The view that foreign language study contributes significantly to literacy in the native language is discussed from the perspectives of a foreign language teacher who also teaches English composition. It is suggested that there is a need for research and publications on the benefits of second language study on native language growth and on…

Given the opportunity to tell and write their own stories directly after hearing folk tales, 15 children, aged 7 to 10, used methods similar to those of professional adult writers to reshape 52 traditional tales. Three times, children retold the original tale; in 9 cases, they borrowed heavily from the original, retaining concrete details and…

Combining linguistics and composition studies in a two-part article (in which part 1 presented the principal concepts of cohesion and information management used in spoken and written discourse) this paper, part 2, describes a model that applies some of these concepts in analyses of the content of samples of published writing in three disciplines…

An overview of the research literature reviews studies on the effectiveness of sentence-combining (SC) exercises in helping English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students integrate their knowledge of grammar into their writing. In the 1960s, Kellog Hunt published a series of articles that explored the relationship between SC and writing skills.…

This paper attempts to show the relationship between variable rules and more widely used psycholinguistic constructs such as amalgams and schemas, and to point out how variationists' methods can be useful in the study of language acquisition. The traditional rule, the rule for forming the past tense of regular verbs in English, is discussed as it…

Recognizing a word in a meaningful text involves processes that combine information from many different sources, and both bottom-up processes (such as feature extraction and letter recognition) and top-down processes (contextual information) are thought to interact when skilled readers recognize words. Two similar experiments investigated word…

As evidenced by the increasing awareness of metaphorical thought (and other nonlinear and aesthetic thinking structures) in literature on the development of composing and comprehending skills, teaching metaphor as a mode of thinking is an important function of schooling, especially in the English classroom. It is important that the classroom…

Previous research on Spanish vocabulary for second language instruction has focused primarily on word frequency in a variety of print sources, and has the added disadvantages of being outdated and having too complex a format. A new, computer-based analysis of spoken Spanish from different dialect regions of the world was undertaken to provide more…

As part of a wider study of metalinguistic skills, a study examined the segmental awareness skills of adults with a low level of literacy and compared them with the skills of more literate adults of similar backgrounds. Subjects, 60 adults enrolled in adult education classes, were divided into three groups of 20 according to reading level.…

A comprehensive six-year longitudinal study of the development of reading skills during the primary grades for a large sample of bilingual (Spanish-English) children and smaller samples of monolingual (English or Spanish) children is outlined at its midpoint. In this natural variation study, approximately 350 children taught by 200 teachers in 20…

The paper demonstrates how contrastive linguistics may receive a fresh breath of life from approaching certain problems from the cognitive linguistic point of view. Cognitive linguistics is not only capable of providing contrastive linguistics with a comprehensive but coherent theoretical backbone the latter has always badly needed for its…

The belief that bilinguals are an asset to their country is not held by most bilinguals today, much less the general public. This paper describes on-going research into the discovery that many bilinguals conceal their linguistic skill in the home language when in an English-speaking environment, passing as English-speaking monolinguals. Data are…

This paper attempts to identify some of the reasons for problems in American-British communication, particularly in the use of intonational contours by male and female speakers. One major contrast between British and American speech is found in the use of heads. Rising heads seem to be more frequent in British English, whereas a neutral head is…

This study examines one aspect of sociolinguistics: social cues affecting the choice of language in the speech of children bilingual in Spanish and English. The study is based on data collected from the speech of two children, from birth to age nine in the first case and from birth to five in the second. Analysis focussed on the identification of…