Research from several disciplines has been examined to create this literature review of information on document design, the overall movement toward producing public documents that the intended users can understand. Six chapters review appropriate research from the areas of psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, instructional research,…

The "individual forming meaning with a text" is a private and fundamental semiotic process involving relationships among text, individual, and meaning. Prior to an individual's use of language for aesthetic purposes lies the presupposition of the aesthetic language act--that the individual approaches the text expecting to work and be rewarded.…

The conference from which the papers in this book are derived addressed the following questions: How is knowledge organized? How does knowledge develop? How is knowledge retrieved and used? What instructional techniques promise to facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge? Separate chapters address types of knowledge and purposes of education;…

Tagmemic invention offers a student several ways of decreasing the unfamiliarity of the early stages of writing. The process of inquiry and the heuristic devices provide the orientation and tools for dealing with new writing tasks with increased confidence and likelihood of success. In the theory of tagmemic rhetoric, language behavior and…

The role of print in serving the poor majority populations in the developing world is explored through discussions of (1) a rural Ghanian newspaper, the "Densu Times," (2) a popular French language magazine entitled "Famille et Developpement," published in Senegal, West Africa for change agents, (3) a series of cloth posters for classroom use in…

This paper describes the preliminary results of research currently underway concerning sex-based differences in written composition. Sixty themes written by college-age native speakers of English were chosen for study. The themes were typed exactly as they had been written. No corrections were made. They were numbered alphabetically by the names…

The program described in this book enables children and adults to spell 96 percent of the words they use correctly, to develop a spelling conscience and the necessary dictionary skills to enable correct spelling of the remaining 4 percent, and to provide the encouragement and practice that will lead to skill and enjoyment in manipulating language.…

This study seeks to determine whether there are syntactic differences in the ways in which field dependent and field independent individuals write, and to determine whether these differences can account for the differences in interpersonal evaluations. One hundred sixty-five subjects were selected for this study by randomly selecting classes from…

Public interest in language is strong, as evidenced by recent articles on spoken and written forms of contemporary English in major news magazines. The December 8, 1975 issue of "Newsweek" contains several allegations, notably by Mario Pei, castigating linguists for causing the decline in writing ability in the United States. In this paper an…

The five different methods of teaching reading used in the schools of Neuchatel, Switzerland, are described in this study. Remi-Colette is the official method, approaching reading through the study of key words, then syllables, letters, and sounds. The second method, S'Exprimer-Lire (Express oneself-read), inspired by recent linguistic studies,…

The purpose of the research covered by this final report was to produce a Javanese-English dictionary, the first ever to exist. Source materials were of two major kinds: (1) pre-Revolution sources: the two most recetnly published Javanese dictionaries (see Bibliography, Pigeaud and Poerwadarminta), predating the 1945 Indonesian war for…

This curriculum guide contains topics and outlines for a beginning, individualized course in speech-communication. Following a statement on the philosophy of the course, the objectives, learning strategies, evaluation methods, and class attendance requirements are presented in the first section of the guide. In the second section, 11 topics are…

Keeping vocabulary and content constant, it was determined whether syntactically more complex structures increase reading difficulty or whether all students, regardless of grade level, have the same syntactic skills and thus read with equal facility materials written at different syntactic maturity levels. One hundred and twenty randomly selected…

This text (which may be used by foreign students of English or by speakers of nonstandard English dialects) is based on the precepts that any genuine learning is by discovery; that such learning is an active process involving the use of conceptual intelligence; and that this learning can be facilitated by teacher guidance. The first section of the…

"Variety" is defined as a "unique configuration of linguistic features." These features characterize the language of conversation, unscripted commentary, religion, newspaper reporting, and legal documents. Everyone learns many varieties of at least one language. The ambiguity of usage labels like "slang" and "colloquial" indicates that we know…