Examines three basic approaches for teaching argument in a composition class--logical/analytic, content/problem solving, and rhetorical/generative. Discusses the problems of each and defends the rhetorical/generative approach as the one that reaches its goal most directly and most reliably. (HTH)

Investigates the ways in which primary school-aged children engage a teacher's attention through active solicitation. Argues that examining these interactions reveals both what the children do and allows for a redefinition of a conceptualization of "talk engagement." (FL)

Defined competence as effectiveness in dealing with one's environment and assessed (N=27) independently living older adults. Results found higher levels of competence were associated with a more demanding environment, and engaging in more activities. Cognitive test performance was related to both competence and quality of lingiustic tasks. (JAC)

Analyzes the linguistic devices and styles employed in advertisement writing. Illustrates the use of rhetorical figures and gives examples of word creation, of puns based on polysemy or paronyms, of alliteration, and of rhyme. Concludes with the suggestion that advertisement texts could profitably be put to use in the classroom. (MES)

Teachers can deal with language disordered children through discourse analysis, a conversational teaching process aimed at getting children to talk. Steps include selecting a topic to talk about during the remedial language session, having teacher and child take turns talking about the topic, using requests to constrain the child's responses so…

Argues that studies on how and why humans talk, however precise the methodology, do not have the quality of science. Contends that these studies contain the essence of criticism and should be regarded as such. (PD)

Examines social differences in expectations of indirectness in conversations between married couples, both Greek and Greek-American. Concludes that Greeks are more likely to expect indirectness in the context presented and that Greek-Americans have retained the Greek communicative patterns. (FL)

An experiment was designed to find out whether there were any quantitative and qualitative differences in the spoken discourse of 'high' and 'low' ability 16-year-old pupils in discussions of problems arising from textual material. Cognitive, linguistic and quantitative analyses of the discourse were carried out. (Editor)

Presents a three-stage process for teaching the logical relationships that exist in paragraphs to aid high school students in differentiating main ideas from subordinate statements. (MKM)

The most frequently noted difference in the abilities of tenth graders and college seniors to recall sentence connectives was the college students' ability to engage in free recall and rewriting, indicating that such a task would be a good predictor of mature use of transformational sentence connectives in the study of English. (JD)

During oral and silent reading, retention was related to segment length and existence of sentence boundary. Next limits on retention were tested by increasing segment length and difficulty. Performance of less skilled readers was uniformly low; performance of skilled and older readers was again affected by length and sentence boundary. (Author/CP)

Provides a description of communication in legislative hearings. Categorizes members' comments by type, purpose, valence, time focus, problem/solution orientation, audience, and topic. Indicates that the most important function of the hearings appears to be marshalling evidence for later debate. (JMF)

Describes a study that explored the effects of cultural background on American and Indian readers' comprehension and recall of two passages concerning American and Indian wedding customs. Reports that subjects recalled more of the text elements from both passages rated as important by other subjects with the same cultural heritage. (MKM)

Examines recent attempts to explain children's word use and selection through recourse to information theory. It is concluded that information theory cannot account for the complexities involved in early word selection. (AM)

The editor of "English Quarterly" interviews Frank O'Hare about his work on sentence combining, his views about writing instruction and writing research, and about his own writing. (RL)