This paper describes the communicative situation of 17 Mexican immigrant women in San Diego County (California), focusing on a set of narratives of personal language experiences in everyday life. Data collection included intensive fieldwork in an adult computer literacy project serving predominantly Mexican immigrants and interviews with seven…

A study examined repair in native-nonnative (Mandarin) speaker English conversation, focusing primarily on the previously unobserved lexical element "yeah" which occurs in a speaker's ongoing or same turn at talk. Conversational analysis was used to examine the data collected and transcribed. The data was composed of roughly 120 pages of…

A classroom method used to develop advanced English-as-a-second-language students' appreciation for a literary work, ability to do close text analysis, and general language skills is described. The four-session procedure uses a short story and careful sequence of teacher questioning. In the first session, students are prepared to understand the…

Noting that researchers rarely ask urban fathers about their perspectives and choices regarding fatherhood, this pilot study examined the experiences of urban fathers, focusing on their views of the challenges of fatherhood and how they accounted for both their irresponsible and their promising fathering behaviors; the study's larger goal will be…

This paper reports on a research process that evolved as the researchers considered a study they conducted with kindergarten children, in which the process problematized the research construct of participant/observer. The paper is informed by poststructuralist theory as the participant/observers are observed. According to the paper, a…

This article attempts to offer insights on how to facilitate student-student interaction in the science classroom. These insights derive from two sources, one from the education literature and the other from the linguistics literature. From the pedagogic sciences, cooperative learning offers a means of understanding what helps groups of students…

Argues that the perception of cohesion is an important factor in reading development. Suggests that teachers familiar with the devices that make text can help readers keep on track during comprehension. (FL)

Analyzes data from natural settings and controlled experiments in order to describe native speakers' responses to questions asked by nonnatives and discusses what variables of a nonnative's speech might elicit these responses. (EKN)

Examines the role of nontext social knowledge on elementary school children and college students' understanding of protagonist-antagonist stories, noting some developmental changes in the understanding of these stories based on knowledge of persuasion. (FL)

Examines the writing of five administrators and six caseworkers in a county social services agency to determine their sensitivity to rhetorical issues and writing style. (HOD)

To describe interviewees' discourse and to contrast successful and unsuccessful communicative behaviors, investigated their communication. Behaviors from rhetorical theory were also searched for criteria of effectiveness. Successful candidates displayed more behaviors that identified them with employers, supported arguments, organized thoughts,…

A survey of writing research indicates positive directions for teaching composition: reflecting developmental patterns in curriculum guides; emphasizing prewriting and revising strategies; giving priority to problem solving and creative thinking skills, attending to rhetorical issues like purpose and audience, and conducting research in the…

Undertakes to classify the various types of questions occurring in everyday speech for the use in foreign language teaching. (IFS/WGA)

Presents a case study of an elementary school child with a learning disability to illustrate that both performance and disability have to be understood in terms of the social environments with which they are linked. (FL)

Examines an aspect of colloquial American English in which linguistics and area studies are involved. Analyzes typical errors which lead to misunderstandings and discusses in detail the use of the expressions "excuse me" and "I'm sorry." (IFS/WGA)