This paper investigates the discourse structure of the practical demonstration, particularly the effect produced by the presence of a visual display. The Practical Demonstration (PD), as used in technical education, differs from the lecture in having a visual display; the speaker carries out an operation as he explains it. This affects the…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with the following topics: the use of mass distribution as a method of diffusing ideas on college campuses; compliance-gaining message selection; the rhetoric of Divorced Catholics Groups and the founding of a…

An integrated approach to teaching English composition to undergraduate students in Indian universities is proposed. The integration in approach is realized in terms of an onward progression from the first to the third year of the degree course. The idea of an integrated approach (viewing the sentence and the paragraph in an integrated manner) can…

Based on the view that text-specific concept and vocabulary knowledge affect the processing and recall of text and that a measure of this knowledge might assist teachers in determining whether a reader possesses adequate background to successfully comprehend and recall a particular text, a study was conducted. Its purpose was to develop a measure…

Mark is the central character in this story designed to help adolescents formulate a philosophy of values. The story is well suited for use in high school social studies courses and/or in philosophy or guidance units. Mark's thoughts and actions are reported as he interacts with his family, friends, acquaintances, and individuals of authority…

Six judges evaluated 20 randomly selected essays from a remedial writing program at the University of Houston to study racial differences in writing and the reasons for such differences. The judges, who were not informed of the race of the writers, examined the essays for the following writing features: free associations, redundancy (ineffective…

The creative oral language elicited from 45 preoperational and 40 concrete operational first grade students was analyzed to study the relationship between cognitive development and the types of case relationships produced. Each child's language was analyzed for eight noun/verb relationships, including state, process, action, experience, location,…

Regardless of the way in which one chooses authentic texts for a course in reading a language for special purposes, at one time or another, one is confronted with the problem of textual analysis. The analysis has to be done in view of the course objectives. A pre-instructional analysis allows the instructor to work out teaching strategies which…

To teach students how to write in a contemporary style, a secondary-school English teacher must be able to describe adequately the kind of writing he expects. Since many modern writers frequently ignore the guidelines proffered in traditional writing handbooks, the "new rhetoric"--a descriptive approach to composition that substitutes…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: a television course designed to improve community college students' writing skills; Christian humanism and the teaching of English; a folklore curriculum for junior high school students…

This paper serves as an introduction to a group of papers produced by the Classroom Interaction Project of the Center for Research in Social Behavior at the University of Missouri in Columbia. This project has been chiefly concerned with ascertaining if black-ghetto and white-suburban classrooms use language differently and, if so, in what ways.…

The "direct discourse analysis" introduced by Susumu Kuno is examined and found to be inadequate. To account for the data Kuno discusses, as well as for related data, a new approach to transformations is suggested. By determining the function, rather than the form, of a transformation, certain predictions are possible. Primary is the…

This study of hierarchy and universality in the languages of New Guinea seeks to describe and place the run-on surface structures found in those languages. In the process, traditional stereotypes of "sentence" and "paragraph" are questioned and revised, while hierarchy -- a fundamental characteristic of language -- is shown to…

Hierarchies have been identified as determinants of constituent order. The set of such hierarchies is reviewed and ranked as determinants of NP sequencing in English. The effect of a hierarchy in other languages is compared to and contrasted with what is found in English. (Author/LMO)

Relates research on second language acquisition (SLA) and research on the language problems of foreign teaching assistants (TAs) and their remediation. SLA research has not yet addressed specific data on the proficiency level needed for effective foreign TAs. Research needs are outlined. (Author/LMO)