Discusses word games and activities that encourage students to use dictionaries and alternate forms in their writing. (HTH)

Three experiments conducted with normal adults in both Israel and the United States show that the answers people give to questions vary with the category of the target and its distance. (FL)

Notes research showing that narration and opinion writing are two different crafts and that children differentiate between the two when they write. (FL)

Concludes that there are about 88,500 words in printed school English and that even systematic direct vocabulary instruction could not account for a significant proportion of all the words children actually learn, nor cover more than a modest proportion of the words they will encounter in school reading materials. (FL)

Notes that modern rewriters transform traditional folk stories for reading texts, adhering to strictures imposed by popular ideas about childhood, language, and learning. Proposes to improve the quality of folktales and learning by restoring original language in folktales. (FL)

Notes that poetry writing can be a natural and interesting part of the language arts curriculum. Offers an approach to teaching poetry to intermediate grade students that leads them to accept and like poetry. (FL)

Presents (1) suggestions of a sex-related frequency variation in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar; (2) evidence of increased sensitivity to sexist language in the manuscripts submitted to the National Council of Teachers of English; (3) a proposed substitution of "Dear Reader" for "Gentlemen" in business correspondence; and (4) a description…

Looks at research and practice in the area of idioms and offers suggestions for teaching them effectively. (FL)

Explored the effects of sex-biased language in occupational information on subject's attitudes regarding gender appropriateness of occupations, in a sample of 184 eighth graders who read neutral or biased occupational briefs. Results showed a nonsignificant language effect and a significant sex difference in occupational interest. (JAC)

A participant in a British teacher workshop that focused on student talk describes the progress of the group toward defining the types of language they wanted to focus on in the classroom and the group's publication of weekly progress reports. (HTH)

An often-neglected aspect of daily language is syllable doubling or repetition, as in infant language ("nounou"), onomatopoeia ("ronron"), interjections or responses ("oui oui"), names ("Mimi"), or military slang ("coco" for "commandant"). The mechanisms and semantic functions of this phenomenon are outlined, drawing on examples from French…

Points out that children must master a great deal of information about form classes, written conventions, and word referent relationships in order to understand what teachers mean when they use the term "word." (FL)

Although propaganda appears to be universal, its language may not be, reflecting instead the particular cultural context in which it emerges and is used. To understand the various styles of propaganda is to better understand their cultural functions. (MSE)

This feature consists of instructional materials to be used for vocabulary development and language use in French instruction. Specific areas covered include advertising, travel, and journalism. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

This article, reporting a study of teacher attitudes toward the linguistic situation in their Caribbean communities, suggests that the social values attached to varieties of English in Creole Communities must be regarded as substantially different from those which obtain in more usual dialect situations. (POP)