A study examined the characteristics of the oral and written production of French-speaking and minority-language students in elementary and secondary multiethnic schools in Montreal (Quebec), with the purpose of assessing the relevance of student evaluation methods. Subjects were 248 elementary and 231 secondary students, categorized in 9 ethnic…

This paper argues that unsatisfactory argumentative and expository texts generated by college students represent a simplification of complex discourse structures. It asserts that the usual explanations for poor student performance, such as illogical thinking, lack of academic commitment, and poor mastery of grammar, are unsatisfactory. The paper…

A collection of essays on the comprehension of text brings together perspectives of different disciplines on discourse. Articles include: "Naturalistic Texts and Naturalistic Tasks" (Herre van Oostendorp, Rolf A. Zwaan); "Psychological Studies of Naturalistic Text" (Arthur C. Graesser, Joseph P. Magliano, Karl Haberlandt);…

Education may be seen as a form of verbal communication. Opinions about the part language plays in pedagogical communication differ according to the emphasis placed on: (1) the teacher (i.e., language as a means of transferring knowledge, as in the traditional teacher-centered concept); (2) the students (or language as a means of learning); or (3)…

This paper examines remediation as the product of perceptions and beliefs about literacy and learning. It illustrates some ways teachers inadvertently participate in constructing inaccurate and limiting notions of learners as being cognitively defective and in need of "remedy," and thus limit classroom learning. It combines an empirical,…

A case study examined the brief conversations about writing that took place between a high school English teacher and two of his students. One illustrative writing conference conversation lasting 1 minute and 19 seconds shows how, through the push and pull of their short exchange, student and teacher simultaneously read the book, read the writing…

Observations of 90 lessons reveal the limitations of the whole-class discussion, the dominant teaching method in elementary and secondary schools. In addition to producing a low percentage of student involvement, rarely more than 50%, teachers' questions and answer techniques do not usually stimulate critical thinking. Besides most often asking…

A study examined (1) developmental differences in the writing of urban students, (2) the syntactic complexity associated with differing modes of written discourse, and (3) the relationship among grade level, mode of discourse, and writing quality. Subjects were approximately 1,200 second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade students from large…

The promotion of literacy among minority groups depends in part upon educational and sociolinguistic discourse analysis. As a contribution to that effort, the present study provides data on the narrative in the language of Mexican-American adults by gathering and analyzing personal narratives produced in both English and Spanish. These narratives…

United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev have strongly emphasized in several speeches that their ultimate goal is peace between their respective nations. However, this apparent shared goal has not come about, largely because they lack a common understanding of the meaning of peace. Both have stated that they wish…

Interactional processes that lead to individual differences in children's communication styles and peer competence were explored in an examination of discourse and communication patterns used in parent-child and child-child interaction. Subjects were 38 children of 29-64 months in full-time day care and their mothers. Data was gathered through…

In order to teach anything, two fundamental questions must be asked and answered continually: What should be taught, and how should it be taught? The answer to the second question is highly dependent on the answer to the first, but the present answer to the first question is inadequate and inappropriate to today's communication tools. Language…

Folk models have been called unspecified programs that are passed on and learned experientially. Through a narrative reconstruction of a participant observer's fieldnotes on an eighth-grade teacher's professional activity, the researcher sensed two folk models at work: (1) knowledge as corpus, hierarchically organized; and (2) knowledge in…

Changes in the teacher's authority structure as well as changes in the content of student talk during peer response sessions occur over the course of a school year in a first-grade classroom. In the beginning of the year, the teacher, a beginner in the Teachers College Writing Project, dominated the talk during share sessions, while the students'…

In its first year, the Hawaiian Language Immersion Program combined kindergarten and first-grade students in two classes. About half of the students had no speaking knowledge of Hawaiian; the remainder had attended Hawaiian-language preschools and/or spoke Hawaiian at home. Both teachers, fluent speakers of Hawaiian, were new to teaching. The…