This paper examines the nature of communication taking place between suspected victims of child abuse and adults in courtroom and investigative proceedings. It focuses on the discourse requirements of eyewitness testimony, the child's developing ability to produce the requisite discourse, autobiographical memory, sociocultural factors influencing…

Discusses importance of adults asking questions that encourage development of children's expressive language. Compared the responses of 4- to 5-year olds asked only closed questions with those of children asked verbal reflective questions in which the questioner restated part of the child's previous utterance. Found that closed questions generated…

Analysis of adult English-as-a-Second-Language students' dialogue journal communication with their native speaking teacher found that 5 of the 12 conversations analyzed were reciprocal in most of the "move" (sharing of information or opinions unknown by the other) categories, but only 4 were reciprocal in initiating solicits, and only 1 extended…

Traces the clarity of noun/pronoun referents and the use of cohesive ties in personal experience narratives told by children aged two, four, six, and nine years as well as by adults. Shows that children interrelated their sentences in similar ways as adults. Discusses implications of the study for educators. (HB)

Critiques how the Kennedy assassination is interpreted by visitors to the assassination site in Dallas, Texas. Reveals how participants at the twenty-fifth anniversary, including members of the media, used reproductions of the site to structure their experience, how they reproduced new realities of the site and the assassination, and how they…

Presents a linguistic description of the schematic organization of 40 journal articles from three academic journals in computing research. Results indicate the introduction-methods-results-discussion research reporting pattern can not be applied to computer science articles, with the central part (methods- results) departing most from the…

Discusses differences in academic discourse presentation, including preference for the use of first person singular "I" in some languages vs. the "we" perspective in others. Data are presented concerning employment of the two perspectives in English, German, French, Russian, and Bulgarian research articles in linguistics.…

Investigates effect of task type on resultant candidate discourse and input of the interlocutor. The experimental design ensured an information gap in one of the interview tasks for prospective immigrants to Australia. Findings indicate that candidate discourse differs in quantity and quality between situations when an information gap exists and…

Presents a one-class-period writing exercise (including handout) which uses a short excerpt from a 1948 book called "Making Housekeeping Easy" to teach the linking of claims to evidence as well as academic citation practices. (SR)

Investigates the patterns of intertextual linking as learners engaged in problem solving when using hypermedia. Learners were observed in their synthesized discourse in six cases using Perseus, a Greek culture database. Discusses themes that emerged from learners' on-line protocols and interactions and implications for instructional designers.…

Reports on student perceptions of classroom discourse, which includes speech between teacher and students as well as among peers. Students indicate both observations of frequency and value judgments. Responses are analyzed by their final course grade. Results are intended to guide future formal and informal observational studies on how relative…

Describes the conversational rhythm in an elementary class in order to understand when and how teacher and students succeed in developing shared understandings, and when and how they encounter difficulties. Uses the two contrasting concepts of "intermingling" and "bumpiness" to catch the phenomenological aspects of time in the…

Examines how native and nonnative undergraduate-student speakers adjust their referring expressions to each other in conversation. Finds that lexical entrainment was just as common in native/nonnative pairs as in native/native pairs; natives uttered more words than nonnatives in the same roles; and native expressions were judged less…

Discusses outcomes of a research project analyzing the relationship between academic literacy specialists and a subject specialist from a nursing faculty engaged in a collaborative curriculum development project at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Focuses on how participants in this partnership negotiated a working relationship…

Focuses on if conditionals in medical discourse. Three genres are examined: research articles, journal editorials, and doctor-patient consultations. Analyzes a variety of formal, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of conditionals across genres. Concludes with brief reflections on pedagogic implications. (Author/VWL)