The linguistic home environments of 10 language-delayed children and 10 linguistically normal children were compared using audiorecordings of parent-child dyads. Significant differences were found between the linguistic interactions of parents with a language-disordered child and parents with a linguistically normal child in all areas studied.…

Uses examples from higher education to present a taxonomy of discourse, classifying verbal interchanges into three minor modes (rote pronouncement, passing time, and gossip), a transitional mode (true conversation), and three major modes (rhetoric, dialectic, and deliberation). (JAC)

The author emphasizes the importance of understanding the secret mechanisms of political rhetoric and analyzes in particular the vocabulary and morpho-syntax of political language. (CFM)

Argues that while story grammar is useful in teaching students to analyze stories, teachers must be aware that a story grammar approach appropriate for stories written in the Western tradition may not match stories written in the traditions of other cultures. Uses Japanese folktales to illustrate the point. (FL)

Children listened to stories which contained anomalies produced by violating semantic restrictions or based on conflicting propositions at two points in a story. The capacity to detect violations of sentences developed more rapidly than detection of violation of discourse. Children's developing capacity to integrate and store story structure is…

Explores how Stephen Toulmin's "layout" for arguments might be usefully adapted to the teaching of "argumentative" sentence-combining exercises. (JL)

Investigates the question of T-unit length stability in informative discourse written by freshmen near the end of an intensive course in college writing. (HOD)

Investigates how writers plan to produce discourse for different purposes--to report, to generalize, to persuade--as well as how writers plan for sentence level units of language. To learn about planning, an observational measure of pause time was used. (HOD)

An analysis of descriptive and narrative passages written by 45 first-semester college freshmen early in the semester suggests that mean T-unit length is not a stable individual trait either within the descriptive mode or across description and narration. (GT)

A study was conducted to measure the effect on reading comprehension of forcing attention to different levels of analysis. Results indicated that for adult fluent readers, and--to a lesser extent--for children, attentional orienting tasks affected the amount and type of information recalled from reading a paragraph. (MKM)

Concludes that teacher guidance affects learning disabled students' recall and comprehension of goal-relevant information but that neither text organization nor age level is associated with degree of recall and comprehension. (FL)

The efficiency of language teaching that employs requests and information solicitation is demonstrated. Pre- and post-test scores of students and videotapes of their teacher-initiated verbal interactions shows a direct relationship between language improvement and the teacher's use of imperatives, indicating the potential value of…

Presents a case study suggesting that teachers who know how to analyze adult literature can use similar skills to analyze children's stories, leading to an increased understanding and sensitivity of the child's creative efforts. (RL)

Suggests that young children use their expectations of a context-specific, normal range of pause duration in timing the onset of a turn at speaking. (FL)