The bare fact is that the speaker's words are nothing until the listener gives them meaning. The denotation of a word is developed through association with other words. The connotation is the more difficult concept to establish for the critical/comprehensive listener studying word meaning. The common explanation is that "connotation refers to…

The Project on Academic Language Socialization (PALS) investigated, in a longitudinal study, the process by which urban high school students are socialized into subject matter discourse. Specifically, the PALS project examined language forms and discourse patterns that both occur in and constitute the process of teaching and learning in high…

Teachers and students were found to use verbal interruptions differently. The amount of time used by students initiating talk before interruption was also found to be different between students. (RC)

This study examined the teaching methods of the actor/teacher in hopes that the techniques developed at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, England, can be propagated and used to advantage elsewhere. (Editor/RK)

Describes a unit planned to help students become interested, involved and willing to communicate with the teacher and other students. (HMV)

Suggests that to know more about nonverbal communication is to master another means for communicating more effectively, both within and outside of the classroom. (RB)

Student question-asking is essential to the learning process, and yet little is known about this communicative phenomenon. More important, the research that is available suggests that students ask far fewer questions than might be expected by educators. An exploratory study examined 15 college communication classrooms and determined that: (1)…

The communication that occurs in a language classroom is real communication, because the interactions deal with ordinary, everyday matters. The substance of classroom management and the related exchanges between students and teacher, such as roll call and group exercises, provide many opportunities for language learning. Teachers can require…

The study examined the ways in which different categories of discourse marker affect how well foreign college students understand university lectures, and specifically, the effects of macro markers (those indicating overall organization) and micro markers (functioning as fillers, indicating links between sentences). Four versions of an American…

Described is the Inquiry Role Approach, a teaching methodology for secondary school biology, developed by staff at the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory in Kansas City, Missouri. The materials are designed to complement, not to supplement or substitute for, the biology textbook. (PEB)

Systems for analysing the verbal interaction in the classroom are reviewed and one method is developed to provide a structural and functional analysis of classroom discourse. (Editor)

Teachers need greater familiarity with the social and behavioral sciences in order to become efficient managers of classroom learning. (Editor)

The communication practices and training in communication activities of classroom teachers in Hawaii were examined by surveying 370 elementary, intermediate, and secondary school teachers in Hawaii. The results supported the claims that the classroom constitutes an ongoing communication event composed of varied speech activities and that the…

A group of 195 students enrolled in various communications courses at General Motors Institute filled out course evaluation forms which were then factor analyzed. Items involving an evaluation of teachers accounted for 69% of the variation. Items about course objectives, amount of work in relation to credit, textbooks, tests, and assignments were…

This pamphlet is the ninth in a series of ten stemming from the view that language is central to learning, that teachers can gain insights into their work and into learning by examining the language of the classroom, and that current language theory can be the means to such insights. The pamphlet describes a project that was undertaken to discover…