Summarizes the most basic rules for indirect speech in English but claims that they are useless if taught strictly as rules; also insists on the necessity for contextualization in drills on indirect speech. (FB)

Reading levels attained by two groups of language-disordered children at the end of the first year of school were compared. Results confirmed the association between reading disability and language disorders, and yielded group differences: reading achievement was associated with semantic and syntactic competencies. (Author/RD)

Examines whether significant differences existed between the semantic, syntactic, and paragraph reading abilities of learning/reading disordered and normally achieving elementary school students. (FL)

Focuses on five human information processing abilities which cognitive psychologists anticipate must be accounted for in order to develop good computer courseware--memory and attention; language or text characteristics; graphics and visual processing; cognitive characteristics of user; feedback to users. A 31-item bibliography is included. (EJS)

Most composition texts categorize cohesive devices according to function, ignoring their semantic and syntactic restrictions, and giving the idea they can be used interchangeably. More effective strategies are suggested for presenting these links, including methods of teaching both intrasentence connections and the linking of larger units of…

Discusses the influence a first language can have on the acquisition of a second language. Includes some tentative proposals on the interaction of prior first-language knowledge and the creative construction process. (EKN)

Analyzes mother and child speech in free play conversation for different semantic and syntactic categories. Based on the study of changes taking place over time in children's use of semantic categories, argues against the hypothesis that the mother's speech is gradually adjusted to the child's performance. (Author/MES)

Briefly discusses theories on second language reading strategies and describes pilot study conducted at University of Ottawa using cloze procedure to help determine roles of syntactic versus semantic cues and similarities and/or differences between L1 and L2 reading strategies. (Author/BK)

Discusses the difficulties English speakers experience in using correctly the various tenses of the past in French, focusing particularly on the imperfect tense. Proposes a series of exercises based on contrastive analysis that gradually lead the learner to restructure his intuitive grammar. (MES)

Proposes that dialogue provides children with opportunities to participate with adults in creating linguistic relationships of which they would be incapable alone. Reports the findings of a study of dialogues between mothers and their young children. (FL)

Illustrates a classroom "Ninepins" game designed for review of German prepositions and the cases associated with them. Claims that, judging from tests, the game has proved to be an effective mnemonic device. Suggests repeated utilization of it, with variations, as an entertaining alternative to repetition of alphabetical lists. (MES)

Describes the functions, specific uses, syntactic structure, and typographical characteristics of titles, discussing examples from newspapers, books, films, and scientific journals. Analysis of the semantic relationship between title and text is followed by the description of various instructional techniques for the production of titles and the…

A study of 65 seventh grade students indicates that existing readability formulas should be used in combination with measures of syntactic complexity to assess levels of passage difficulty for students who appear to have difficulty in reading comprehension. (JD)

Compares the use of sentence weight and the T-unit in measuring the oral language of 32 adolescents. Indicates the relative merits of the T-unit as a measure of oral language, because the two measures appeared to give much the same information about the speech samples examined. (RL)

Describes a module used to teach ESL students to distinguish phrases from clauses and sentences from nonsentences or fragments, thus enabling them to edit the errors of punctuation out of their writing. A chart of four grammatical units in a hierarchy (single words, groups of words, clauses, and sentences) is included. (Author/PJM)