Dr. William Morgan, a Navajo linguist, devoted his career to the development and preservation of the Navajo language. Morgan collaborated with Dr. Robert Young in writing "The Navajo Language," an unabridged Navajo-English dictionary. He also taught Navajo at the Navajo Community College and worked for the Native American Materials…

Investigates variation in knowledge construction in three disciplines--sociology, economics, and physics--by drawing on Halliday' s notion of "metaphenomenon." Specifically, the study analyzed the frequency and type of agentive elements in textbooks to find the extent to which knowledge in these disciplines is attributed to individual scholars,…

Highlights the concept of discourse communities, which are used in applied linguistics to analyze written communication. Discusses how the concept developed. (Author/VWL)

Examines effects of grouping practice on written Chinese achievement among heritage learners in college Chinese classes. Subjects were two groups of heritage students, a homogeneous group and a heterogeneous group. Results suggest in college level Chinese language classes, tracking based on linguistic background can improve heritage students'…

A study compared the Spontaneous Writing Quotient (SWQ) of the Test of Writing Language-3 to teacher progress ratings of 147 students (grades 3-5) in the local writing curriculum. Corrected coefficients ranged from .39 to .48, offering only low to moderate support for the criterion-related validity relative to the local curriculum. (Contains…

This article presents an overview of several written language assessment techniques, as well as a rationale and method for assessing the written expression of hearing-impaired individuals. Fluency, syntactic maturity, vocabulary, content, and conventions of notation are discussed; direct and indirect measures are compared; and a sample composition…

Part of a research project is presented that aims at identifying the difficulties tertiary level students encounter in reading scientific texts in a foreign language and the strategies they apply to overcome them. Strategy markers are identified and listed, and are then analyzed to interpret the linguistic difficulty and the strategy used.…

Explored young children's concepts of the functions of writing in community contexts. Twenty kindergarten children responded to three videotaped vignettes depicting people writing in community settings. The children were able to identify a range of writing functions. They also valued writing and described the negative consequences likely to occur…

Describes the teaching approach and materials in "Origins," a book about word origins and how to teach them to elementary students. Notes that this book includes step-by-step activities, a brief history of the English language, relevant poetry examples, and several writing ideas. (MM)

Asserts that a major challenge in the language arts curriculum is to continue including expressive oral language activities amid requirements for more written-language activities. Claims that there are three tasks for curriculum workers interested in oral language: develop rationales; plan curriculum sequences; and implement evaluation of…

Examines a passage describing an encounter between the missionary, Saint Constantine-Cyril, and a pagan in the land of the Khazars. The main focus of the saint's discourse emphasized that without inventing the Slavic alphabet, he would have had no hope of success as a missionary. (24 references) (CK)

Proposes a method for examining how disciplinary differences in knowledge making are created or reflected at the sentence level. Focuses on grammatical subjects of all sentences as key indicators of disciplinary knowledge making in sample journal articles in the subfields of psychology, history, and literature. (PRA)

Examines the relationship between stages of orthographic development and writing fluency. Finds that the graphemic output lexicon of beginning readers and writers is not sufficiently detailed to allow a fluent output. (PRA)

Misconceptions within Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) about Plain English (PE) are that PE involves sentence-by-sentence translation and simplification of the language and content of an existing text. Both misconceptions are refuted and PE is concluded to be basically about good communication. (Contains 12 references.) (LB)

The importance of integrating written with oral language in second-language instruction for children is emphasized, and ways to do so naturally in the first two years of French language teaching are outlined. Specific exercises are described, particularly for the second year. (MSE)