IT IS URGED THAT THE TEACHER BE FAMILIAR WITH THE LANGUAGE PATTERNS OF HIS PUPILS. A CASE IS CITED IN WHICH A TEACHER ATTEMPTED TO TEACH ROMANTIC POETRY TO A CLASS OF TEENAGERS. THEY RESPONDED WITH BOREDOM. A POEM BY LANGSTON HUGHES ENTITLED, "MOTTO," EXPRESSED IN "JIVE" LANGUAGE WAS INTRODUCED TO THE SAME CLASS AND IMMEDIATELY…

AN APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING THE SUPPLY OF IDEAS FOR TEACHING DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN WAS CONSIDERED. A BASIC PROBLEM IN WORKING WITH DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN IS THAT OF OVERCOMING THEIR RESTRICTED, CONTENT-ORIENTED LANGUAGE STYLE. WORKING CLASS CHILDREN USUALLY INTERPRET THINGS AROUND THEM AS SIMPLE, CONCRETE, DISCONNECTED, ISOLATED…

A CONFERENCE WAS HELD TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY OF LANGUAGES OTHER THAN ENGLISH, FRENCH, GERMAN, ITALIAN, RUSSIAN, AND SPANISH. DISCUSSIONS WERE CENTERED ON (1) DETERMINING CRITERIA FOR THE SELECTION OF NEGLECTED LANGUAGES WORTHY OF INCREASED STUDY, (2) SELECTING A LIST OF LANGUAGES MEETING THE CRITERIA, (3) A…

A NATIONWIDE SURVEY WAS CONDUCTED OF MODERN LANGUAGE TEACHER EDUCATION CURRICULUMS. FOUR TYPES OF QUESTIONNAIRES WERE DEVELOPED FOR (1) LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES, (2) TEACHERS COLLEGES, (3) GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, AND (4) GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF EDUCATION, AND ADDRESSED TO 1,058 OF THESE INSTITUTIONS. A TOTAL OF 758 REPORTED THAT THEY…

The first part of this essay argues specifically that legal speech acts are not statements but question/answer constructions. The focus in this section is on the underlying interrogative structure of the legal decision. The second part of the paper touches on significant topics related to the concept of legal speech acts, including the philosophic…

This is the first in a series of self-instructional modules dealing with common English idioms, and is intended for use in the learning of English as a foreign language. The idioms were selected for frequency and usage in up-to-date usage in North America. The situations in which the idioms appear are in authentic conversational English, many of…

Readability estimates are usually based on measures of word difficulty and measures of sentence difficulty. Word difficulty is measured in two ways: by the structural size and complexity of words or by reference to phonomena of language use, such as word-list frequency or the regularity of spelling patterns. Sentence difficulty is measured only in…

An experiment was conducted to investigate the hypothesis that English cliches reflect sex-specific styles of speech and that sex-specificity of expressions is related to differential usage by male and female speakers. Hypotheses were derived from Tyler's claims that the "neutral sphere" is infused by the male style, rendering it an inhibiting…

The initial stage of second language learning usually aims to develop the ability to converse. This conversational ability is, however, rarely the ultimate object of second language instruction. The student may want access to the literature of the culture of the second language, or to get an education in it. For these reasons, interest shifts…

Three principles are integral to any reading theory which provides reading teachers and researchers with the linguistic explanatory power required by linguistic theory. A clear understanding of language is dependent on the knowledge of what language is and how it works. There is an important distinction between competence and performance; most…

Substitutes in English (such as "he,""she,""it,""one,""do so,""thus,""there," and "such") participate in an intricate network of systems. This study aims to identify those English substitutes which are words or word sequences and to describe their workings in some of…

Linguistic criticism not only shows students the usefulness of grammar but also improves their comprehension of literature. For instance, a study of stress, pitch, and juncture in E. E. Cummings'"anyone lived in a pretty how town" adds meaning to the poem. Also helpful is an analysis of Cummings' tagmemic method of substitution slot-filling--use…

The two studies of predisposition toward verbal behavior (PVB) reported in this paper examined the behavior of interactants who have dissimilar verbal predispositions in task-oriented discussions. In the first study, 20 groups of three members each were given an interpersonal task that involved reaching a consensus. In the second study, 17 pairs…

Answers to three of the questions used in gathering material for the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) are analyzed in this paper. The data was collected state by state, and the number studied in each state was based on the 1960 population figures and known patterns of settlements and migrations. In the first question, the informants…

In this paper the bitransitive clause is defined in terms of its nuclear tagmemes: subject, predicate, direct object, and indirect object. A semantic characterization is given of the prototype bitransitive clause with a correlation of situational roles and grammatical functions. The nine different dominant orders in bitransitive clauses which were…