The role and status of English instruction in Malawi is outlined. The role of English in Malawi as a whole, English instruction within the educational system, language teacher supply and training, and British support for English instruction in Malawi are reported. English is taught as a subject in primary school and is the language of instruction…

Drawn from a conference intended as a step toward reuniting the disciplines of behavioral sciences and law, the items in this compilation were prepared by practitioners and educators in the areas of law, communication, social psychology, and sociology. The items are arranged in five sections according to these topics: interviewing and counseling,…

At the beginning of the 1981-82 school year, the Board of Education of the Portland (OR) Public Schools established a system-wide achievement goal of improved learning in all areas of the curriculum including the basic skills. This report describes the gains made during the first year of implementation of that new achievement policy. Portland's…

This study was conducted to determine the effect that hands-on, creative activity using the Language Experience Approach would have on language usage in students' written stories. Twenty-five fifth grade students were randomly divided into three sample groups. Sample A received hands-on, creative stimulus and art materials; Sample B looked at and…

Viewing language as both presentational and representational, or as having both manifest and latent content, can help writing instructors and student writers appreciate its full function and better understand the nature of writing errors. This essential duality of language usage is seen by its functions consisting of unconscious (primary process)…

Esperanto can remove the language problem from tourism and bring major moral, economic, and practical advantages for all of humankind. Officials of national and local tourism organizations and companies should encourage its application in various ways, for example, by using it for: publication of publicity materials destined for use abroad; public…

The ways in which the Chinese have used the homophonic nature of their language to express abstractions in concrete terms, especially to express daily wishes, are described. In Chinese, a value is assigned to an object because the pronunciation of the word for the object brings that implied value to the mind of the listener; for instance, vase in…

The principal motivation for and main value of the national language concept is its character as a standard for all users, but that standard most often reflects the norms and beliefs of a cultural and economic elite and the "nation" becomes synonymous with the ruling class. It would be more useful to talk about a standard usage imposed on the…

The revival of Hebrew as a modern spoken language in the early part of this century is discussed. The usage of spoken Hebrew in the Middle Ages and its evolution within and outside the Middle East are described. The interpretation of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's late nineteenth century interest in reviving spoken Hebrew as a call for general spoken Hebrew…

Linguistic history has described borrowing in the European languages as a process exclusive to one language at any given time. However, it is more likely that there is a core of common loan words, or internationalisms, in many European languages. These internationalisms have come from a variety of sources: the historic interrelatedness of…

The role of pragmatic particles such as "you know,""I guess," and "man," which occur primarily in spontaneous speech are examined. Pragmatic particles and impromptu speech are defined in terms of prototypes and the social and cognitive causes for the two phenomena are discussed. A distinction is made between core and…

Both a theoretical framework and some practical suggestions are included in this book intended to help educators improve the teaching of writing to high school students who are native speakers of nonstandard English dialects. The first chapter includes a brief background on the problem of writing in American schools, with special focus on the…

Before students can select words effectively for speaking, they must understand the value of word choice and the difference between written and spoken language. Once students appreciate effective word selection, they can label their own strengths and weaknesses in language and improve significantly by reading, listening, experimenting, and using a…

A directory of collections of audio recordings of varieties of American English spoken in North America and including English-based creoles contains information about collections of any size, classified according to the primary state in the U.S. represented by the speakers in the sample and cross-referenced when more than one state is represented…

Two experiments examining adults' use of dimensional adjectives focused specifically on the distinction made between height and overall size as determiners of "bigness." The subjects in both experiments were college students. In the first, the hypothesis that the meaning of "big" shifts as a function of the object being…