This study examined the ways in which adult, Korean, English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners performed the "request" speech act, with particular attention to deviations caused by negative transfer. An oral discourse completion test with six request situations was given to three groups of learners; situations varied in terms of the…

The study focused on problems that Finnish learners of English (NNS) encounter with epistemic modality in conversational interaction with native speakers of English (NS). Epistemic modality refers to modal expressions that convey the speaker's commitment to the truth of the propositions he is expressing (e.g., "surely he…

A study investigated the kinds of English literacy experiences of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students in a an all-English mainstream classroom, the conceptualizations of ESL students and their English language literacy learning held by a monolingual English-speaking teacher, and instructional strategies used to facilitate ESL students'…

The grammar of the Korean language presented here is descriptive and structural, and does not align with any particular theory. An introductory chapter gives some background information about the language and related research. Subsequent chapters treat: writing and sound systems, including some sound rules and suprasegmental features; morphology…

A study of the discourse of book reviews in several academic disciplines examines how interaction of text and context varies across disciplines. Sixty academic book reviews in linguistics, chemistry, and economics were analyzed for rhetorical structure and for the communicative goal of the genre, that of evaluating knowledge production. The book…

This paper presents a detailed analysis of a teaching evaluation conversation between Michael Darwin, high school principal, and teacher, Joseph Wolenko, in order to explore how both attended to issues of "face" during the evaluation process. The analysis draws on data from a larger study in an ethnomethodology/conversation analysis…

A study investigated three issues: (1) differences between two types of rhetorical organization of expository text (problem-solution pattern and collection-of-descriptions pattern) in the reading recall of second-language readers; (2) differences between the two types on reading recall of readers at two levels; and (3) relationship between the…

To suggest that activity in the classroom shift from a focus on memorizing procedures to using mathematical reasoning is to suggest a shift in the classroom environment accompanied by shifts in teacher talk. The task of this report was to introduce the idea of teachers' orienting behaviors aimed at facilitating student cognition, and to suggest…

A study analyzed the multiple purposes of songs in which children in early childhood classrooms sing and move their bodies to the lyrics, the discourses the songs mobilize, and the gendered positions the songs accomplish. Subjects, 28 students entering their first year in a suburban primary school in a large regional center in southern Victoria,…

Issues related to changing modes of business communication, particularly those that are computer-mediated, are discussed as they relate to the teaching of business English. Information about current practices in computer-mediated communication (CMC) drawn from the business press and research journals is summarized, focusing on that which can help…

Experiences with the data, analysis, and results in the Finnish Contrastive Discourse Analysis Project (1985-1988) at the University of Oulu are reported. The purpose of the project was to describe the conversational skills of advanced Finnish speakers of English, and especially to determine the level of their social competence or their ability to…

The process of setting objectives for the reading component of an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course at Suva University in Fiji is described. The course is taken concurrently with a history course whose reading component is integrated into the EAP curriculum and whose specified objectives were to be facilitated by the EAP instruction. The…

A study investigated the effect of discourse style adopted by students on the way in which the assignment was graded. Subjects were three foreign college students, all non-native speakers of English, in an introductory business course. The assignment was a case study of organizational behavior in two competing companies; the students were to…

A study examined a resistant student's interactive discursive practices within a participant framework. Data were taken from observations, audiotapes, and transcripts of teacher-led small group discussions in two sixth-grade classrooms at a public urban middle school. Seven visiting teachers from a university and 56 students in the two classes…

A study investigated patterns in the apparent syntactic errors of native English-speaking, upper-level learners of Arabic as a foreign language. One hundred writing samples, including summaries, criticisms, and free composition, were gathered from a number of university courses. Error types analyzed included articles, subordinate clauses, two-word…