Presents a history of critical approaches to literacy from a neo-Marxist perspective; discusses the social, cultural and ideological work "literacy" has performed in the service of the "dominant discourse"; and highlights literacy's hegemonic function in Australia, Great Britain, and the United States. Argues that literacy…

Investigates the linguistic abilities of a subgroup of grammatical specific language impaired (SLI) children, focusing on the use of referential expressions in a narrative discourse and providing insight into the underlying nature of grammatical SLI. Findings support the hypothesized modular nature of grammatical SLI children's underlying…

Describes an attempt at an English grammar program for the first year of secondary schooling in Queensland, Australia linked to the grammatical features introduced in the students' second language programs. Outlines the stages of development, including examination of the second language texts and of English course books and deciding on a…

Examined how mathematical problems are articulated, i.e. identified and defined, in the context of a fifth-grade lesson on equivalent fractions. Notes that classroom discourse limited to serial tasks constrained students' opportunities to develop relational knowledge about the properties and principles of equivalent fractions. (38 references)…

Discusses the issue of literacy as a gate keeper and how the interviewee's own experiences as a bilingual Latina and writing teacher aroused her interest in sociocultural understandings of literacy and language learning. She emphasizes the importance of discourse-based analysis and discusses the issue of high urban mobility as well as her other…

Quantitative analysis of 1,083 first language and second language academic texts establishes that advanced nonnative-English-speaking students in U.S. universities employ excessively simple syntactic and lexical constructions at median frequency rates significantly higher than those found in basic texts by native English speakers. (Author/VWL)

Examines how students in a second language classroom deploy linguistic and cultural resources to both resist and appropriate aspects of the teachers' voices. A key episode is analyzed to show the nuances of students' ventriloquation of diverse voices to construct a complex social order and shifting strategic identities. (Author/VWL)

The written stories of 8 severely to profoundly hearing-impaired students in grades 4-11 were analyzed and assigned a developmental level. Results indicated T-unit lengths within normal limits, limited use of cohesive devices, and difficulty with internal responses. The developmental level exhibited by most subjects was the true narrative stage.…

In speech therapy lessons, discourse between the clinician and the child is impacted by the social presuppositions of both participants. This paper argues that some macroanalysis of the clinician's social experiences must be incorporated into the microanalysis of therapy to sort out the multiple meanings of therapy events. (Author/JDD)

Four ideas for language classroom activities are presented, including an exercise in oral discourse analysis, a newspaper-reading activity using the holistic approach, the use of slight phonological changes to turn a title into a joke or play on words, and an exercise looking at varieties of language style. (MSE)

Proposes to examine reading problems by means of discourse analysis of students' translations. The study is based on two previous experiments in which first-year university students translated English texts into their native language (Hebrew or Arabic). (37 references) (Author/VWL)

Uses eight languages in five distinct linguistic areas to examine two hypotheses regarding text generation and analysis and to illustrate their reciprocity relative to narrative discourse. Demonstrates how these hypotheses yield salience schemes and constituent analysis which mutually corroborate and correct each other. (KEH)

Presents an analysis of code switching in the interaction between Japanese as a topic prominent language and English as a subject prominent language, using English sentences uttered by Japanese-English bilingual speakers in North America. A comparison is made with the early English interlanguage of a speaker of Hmong, another topic prominent…

Provides a brief account and explanation of the phenomenon of language use among the Baba community, which uses Hokkien, Malay, and English in the process of code selection and code mixing/switching. Data are drawn from recordings of conversation of the Babas and Nyonyas. (Author/OD)

Results obtained through the implementation of an innovative technique designed to investigate the relationship between classroom interaction and learning outcomes are reported. Topicalization by learners is shown to be influential in accounting for learners' claims about uptake, learners' perceptions about what they have learned, in one…