Argues that the area in which the artistic development of young children can be helped immediately, without awaiting teacher retraining in the various arts, is story telling: if children are continually asked to tell stories, and if delight is shown in their stories, then the stories improve; eventually children want to write them down. (Author/JM)

This report presents the results of classroom interaction research to determine if elementary and secondary school teachers in a North Carolina school district treated males and females differently, and to find out if an intervention strategy would foster more equitable treatment. An experimental group of teachers participated in workshops that…

This series, designed for use in inservice teacher workshops, addresses the question, "How do children and teachers use language to get things done?" The transcribed classroom discourse presented and discussed in each volume illustrates functional language in a real context based on the videotaping of undoctored classroom events from…

The following papers and reports on discourse analysis are included here: (1) "Discourse Analysis, What's That?" by Hatch and Long; (2) "Contextual Analysis of English: Applications to TESL" by Celce-Murcia; (3) "Discourse and Second Language Acquisition of Yes/No Questions" by Vander Brook, Schlue, and Campbell; (4)…

Two trends indicate the importance of competent communication skills in teacher preparation. The first is the professional commitment of the Speech Communication Association (SCA) to speech communication education. At various conferences, the SCA has made recommendations for speech communication training for teachers at all levels and for research…

The use of discourse analysis in examining the classroom language interactions between English teachers and their students builds on the basic concepts of language function and language sequence. The four language functions are eliciting, informing, directing, and boundary marking (marking the divisions of discourse units). The three language…

Data on 17 first grade teachers and 305 students in 45 reading groups were used to examine the relationships between teacher behaviors, their classification of their students, and student reading achievement. The teachers were asked to rank their students on six characteristics: confidence, obedience, extroversion, good seatwork habits, teacher…

A REPORT OF A CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH IN SPEECH AND HEARING FOR MENTALLY RETARDED CHILDREN IS PRESENTED. THE MAIN AREAS INCLUDED ARE THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION, PROCEDURES FOR MEASURING LANGUAGE, AND SPECIAL METHODS FOR TREATMENT. SPECIFIC REPORTS GIVEN ARE--"PSYCHOLINGUISTICS IN THE STUDY OF MENTAL RETARDATION"…

IT IS NOT YET KNOWN HOW THE EXTENT OF LANGUAGE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOWER CLASS CHILDREN AND TEACHERS WITH MIDDLE CLASS TRAINING AND, FOR THE MOST PART, WITH MIDDLE CLASS BACKGROUNDS, INFLUENCES CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION. AN EVALUATION WAS MADE OF THE EXPRESSIVE LINGUISTIC SKILLS AND SPEECH CONTENT OF CHILDREN OF DIFFERENT AGES, RACES, AND SOCIAL…

Two sessions of a kindergarten show and tell (spaced 18 days apart) were observed to compare the participant structure and the content of this shared time. Participant structure was examined in terms of turn taking, spatial arrangement, and teacher management of the event. Content was analyzed in terms of topic and cognitive level. The changes in…

A study was conducted to determine if teachers' use of transitions and additional unexplained content influenced student achievement and perception of lesson effectiveness. One hundred eleventh grade English students were randomly assigned to one of four groups defined by possible combinations of two teacher transition conditions (transitions or…