Although many studies have been undertaken by literary critics and stylisticians on African English literary texts generally and Nigerian English prose fiction specifically, there has been little or no analysis of dialogue and discourse in such texts. An examination of the phenomenon of speech as manifested in conversational pieces in Nigerian…

Notes that the past twenty-five years have seen the evolution of works written for blacks hampered by the opinion of a white audience. There is an attempt to abandon the conventions of standard English writing, and poetry leaves the sanctuary of the classroom and takes to the streets where it is welcomed. (Author/AM)

This booklet describes and discusses a method for determining the readability level of prose passages in reading materials for children. The method discussed in the booklet assigns a value to each noun in selected passages on the basis of its frequency level on standard word-frequency charts, correlated in a number of studies with independent…

A two-experiment study investigated the possible contribution of prose-relevant pictures to the recall and retention of information presented in written prose materials with older learners as subjects. In the first experiment subjects were 52 graduate students from a southeastern university. Recall of information presented in written prose…

The hypothesis that pragmatic inferences presented in text are taken for granted, superficially processed, and not stably or enduringly represented in memory was investigated. Stories were read which in some conditions contained information vitiating the implicational force of explicit inferences. The vitiating information was presented either…

Designed for use by graduate students, this guide describes selected French language and literature materials including basic national, trade, period, and current bibliographies; encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries; historical and literary works; current newspapers and periodicals; materials on each of the literary genres; and stylistics.…

A review of the literature on the function of pictures in prose learning indicates that visual illustrations are helpful to children's learning, but that visual imagery has inconsistent effects on prose learning, although it seems to have potential for assisting those with adequate word recognition but low comprehension. A conceptual framework has…

Four simple "how" stories from Alaskan legend are presented in large type and amply illustrated. In "How the Caribou Lost His Teeth", Siqpik's only son is eaten by the sharp-toothed caribou, so Siqpik feeds the animal sour berries to make his teeth fall out. "How the Loon Got His Spots" relates how the raven paints…

Taken from Alaskan oral tradition, the five "how" stories are written in simple English prose. "The Four Qayaqs" explains why the porcupine has no fat on his stomach and the beaver has none on his back. "Ptarmigan and the Sandhill Crane" tells how the two very different birds come to look alike. In "Why the Dall…

The purpose of this study was to isolate factors responsible for the discrepant results reported in the advanced organizer literature, and to identify processes children employ when attempting to recall connected verbal materials. The subjects were 64 middle-class children randomly selected from a local school system. An equal number of male and…

Based on an extensive computer-aided examination of representative published American writing, this book examines and compares how various kinds of prose employ the diverse forms of parallelism. A scale of rhetorical value for assessing the cooccurring rhetorical devices of repetition is also presented. The chapters are entitled: "Balance or…

This objective test for grades 4, 5, and 6 attempts to measure one facet of literature appreciation--interpretive response to imaginative prose and poetry--by asking students to react to a variety of short selections from children's literature. While some questions are designed to test comprehension of meaning, a large number are concerned with…