An approach to text translation that focuses on understanding the original text and the writer's intentions is outlined. The approach uses a sequence of steps including: studying the text carefully, knowing the writer's background, analyzing the text, understanding the writer's use of words, normalizing the text's grammatical form, composing the…

An examination of the rhetoric of two social movements in the United States--the proslavery movement of the pre-Civil War Period and the anti-feminist movement of the 1970s--reveals that both contain a common theme, paternalism, and that both use similar rhetorical strategies to explicate the theme through a familial metaphor, Father. Examples of…

Classroom language has not yet been recognized as an important aspect of foreign language learning and teaching, but it can make a meaningful contribution to language instruction. Providing for teacher training in this field not only implies provision of information and practice, but also involves changing teacher attitudes about the…

Stylistic features that impede the efficiency of communication in writing were studied in the essays of a sophomore class in reading and essay writing in English as a second language (ESL) at Birzeit University (Israel). It was hypothesized that in ESL writing, college students apply many strategies of communication more typical of the spoken mode…

A classroom-oriented therapeutic program was devised for four pragmatically impaired preschoolers who showed little spontaneous language use within the classroom. Intervention strategies focused on facilitating interactions during free play and were based on four principles for practitioners: be child-oriented; engineer the environment; use…

An analysis of schema theory at the compositional and sentence levels and its implications for Japanese readers of English prose is presented. The study looks at differences between Japanese and English syntax and concludes with five recommendations for English reading instruction for this group. The recommendations include: (1) pursuing the…

A study examined the adjustments made in an individual's speech according to the age and native language of the person being addressed, and compared the results to previous findings on characteristics of "foreigner talk" and "mother talk". An adult native English-speaker addressed four people in turn--an adult native English-speaker, an adult…

Rather than replace the modal methodology approach to writing with an aim or purpose-oriented pedagogy and criticism, it would be profitable for writing across the curriculum teachers to recycle the modes, using them as topics of generative and analytic invention. The move from mode to topic can be applied to the texts of contemporary science…

A study investigates how asking-for-information interactions are managed in actual talk and how they are represented in textbooks for learners of English as a second language (ESL). Data are confined to opening and closing sequences in interactions, and are derived from 60 real-life and 60 textbook dialogue interactions. The real-life interactions…

Although "The Equalizer" and "Finder of Lost Loves" are different kinds of prime time fiction--urban thriller on the one hand and fantasy melodrama on the other--they share an underlying dramatic structure and symbolic problematic in their repeated enactments of a therapeutic cure overseen by a mediating, authority figure. The…

To explore how readers create textual meanings or interpretations from written materials, a study that investigated reading from a semiotic perspective was conducted. The study's design was based on the principle of prior ethnography and employed data collection techniques common to field studies: participant/intervention and interviewing.…

A pilot study of discourse in a practicum reading class for instruction in English as a second language examines miscommunication between non-native English speakers. Teachers and their students read transcripts of episodes from classroom discussions and wrote line-by-line analyses of what they understood was being said. Similarities and…

Ways in which classroom learning environments contribute to the failure of modern school systems to serve ethnic and minority groups in large urban centers are analyzed in this ethnographic study. The study, which took place in the elementary schools of the Berkeley Unified School District, consisted of collecting ethnographic information on the…

Some aspects of foreign language classroom discourse are examined from a social theoretical perspective, and an attempt to raise the learners' awareness of the social reality created in interaction with other learners in the foreign language being taught is described. Through peer observation and the retrospective evaluation by the participants of…

A study investigated whether exposure to contrastive rhetoric would deepen international students' awareness of first- and second-language conventions characterizing their own and other students' writing. Participants included 46 University of Arizona students who represented a variety of language backgrounds and were enrolled in four sections of…