Papers on contrastive linguistics in this volume include: "Contrastive Discourse Analysis in Language Usage" (Juliane House); "Typology and Contrastive Analysis" (Vlasta Strakova); "On the Tenability of the Notion 'Pragmatic Equivalence' in Contrastive Analysis" (Karol Janicki); "On the Relevance of Phonetic,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of metacognitive comprehension monitoring strategies on fourth grade students' reading comprehension and recall performance; (2) elementary school…

This article reports on observations made during an intensive course in French organized by a business firm for its immigrant Portuguese workers. The principal aim of this project was to study course materials as they are actually used. Special attention was therefore paid to: (1) teacher discourse, which, although an essential component of…

The quality of hospital medical records, which are usually maintained by transcribing from doctors' dictation, was found to suffer because of foreign medical graduates' phonological problems and lack of familiarity with good dictation procedure. As a step in correcting this situation, eight taped discharge summaries were subjected to an analysis…

This paper proposes a broad outline of a variable model of language development and explores several particulars of such a model in the language behavior of four two-year-old children. The process by which information about language is progressively transformed and integrated rather than merely being added together can be seen in the shifting…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 14 titles deal with the following topics: case studies of college student and adult composing processes; developing patterns and individual differences in children's writing; writing apprehension's relation to writing quality;…

Analyzes and compares transcriptions of ten one-to-one conferences between teacher and student. Concludes that successful conferences focus on criteria for successful writing, evaluating students' work, and on the work itself; unsuccessful conferences are characterized by repeated requests for explanation, and by tutor dominance that excludes…

Describes a program for adults in which they read about working class people like themselves and then respond in writing. Argues that while they became initiated into the academic community, they also felt powerless to change their situations. Emphasizes the importance of not destroying students' histories while teaching them academic discourse.…

This paper focuses on the scientific dialogue of a small group following an experiment on motion under gravity. This research was designed to investigate ways in which practical activities can be used to foster links between upper elementary children's spontaneous concepts and Newtonian mechanics. Implicit in this is the notion that teaching…

The linguistic behavior of individuals and people in the official literature on lifelong learning (LL) was examined and interpreted in light of the theories of individualization in late modern culture and society, particularly the theories of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. The analysis was performed to shed light on that literature's ideological…

Using a Vygotskian perspective, this study investigated the possibility of secondary school second language students providing scaffolding for each other's learning during dyadic verbal interaction on a dictogloss task. Participants in the study were 19 English-as-a-Second-Language students from China, Hong Kong, and Korea, who studied at a girl's…

Describes how Oyster Bilingual School's (Washington, DC) two-way Spanish-English language plan functions in its sociopolitical context. It is noted that this plan is part of a larger identity plan aiming to promote social change by socializing children differently from the way they are socialized in mainstream US educational discourse. (46…

Praises the theoretical and methodological potential of the field of political communication. Calls for greater interaction and cross fertilization among the fields of political science, sociology, economics, and psychology. Briefly discusses relevant research methodologies. (MJP)

After describing the principles of culturally compatible education, the characteristics of Native American and mainstream narrative discourse are compared, and teaching the structure, content, and style of mainstream narratives is advocated. A program designed to facilitate Native American elementary school children's abilities to comprehend and…

Explores role of college textbooks in students' acquisition of special disciplinary literacy, focusing on use of metadiscourse as manifestation of writer's linguistic and rhetorical presence in a text. Features are compared from 21 textbook extracts in microbiology, marketing, and applied linguistics with similar corpus of research articles,…