If individuals who react to a variety of phenomena tend to have compatible cognitive dimensions, then development of similar meanings and responses among individuduals is facilitated. A study of compatibilities and communication responses utilized two methods of analysis: the "unfolding technique" of scales whereby subjects rank-ordered…

The structure, complexity, and peculiarities of the English language are examined in this book, which begins with a discussion of the nature of language. Chapters are devoted to (1) naming--"Language as Answer to a Need"; (2) grammar--"Language as Economy"; (3) words--"Language as the Finding of Minds"; (4) etymology--"Language to Stretch Brains…

This volume deals with various aspects of the relationship between linguistic ability and general cognitive development. It presents original, up-to-date research for child psychologists, linguists, psycholinguists, scholars, teachers, and students interested in this field and interprets the findings in the context of contemporary linguistic…

Elementary school teachers' attitudes toward individualizing reading instruction were examined in the evaluation of the Wisconsin Design for Reading Skill Development (WDRSD). An instrument was constructed in the semantic differential format. Teachers were asked to respond anonymously on adjective scales to eleven example classroom procedures…

A basic assumption of this study is that the meaning continuum registered by an adjective pair remains relatively constant over a large universe of concepts and over subjects within a relatively homogeneous population. An attempt was made to validate this assumption by showing the invariance of the factor structure across different types of…

This paper examines the semantic and structural characteristics of a basic pattern in English and discusses Spanish equivalents. A sentence-by-sentence analysis is made with consideration of transformations on the basic patterns in both languages. Translation and transformation complications in the two languages are illustrated. The equivalence…

Four Negro children's (two average and two slow readers) oral reading was taped at eight regular intervals during their second and third year of reading instruction in order to analyze their oral reading miscues and to discover any developmental changes. Retelling of stories read was also taped to measure comprehension. The miscues were analyzed…

Intended for use with grades three and four, this curriculum unit developed by the Oregon Elementary English Project attempts to (1) develop an interest in, respect for, and curiosity about words; (2) expose students to the concept that when we know a word we know its meaning, pronunciation, and relationship to other words; (3) build language…

Developed by the Oregon Elementary English Project, these two sections are part of a unit on words. The first section, consisting of 5 lessons, aims to make the student aware of (1) words as an integral part of the language and (2) the tremendous number of words he already knows and can use. The second section, "What We Know about…

This paper seeks to formulate a principle that explains the working of the Japanese number system with respect to Japanese nouns and that defines the kinds of nouns and contexts that condition the forms of number expressions. It is the author's theory that in applying numbers to nouns, the Japanese make a formal distinction between things they…

This report considers the problem of constructing an abstract model of story comprehension. The use of questions that go beyond the story as a test of understanding the story raises a methodological problem which is discussed in detail. (Author)

This self-study program for the high-school level contains lessons in the following subjects: Spelling Endings Added to e; Capitalization; Question Marks and Exclamation Points; Quotation Marks; Spelling Double Letter Demons; Colons and Dashes; Punctuating Series with Commas and Semicolons; More Confusing Word Pairs; Separating Sentence Parts with…

A question answering system which permits a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) student greater initiative in the variety of questions he can ask is described. A method is presented to represent the dynamic processes of a subject matter area by augmented finite state automata, which permits efficient inferencing about dynamic processes and…

The language a child learns from and attends to is the speech of significant persons in his world, addressed to each other and to him. As the child gradually participates in this social interaction he learns communicative competence, i.e., the nonconscious, tacit knowledge that underlies speech behavior--knowledge of both the language and the…

This study reports a portion of a series of investigations designed to determine to what extent credibility scales can be generalized. The investigation data was collected in six phases, representing six subject populations. All of the subjects were either college students or non-student adults. Subjects were asked to respond to one of four…