunciated in 1827 by Samuel Newman, the modes of discourse--narration, description, exposition, and argument--were not very popular until formulated in 1866 and presented in the United States in a rhetoric textbook in 1885. After 1890, they were gradually accepted by the most influential rhetoricians of the day, and their use in…

This overview of current trends in radio program design presents program characteristics which should be considered in the design and production of educational radio programs. A variety of descriptive terms are presented and defined as program variables which can be manipulated to create a desired effect. For each term presented a diagnostic…

One hundred fifty children in first, second, and third grade participated in a study of the relationships between written language variables in narrative and expository writing and reading comprehension. The seven written language variables investigated included mean length of T-unit and the ratios of various sentence-combining transformations to…

Drawing its materials from any genre, a Readers Theater differs from the usual theatrical presentation in that its action takes place in the reader's mind and is then projected to the audience. The one requirement for "production" is the reader or a group of readers--a stage is unnecessary. On a simple level, it emphasizes placement of readers,…

Research on literary response has had little to say about student response to authors' techniques in particular literary works. For this study, 165 senior high students of superior verbal ability were asked to read two short stories and to indicate what they thought made each story effective by selecting from an inventory comments which matched…

Previous studies of elocution and expression in America established the cultural significance of oral reading activities in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There is an abundance of information available from private oral expression schools established by four prominent Dallas teachers: Mrs. A. A. Cocke, Mrs. Pearl Wallace Chappell,…

Examples of dialogues are examined to determine whether they are useful in teaching English as a second language. The use of dialogues is considered to be a satisfactory method only if it is combined with use of narrative texts. A class lesson emphasizing dialogue and narrative text is described. (IFS/MS)

Describes how the four traditional kinds of writing (description, narration, exposition, and argumentation) are used in advertising and suggests ways that advertising and the four modes may be used to teach composition. (DD)

High quality children's literature should be used to facilitate language-learning-disabled children's narrative abilities in the areas of structure, content, values, and aesthetic appreciation. Using the macrostructure of the story can lead to the exploration of feelings and values in real or imagined situations. (DB)