Reports on a classroom experiment testing the hypothesis that the distance across which readers must integrate information is a factor in reading comprehension. Concludes that secondary school students found it more difficult to resolve semantic relationships beyond the sentence than those within the sentence. (FL)

Describes a study designed to test if, when children describe actions, they consider the role an entity plays in an action, independent of the animateness of the entity. Results indicate that young children have relational intentions which are independent of animateness. (EKN)

Reveals that the important connectives in industrial arts textbooks are different from those found in textbooks for other subject areas. Provides a framework of connectives designed to help teachers prepare instructional materials. (FL)

Four experiments were conducted to determine the source of difficulty of Wason's THOG problem. The THOG problem permits examination of the way people tackle a novel hypothetico-deductive problem. The results are interpreted as demonstrating the importance of problem presentation in problem solving. (Author/PN)

Describes a reading experiment with two groups of English speaking children attending French immersion programs. The two groups, from grades 3 and 6 respectively, were tested in both English and French for their ability to recognize spelling patterns and to make positive transfers from one language to the other. (MES)

Reports part of a continuing project to develop a theory of children's first-language acquisition using computer modeling techniques. Notes the correspondence of structures formed by the computer program with recognized structures in English. Discusses anomalies in the program's performance. (RL)

Shows, by discussing presupposition and speech acts, that the interplay between background information and linguistic surface is highly subtle and complex. These ideas are not always obvious to teachers, let alone English as a Foreign Language students. An examination of background information and speaker's intentions will facilitate an…

Examines structural ties that children use to join their sentences into a coherent paragraph or composition. (HTH)

Present a study in which Arab subjects were to change 10 English declarative sentences into yes/no questions. Results showed 25.6 percent of the answers were erroneous. An attempt is made to account for the source of error. Most errors were not due to effects of the native language, but to the verb form used. (PJM)

One can group and teach idioms according to their accessibility to a particular type of student. Four types of idioms exist: (1) those which have equivalents in the student's native language; (2) those having only semantic counterparts; (3) those understandable from the constituent structure; and (4) the true idioms, those not comprehensible from…

All the irregularities of all common French verbs are reduced to five categories in the "passe simple." This system facilitates learning the tense without memorizing each irregular verb independently. (PMJ)

Discusses arguments that support the position regarding the distribution of non-grammatical markings of negation and of "wh"-scope and emphasizes the importance of looking for deep unifying principles in cross-modal studies of American Sign Language in order to further understanding of Universal Grammar. (33 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the influence of sign language structures on the spontaneous use of time and space markers in French and French Sign Language. The study compared the use of nonspatialized utterances and spatialized structures of deaf and hearing children, adolescents, and adults. Findings shed light on the different types of errors in understanding. (17…

Discusses possibilities and limitations of laboratory research methods for testing theories of second language acquisition. Reviews experimental lab studies and focuses on the motivation for conducting these studies, the use of artificial or semiartificial language structures and different design features. (54 references) (Author/CK)

Examines the traditional characterization of the process of verb formation in Sinhala (Singhalese) and the interaction between grammar components involved in the process. Compares this with a new approach, and presents an attempt at formulating derivation rules. The basic assumption is that a more integrated approach to the grammar yields a more…