Children's speech styles vary considerably, ranging along a continuum from formal to informal, in the various educational and social settings they encounter in school. Teachers who see their role as preparing children to fill social roles will be aware of the speech styles that children use and will accept varying speech styles as appropriate to…

There are several things that English teachers at all educational levels need to know about linguistics. They must know, for example, that the terms "grammar,""dialect," and "register" have special meanings for the linguist. In addition, they must know the following: (1) regardless of language, a normal child will…

The word frequency lists presented in this publication were compiled to create a database for further research into vocabulary use, especially the variation in vocabulary due to differences in situation and social group membership. Taken from the natural conversations of 40 target children (four and a half to five years old) with their families,…

This paper considers a distinction frequently used in sociolinguistics and ethnography of speaking to describe speech events: their formality or informality. Three principle meanings of "formality" found in the literature concern whether the formality relates to properties of a communicative code, properties of the social setting in…

The relationship between teachers' expectations of students' communicative competence in the classroom and certain aspects of teachers' language during interaction with students was investigated in a study involving 55 nursery school and primary school children and their seven female teachers. The teacher expectation model used in the study…

A "generative stylistics" approach to writing presents usable, conscious standards for the production, arrangement, and rearrangement of written discourse thereby teaching students how to make appropriate decisions about language usage. Based on research studies that indicate the dependence of the writing process on the decision making…

The reading difficulty that black children encounter is not a result of language differences but rather a consequence of living in a society where people are socialized to view blacks as inferior and less able. Teachers are not immune to these attitudes. In addition to societal views, teachers are also influenced by social science research which…

This paper reviews relevant experimental literature on certain components of printed instructional materials which are commonly used in early childhood education for normal, at-risk, and handicapped children. The components examined include the use of color, instances of concepts, language style, number of answer options, the use of pictures and…

A study sought to determine what relationships existed between speech rate, speech pitch variation, speech loudness, and the personality assessments made by listeners. The subjects, 214 undergraduate speech communication students, listened to one of eight tape recordings made by a male speaker to represent all the combinations of the three…

The reading habits by which students formulate a critical analysis of a literary work should focus attention on the choices that a writer makes when putting words on paper. These choices include sound, diction, language, imagery, organization, metaphors, sentence structure, transitions, allusions, and patterns. Discussing these choices does not…

THIS MANUAL DESCRIBES MEASURES USED IN "THE COGNITIVE ENVIRONMENTS OF URBAN PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN" PROJECT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO. THE SAMPLE FOR THE STUDY CONSISTED OF 163 NEGRO MOTHER-CHILD PAIRS SELECTED FROM 3 SOCIOECONOMIC CLASSES BASED ON THE FATHER'S OCCUPATION AND THE PARENTS' EDUCATION. A FOURTH GROUP INCLUDED FATHER-ABSENT…

While the concept of parent involvement is stressed by almost all programs for preschool children, there is little evidence of parent-focused programs specifically designed to overcome the deficits of the lower class parent. It was the purpose of the present study to develop a program to enhance the functioning of the lower class mother in…

In the absence of guidelines for "a purely literary study" of the Bible at the secondary school level, this discussion is offered as one English teacher's approach to teaching the Old Testament. Among the unit's major purposes are to increase students' appreciation of the literary and ethical values of the Bible and to acquaint them with material…

Many English language arts teachers consider the nonstandard English of their students as being "slovenly or nonverbal or inexact or lazy." These same teachers often have been trained in the "false assumptions of a single universally accepted norm of English." These positions, the author states, are both fallacious and…

Several types of narrative errors are discussed that were found in the course of an analysis of stories collected in casual settings from a number of American speakers in undirected conversation. The approach to the question of error correction is sociocultural; the emphasis is on the motivation for the error correction. This paper explores the…