THIS STUDY GUIDE, THE FIRST PART OF A NINTH-GRADE RHETORIC GUIDE, USED THE STUDENT'S PAST EXPERIENCE IN PREVIOUS RHETORIC COURSES AS A BASIS UPON WHICH TO EXPAND HIS KNOWLEDGE OF SEMANTICS AND EMPHASIS IN WRITING. EXAMPLES WERE PROVIDED OF THE WRITING OF MARK TWAIN AND CHARLES DICKENS AND DIRECTED THE STUDENT TO ANSWER DISCUSSION QUESTIONS IN…

WRITINGS OF MARK TWAIN AND CHARLES DICKENS WERE REFERRED TO IN THIS TEACHER'S GUIDE IN RHETORIC AS EXAMPLES FOR REVIEWING CONCEPTS IN WRITING. IN THE FIRST PART, QUESTIONS FOLLOWED EACH EXAMPLE TO LEAD THE STUDENT TO THE CONVICTION THAT EACH WRITER WRITES FROM WHAT HE KNOWS, AND TO SUGGEST A NUMBER OF WAYS IN WHICH AN AUTHOR MAY ARRANGE HIS…

Human beings who have been forced to acquire language through non-auditory modalities characteristically display an impoverished syntactic system. I.M. Schlessinger (1970) has shown, for example, that users of sign language have difficulty in communicating syntactic relations such as "subject of main verb,""object of the verb," and "indirect…

This study examined oral-reading characteristics associated with language development in second-grade children, working on the suppositions that oral syntactic proficiency influences a child's use of syntax while reading and that this influence can be seen in oral reading, particularly in the contextual appropriateness of errors. It was also…

Because of the high incidence of structural similarity between Jamaican Creole and Standard English, many of the important differences between the two languages can be obscured. This fact and that of negative attitudes towards Creole are the principal problems encountered in teaching Creole. The lessons in this course on Jamaican Creole are based…

Describes specific changes in children's conversational abilities in early childhood, which may in turn serve to alter how their partners judge their abilities to understand. The evidence regarding the level and types of changes in adult speech to children as the child's ability changes is also addressed. (EJS)

Discusses the shortcomings of the morpheme order approach in first and second language acquisition research, and proposes instead the notion of developmental sequence, drawing on examples from data on four German children learning English naturalistically. (Author/AM)

Rebuts an article that claimed to overthrow the authors' 1969 findings. It is demonstrated that the original study concerned syntactic organization and that interpretation of it as bearing on comprehension is largely unjustified. Comments on their prior work in light of new developments in child language are included. (EJS)

This article discusses the concept of "threshold level" as it applies to second language learning and proficiency. The threshold level is seen as the minimum level of proficiency required to communicate basic needs and to interact successfully. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Explores the use of discourse anaphora in scientific abstracts and presents rules to be used for distinguishing anaphoric functioning of terms. The results of tests using these rules are reported, and the implications for natural language understanding, question answering, automatic extracting, query analysis, and bibliographic retrieval are…

Describes a beginning foreign language class applying the principles of Stephen Krashen's "Natural Approach" and James Asher's "Total Physical Response" method. Initially students carry out the instructor's commands in the form of actions rather than being required to speak. In later stages role play and simple discussions are…

Summarizes current trends in second language acquisition research and suggests their implications for teaching. Five second language acquisition principles are presented, followed by a discussion of the relevant literature and a description of language teaching practices consistent with each principle. (SED)

Comparison of how English and Spanish speakers express contrastive emphasis revealed that, while English speakers used pitch and intensity, Spanish speakers used changes in syntax and lexicon as well as pitch and intensity in showing contrasts. (CB)

The article describes a secondary-level curriculum for written expression based on a linguistic model. Directed toward learning disabled adolescents, the method teaches sentence and paragraph construction based on verbal and written models presented by the teacher. Writing good sentences, paragraphs, and essays is presented as a logical extension…

Samples of the communicative behavior of a group of mildly mentally retarded adults were examined for indications of mature linguistic competence (specifically, grammatical morpheme and complex sentence use).Findings confirmed the expectation that the eventual mastery of these aspects of linguistic competence in higher-level retarded individuals…