Describes recent studies dealing with writing and the writing process, language acquisition, English teacher education, multimedia instruction, literature, language skills, and reading. (HOD)

Educational programs for teachers of English as a Second Language must devote more attention to differences between the standard varieties of American and British English, with instruction focusing on the major orthographic, morphological, syntactic, collocational, and lexical differences. (CB)

Presents various viewpoints on dual language acquisition by children. These include native language foundation, first-language monolinguals' vocabulary development, second-language learning, simultaneous acquisition strategies, television as a source of language learning, functions of language in discourse, analysis of conversation, syntax and…

Identifies problems that undergraduate searchers encountered in a search of the ERIC database on CD-ROM. Results of participant observation, questionnaires, and interviews are reported; a taxonomy of user problems is proposed that includes syntactic errors and semantic errors; and recommendations for menu selection systems, online help, and…

The paper examines two types of texts, personal experience narratives and expository discussions, dealing with the shared theme of interpersonal conflict. Both were produced by the same 80 subjects, participants in a crosslinguistic study on developing literacy: gradeschoolers aged 9;0 to 10;0, twelve-to-thirteen-year-old junior high school…

Many simultaneous bilinguals exhibit loss or incomplete acquisition of their heritage language under conditions of exposure and use of the majority language (Silva-Corvalan, 1994, 2003; Polinsky, 1997; Toribio, 2001; Montrul, 2002). Recent work within discourse-functional (Silva-Corvalan 1994) and generative perspectives (Sorace, 2000; Montrul;…

This study examined discourse strategies used by males and females to convey embarrassing information to interlocutors of unequal status and unspecified gender. Subjects were 80 native speakers of Turkish (28 males, 52 females), from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and geographic areas. Data were derived from a written discourse completion…

Five papers on African linguistics are presented. "Observations on Some Derivational Affixes in Kiswahili Predicate Items" (Assibi Apatewon Amidu) examines the few morphemes recognized in the Swahili derivational affix system and suggests changes in the rules of vowel harmony and in presentation and representation of the affixes in use.…

A replication of a previous study assessed the construct validity of a national test for academically oriented Swedish upper secondary students. The analysis consisted of a comparison of test results of 10 percent of the Swedish test population to results obtained from a sample of native English speakers of the same age. Analyses of the Swedish…

Text linguistics can make significant theoretical and practical contributions for writing teachers. Borrowing from classical rhetoric and cognitive psychology, text linguists investigate defining text, creating text grammars, and identifying communicative aspects of text. To show how these investigations are useful for writing teachers, this…

A method of teaching English as a second language (ESL) involving open sentence combining practice with group discussion was compared with a more traditional teaching method. Students were largely college-bound and attended the University of Arizona's ESL Center. Sentence combining was analyzed for a paragraph-length exercise on a low-level…

This is a report on the use of computerized instruction in some of the elementary French classes at the University of Illinois (Urbana campus). This project was initiated in the fall of 1968. The experiments were carried out on the PLATO III system until January 1973 at which time the PLATO IV system became operational for student use. This…

The amount of time that should be spent on explicit teaching of language patterns and structure is an issue among second language teachers. Those who believe that language learning is a developmental process feel that there is no sense in teaching grammar and syntax explicitly since the learner can be expected to acquire these skills as he…

A study investigated whether syntactic differences between oral and written discourse interfere with the comprehension of beginning readers. Subjects were 28 second grade and 28 fifth grade students who read, orally, versions of stories identical in nature except for the structure of their syntactic patterns. One version contained structures more…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) aspects of the organization of redundancy rules in the lexicon; (2) the adult role in early child language acquisition; (3) semantic categorization,…