The use of extracts from works of prose literature for teaching English as a foreign language at intermediate and advanced levels is considered. Attention is directed to the effectiveness of using such extracts as a means of improving the English of foreign learners, and to criteria for the choice and presentation of the extracts. The last six…

An analysis was performed of multiple-choice tests in terms of the frequency theory of recognition memory. High and low ability children listened to sentences under different instructional sets (imagery rating and sentence repetition) and were later tested with multiple-choice alternatives: (1) either identical or similar in meaning to the…

The relationship between children's knowledge of particular situations and their comprehension of stories about them was investigated. Children in kindergarten and grades two, four, and six heard stories about differentially familiar situations and then answered questions. "Scripts," characterizing knowledge about stereotypical events, were…

Cultural and dialect differences affect the writing style of black college students in several different ways. Some stylistic features, such as hypercorrection that involves confused word choice, grammatical deviation, or incorrect word order, are undesirable in spite of the fact that they indicate a knowledge of the formality of writing and a…

Forty-eight pupils from grades one, three, and five participated in a study of the extent to which children are able to use their prior knowledge and expectancies to aid them in integrating verbal material and in drawing appropriate inferences. Six stories were constructed for each of four inference levels, and 11 questions were prepared for each…

The 13 chapters in this book are based on papers presented at the 1974 Indiana Cognitive/Mathematical Psychology Conference, at which contributors were asked to emphasize the relatively broad theoretical significance of their work, to incorporate the work of others, and to speculate about future developments. Topics covered include the nature and…

Several studies have reported adult age deficits in memory for prose materials. Adult age differences in prose comprehension were examined among young and old adults from high or low educational backgrounds. Subjects (N=53) listened to tape-recorded versions of two narrative passages and attempted to orally recall the stories. Subjects were…

This study examines the relationships among oral, visual, and a combination of oral and visual presentational stimuli; concrete or abstract types of content; and high or low verbal learner ability. The 248 third grade students either heard a short story, watched pictures showing the same short story, or heard and watched a combination of the oral…

The three dominant views of metaphor emphasize comparison anomaly or dissimilarity, and a somewhat vaguer notion that combines aspects of the first two, called conceptual interaction. In all three views, a central consideration as to the aptness of the metaphor is the similarity of the objects linked by the metaphor (tenor and vehicle). The exact…

In 1975, Richard Atkinson's keyword method was formally introduced. He described the method in the context of foreign language learning. However, it has been extended to the learning of other curricular content as well, such as cities, states, individuals and their accomplishments. In the present study, eighth-grade students were presented…

This monograph contains a series of discussions about the ways in which oral interpretation specialists view literature in its various genres and suggestions for oral interpretation techniques that might be applicable to literature instruction. The eight articles address the following specific topics: the fabric of literature, sensory approaches…

This collection of twenty-seven short readings is intended to augment the readings in the authors' previous work, "Literary Sinhala" (1974). These selections are intended to serve as further exemplification of the grammatical material in that text. The selections here are mostly contemporary prose in several styles, ranging from fiction…

Designed to describe the writing behaviors of elementary and junior high school children, the Schroeder Composition Scale is an analytic scale. For eleven of the criteria in the scale, the scoring is simply "yes" or "no" indicating whether the writing does or does not have the characteristic. Five other items identify…

This annual publication lists and reviews books concerning teaching principles and practice, source books and course books, mass media, composition--writing--rhetoric, language and oral work, poetry, prose, drama, criticism, the retarded reader, and the migrant child. (LL)

"The Hope Chest," a short story by Jean Stafford, offers a challenge to the oral interpreter of literature because it demands that the performer demonstrate its complex narrative levels. There are five distinct facets in the personality of the central character, Miss Bellamy: a lonely, fearful old lady; a shrewd, hospitable mistress of…