The same semantic strategies for requesting are available in Spanish and English. Bilingual children use more polite strategies in speaking Spanish and more neutral ones in speaking English. (PMJ)

Examined the effect of homonymity on children's use of semantic context to derive word meaning. The study presented participants (preschoolers, second graders, and college students) with stories including nonsense words, familiar words used accurately, and homonymous words. Results suggest that homonymity inhibits children's tendency to derive…

A study of five adult males with autism investigated which combination of input/output modalities (typed or spoken) enhanced the syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic performance of individuals with autism when engaging in conversations with a normal language adult. Results found that typed communications facilitated the use of longer utterances.…

Presents a study of technical lexical structures with the aim of assisting students of English as a Second Language in processing and deciphering the lexico-grammatical realization of technology in the field of plastics. The analysis aims to show that technical terminology is closely related to grammar, and that technical lexis and grammar should…

Follows up on a study by Dagut and Laufer (1985), who found that Hebrew learners of English avoid phrasal verbs. Three tests (multiple choice, memorization, and translation) were administered to Dutch learners of English to determine whether Dutch learners would tend not to avoid English phrasal verbs because they do not exist in Dutch. (Author/OD)

Western and Soviet views of memory-related performance are synthesized. Whether middle childhood-aged students comprehend better with meaning-based (involuntary) strategies due to the importance of semantic focus, and whether adolescent students comprehend better with memory-oriented (voluntary) strategies were studied with 243 students in grades…

Outlines the history of semantically based programs that have influenced the design of computer assisted language instruction (CALI) programs. Describes early attempts to make intelligent CALI as well as current projects, including the Foreign Language Adventure Game, developed at the University of Delaware. Describes some important…

Illustrates how, through the words selected, the patterns of interaction experienced, and the range of events constructed in a bilingual sixth-grade classroom, students and teachers defined what counted as mathematics, mathematical actions, and being mathematicians. The patterns of language use and the range of mathematical events within the first…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an innovative treatment sequence designed to facilitate semantic/pragmatic language development in a 5-year old with high-functioning autism. The independent variable was a treatment sequence emphasizing video vignettes and role plays. Dependent variables included efficient gaze, responding without delays,…

Two studies investigated the effects of modified interaction on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition among Japanese high school students learning English as a Second Language. The studies found that interactionally modified input resulted in better comprehension and the acquisition of more new words than premodified input. (MDM)

Words in English often have multiple meanings, causing concepts to be paired with incorrect signs when working with deaf students, such as the concept of "made up" meaning either "invented" or "decided." A method called "sentence chains" is recommended as a drill to learn to link concepts with their appropriate signs. (JDD)

Discussion of authoring tools for computer-based instruction (CBI) focuses on the Computer-Based Educational Software System developed for Navy training. Topics addressed include user experience and task difficulty; generative CBI techniques for memorization and technical vocabulary training; generating questions from a semantic network; and the…

The aim of this study was to determine universal versus language-specific aspects of children's ability to organize cohesive anaphoric relations in discourse. Analyses examine narratives produced on the basis of two picture sentences by subjects of four ages (preschoolers, 7-year olds, 10-year olds, and adults) in four languages: English, German,…

This study investigated sensitivity to morphological, semantic, and syntactic cues to grammatical gender among 64 students of college-level Italian. Results showed sensitivity to cues in word-final phonemes, but low awareness of gender associations of derivational suffixes. Students had more difficulty dealing with multiple cues, particularly when…

A study analyzed the accuracy of Spanish second-language production across three tasks (narrative, multiple-choice cloze test, fill-in cloze test) on three discourse-determined grammatical items (subject pronouns, articles, past tense aspect) among 74 intermediate and advanced college-level learners. Results revealed different rates of accuracy…