Explicates how teachers' control over classroom discourse patterns during teaching-learning activities influences the types of knowledge children create and acquire. Examines the relationship between two types of teacher-child discourse commonly used in early childhood classrooms and the semiotic tools children appropriate through participation in…

Used message semantics networks to analyze Year 1 teachers' questions of students during small group sessions. Found that although questions were common, they were used to prompt information already known to the teacher. Results suggest that questioning style may help or hinder children's learning and that semantic networks may be used to evaluate…

Analyzes the ways in which language use reflects alignments and symmetry between people who are well-acquainted and communicate via electronic mail in Greek. Focus is on certain discourse features that form the conventionalized style of e-mail and frame contextualization cues, particularly certain patterns of code-switching and style shifts. (MSE)

This article analyzes how semantic differences between English and Japanese affect the discourse when Japanese speakers engage in negotiation in English, and how and to what degree English-language proficiency affects discourse. Results of the study show the importance of language and cultural knowledge in cross-cultural negotiation. (Auth/JL)

This study tested a theory of null subject pronoun variation, based on a model of discourse connectedness, on the oral and written Spanish narratives of northern California Mexican-descent pre-adolescents. Results indicate the children with greatest depth of ties to the United States are less likely to use overt pronouns than children born in…

Analyzed the spoken and written language of Caribbean college students who consider themselves to be native speakers of English. Discusses the students' linguistic self-perception as well as the morphosyntactic and discourse features that emerge when they write in standard English. The study suggests that anglophone Caribbean students should be…

Examines student perceptions of the changing nature of a classroom as a result of the implementation of constructivist approaches. Results indicate that students are appreciative of the opportunity to use their own ideas and knowledge. Contains 31 references. (DDR)

Describes a study of class assessment meetings in Swedish secondary schools, focusing on communicative practices in these meetings, how interactional patterns are reproduced by the participants in the meetings, and how these patterns are linked to the social organization of schools. Findings indicate that time constraints and a standardized agenda…

Investigates the role of language in adult numeracy classrooms, utilizing the resources of systemic functional linguistics and constructs derived from conversational analysis and ethnomethodology to examine how these classrooms are constructed in discourse. The study characterizes these classrooms as mixed-mode discourse sites and examines how…

Investigates the reintroduction of referents in the "Frog Stories" told by Italian children, aged 4-10 (n=100). The study confirms that elementary school children are more competent than preschoolers in integrating the semantic content of the current utterance into the context generated by previous discourse.(Author/JL)

Outlines a three-stage strategy for teaching appreciation of French literature. The first stage is a global approach to the work, giving an overview of its structure and presentation. The second stage looks at the text type and generic characteristics, and the third focuses on the specific treatment given these characteristics and the details of…

Describes a text and some children's readings of a fictional animal story in which a bossy rooster is "tamed" by a female sheep dog. The article's analysis of the children's discussions of the story focuses on modality to trace their acceptance of "credibility" in the text with respect to the construction of gender and the story's resolution. (23…

Presents a study based on the analysis of contrastive Swedish-English data on modal particles. The article maintains that the meaning of modal particles requires an analysis of their pragmatic aspects such as the relation between the interlocutors. The analysis most accurately accounting for the multifunctionality of the particles is based on a…

Examines, within the framework of contrastive rhetoric, nominal clauses and predicates, arguing that there are essential differences in nominalization between English and Japanese, such as focusing on the event in Japanese and on the individual in English. The article emphasizes the diverse ways in which languages are endowed to express different…

Presents a communication skill model developed on principles of communication and cognitive social psychology and offering a programmatic conception of communication needs, realized through language. The article offers an exploratory approach to such an integrated model and calls for research to test its benefits to language learners. (34…