The contents of this handbook are designed to help teachers clarify, in their own minds, many of the grammatical points that might be raised in the English as a second language classroom. Each chapter ends with exercises and a discussion of classroom implications of the topics raised. Chapter I covers parts of speech, including nouns, verbs,…

AS COMPUTERS ARE USED FOR INCREASINGLY COMPLEX OPERATIONS SUCH AS RETRIEVING DOCUMENTS AND ANALYZING SENTENCES, IT BECOMES APPARENT THAT HUMAN DECISION-MAKING IS STILL AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF THE PROCESS. THE USE OF THE ON-LINE INTERACTIVE CAPABILITY OF TODAY'S THIRD-GENERATION COMPUTERS SUPPORTED BY TYPEWRITER AND DISPLAY SCOPE TERMINALS MAKES…

In a verbal memory study of language development, third- through sixth-grade children read and orally recalled short, expository passages which were presented in three syntactic paraphrase forms: (1) complex sentences with preverbal elaboration such as complex subject nominalizations and relative clauses, (2) complex sentences with postverbal…

The persuasive writings of 14 teacher education students considered to be exemplary writers were examined to determine what variations occurred across topics and across writers. The stability of the T-unit (the main clause and all its subordinate clauses) as an indicator of writing ability was also tested. All the subjects wrote compositions on…

The frequency with which a child's parents use a given linguistic form has been considered influential in language development. This hypothesis has been challenged, however, notably by Ervin (1964) and Brown (1973). The frequency hypothesis makes the assumptions that: (1) children are not selective in what they attend to, (2) they listen to most…

An important feature of the sentence in any language is its thematic structure, new/given information organization. It has been found that in English, where word order is grammatically determined, the thematic structure is signalled by the place of the sentence stress. If an indefinite noun (new information) is present in the sentence, it bears…

This is a description of the motivation and overall organization of the OWL language for knowledge representation. OWL consists of a linguistic memory system (LMS), a memory of concepts in terms of which all English phrases and all knowledge of an application domain are represented; a theory of English grammar which tells how to map English…

It was reasoned that if the right ear/left brain hemisphere is more efficient than the left ear/right hemisphere at extracting the meaning of a sentence, then verbatim information presented to the right ear may be more difficult to retrieve than verbatim information presented to the left ear immediately after the sentence is heard. This idea was…

This contrastive analysis of Telugu and English covers the structure of sentences, clauses, and "groups" (phrases) from a pedagogical point of view. Areas of difficulty for Telugu-speaking students of English as a second language are listed, and a list of errors commonly made by these students is appended. (JB)

The purposes of this 11th-grade unit on language are to survey the most important grammatical elements of the English sentence and to synthesize grammatical principles previously learned in grades 7-10 of the curriculum. The unit moves from discussions of the simplest grammatical elements to the more complex: Bound and free morphemes are defined,…

THE DESCRIPTIVE SCIENCE OF LINGUISTICS AND THE SKILL OF WRITTEN COMPOSITION MEET IN THE "SENTENCE," AND THE INFORMATION WHICH LINGUISTICS PROVIDES ON SENTENCE STRUCTURE CAN AID THE TEACHER OF COMPOSITION. ALTHOUGH TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR DOES NOT IMPROVE A STUDENT'S WRITING, CONSTITUENT GRAMMAR AND TRANSFORMATIONAL GRAMMAR, BY PRESENTING METHODS OF…

A comprehension model of simultaneous interpretation activity raises three types of problems: structure of semantic information stored in long-term memory, modalities of input processing and specific restrictions due to situation. A useful concept of semantic mnesic structures includes: (1) a componential-predicative lexicon; (2) a propositional…

In order to study the complexity of sentence combining in college students, 32 students from five basic composition courses were asked to perform three writing tasks at three distinct times during the eight-week instructional period. Each student was asked to rewrite a passage of kernel sentences, to write a composition in the argumentative mode,…

Students' abilities in manipulation and control of syntax may be increased through a sequence of instruction involving the use of exercises termed "Non-Sentence Practice,""Nonsense-Sentences Practice," and "Syntactic Patterning Practice." The final step in the instruction sequence is to make the syntactic exercises pertinent to students' writing…

Three papers from this issue of the Working Papers are provided here. "The Nesting Constraint in Child Language," by Patrick Alan Brogan, discusses a child's ability to perform complex, internally embedded sentences. It is hypothesized that difficulty stems from a child's limited short-term memory. "A Framework for Studying Kin Term…