This essay contrasts two approaches to household bilingual education with respect to the notion of identity. The notion of lingualism is presented. Lingualism emphasizes the continuum between monolinguals and bilinguals through a nonquantifying understanding of language (including speech, writing, gestures, and language potential). Kouritzin's…

The purpose of this volume is to demonstrate that the fields of linguistics, dialectology, language education, and early reading would be well served by a word book of the Black English vernacular. Chapters are devoted to discussion of the social significance of a lexicon of Black English vernacular, the terminology of sex and lovemaking, religion…

The text consists of 22 lessons and is intended as a supplementary text for intermediate and advanced Hausa students. All but three of the lessons contain a reading selection, a set of discussion questions, a list of idioms from the reading along with other expressions that are semantically or syntactically related, exercises to test for mastery…

Sociolinguists have recently demonstrated the value of directives in indicating the relationship between status and linguistic form. The purpose of the instrument developed for this study was to quantify the coerciveness of directives on the basis of the theoretical approaches in the literature to objectify the comparison of directive forms.…

This paper discusses the central theoretical aspects of the "Languaging in the Content Areas" (LICA) thesis, intended to provide postelementary reading with a sense of definition and purpose compatible with contemporary needs and conditions. The objective of the LICA thesis is not merely to teach students how to read critically what has been…

This study was designed to identify and analyze some of the common linguistic patterns that impede the academic progress of black students entering college. A questionnaire, distributed to educators in communication skills on the college level, asked for the identification of common black linguistic features according to familiarity and use in…

Translating legal and bureaucratic language into plain, comprehensible English is not amenable to simple rules and procedures. Rewriting comprehensibly requires specialized knowledge about language and an awareness of a number of misconceptions and pitfalls. This paper discusses what not to do in rewriting, based upon rewritten documents presently…

This paper presents 111 specific activities to help elementary students develop their creative writing skills. For each activity, suggestions are given for ways to begin and to develop the activity and for follow-up. Other sections of the paper discuss the type of classroom climate which is conducive to the development of creative writing skills,…

This article provides suggestions for generating real conversation in the foreign language classroom. Garfinkel suggests using cameras for students to take pictures to talk about, and Gillett suggests that students be involved in the preparation, operation and display of media. Conner advocates round table discussions, language games, and panel…

Research indicates that dialect is used in children's books to suggest the geographic background, social class, educational level, and intelligence of literary characters. Several studies show, however, that young readers develop negative attitudes about characters who speak nonstandard dialects and that these attitudes are intensified if the…

Part of the Grade Teacher Special report, "Linguistics and the Language Arts.

A study was conducted to determine the meanings people give to certain words that describe different groups of people. Participants indicated the chronological age they have in mind when using 15 age terms, including baby, senior citizen, adolescent, infant, mature, elderly, youth, and old. The 150 replies to the questionnaire came from college…

The 10 articles in this book examine how comprehension is affected by what the reader brings to the text, the manner in which the text is structured by the author, and the contextual variables that shape the meaning derived by the reader. Specific topics covered in the articles are (1) background knowledge and comprehension, (2) learning how to…

Many linguists have maintained that the pronouns "he,""his," and "him" and the noun "man," when used in the generic sense, legitimately refer to both males and females and effectively cue readers to think of both. Others have argued, however, that the generic terms cause readers to "filter out" or…

Two experiments investigated the relationship between cultural schemata and reading comprehension. Subjects for the first experiment were 186 eighth grade students who attended one of five schools--two predominately black inner-city schools, two predominately white working class area schools, and a predominately white agricultural area school.…