Ideas for using entire comic strips or parts of cartoons to teach coherence, cultural information, vocabulary, semantics, grammar, syntax, discourse, and other elements of language in the French language classroom are presented and illustrated. (MSE)

Outlines the development of a French second language program based on the communicative needs and professional objectives of individuals conducting diplomatic affairs in France. Two examples of discourse analysis are given: one of a number of telephone conversations recorded in an embassy and the other of a collection of notes. (MSE)

Investigation of commonalities in children's language across tasks showed that children with literate and oral speech styles made both contrastive and similar types of adaptations when portraying events through play and oral narration. As they moved from playing to narrating, both groups edited more carefully and employed more explicit language.…

After a summary and critique of traditional approaches to politeness that are based on appropriateness, suggestions are made for an approach based on interpersonal supportiveness. The issues in the proposed model pertain to cross-modal ways of expressing emotion, supportive and nonsupportive use combinations, and a redefinition of politeness. (SED)

Explores four drafts of a child's story about the disappearance of television, showing how the later draft suggests the writer's interest in questions about the nature of reality, and how the student grew as writer. (HTH)

Argues that communicative competence is as important in writing as in speaking, and that more emphasis should be placed on written work and writing skills in the second language classroom. Discusses some of the insights that discourse analysis provides into written communication in the areas of pragmatics, semantics, lexicon, and syntax. (EKN)

Examines the quality of conversation produced by small groups of subjects in fifth, ninth, and twelfth grades and the last year of college. Results supported Piaget's sequence of conversational development. However, topical coherence apparently is not fostered by focused turns but emerges as a generalization of the normative constraints applying…

Discusses what a spontaneously formed group of three children thought and did as they composed a story together. The observations focus on the whole writing process. (HTH)

Urges the use of new developments in structuralist and poststructuralist theory as the basis for a new practice in the teaching of composition. (CRH)

Describes four basic features that distinguish narrative from expository discourse and suggests that teachers who recognize those differences can guide their students to use reading strategies appropriate to particular text structures. (HOD)

Describes a successful in-class exercise that forces students without their knowing to form their own methods of patterning in order to reach understanding of a work and to begin to assign symbolic value to items in a work. (CRH)

Investigates interaction between application of communicative strategies and narrative discourse features. The data draws upon research in narrative discourse collected from one student of Moroccan Arabic. The study suggests that the subject resorted to a number of strategies to compensate for her linguistic deficiencies and that application of…

The purpose of this study was to identify the initial terms and means of creating and assessing the quality of what the author calls "fear education" (analogous to sex education or health education). Using a review of a random sample of discourses from the educational literature, the author analyzes how "fear" and…

A review of literature in sociolinguistics and classroom conversation reveals areas in which sociolinguistic research and theory can inform the conducting of student writing conferences with teachers. Studies on classroom discourse, communicative competence in classroom exchanges, the nature and role of teacher talk, and the features of…

This chapter examines benefits and pitfalls inherent in studying teaching and learning from the inside where the teacher is also the principal investigator of the research. The first section describes a first-person account of a trajectory using inquiry as a means of practice and using practice as a medium for research. Then, three cases of…