To create not a text-bound but a reader-based procedure for identifying global coherence within a discourse, five major writing tasks of 13 college students enrolled in a basic skills composition course were evaluated by three readers--doctoral students and faculty members in English and Reading Education. After choosing the five most and the five…

The production and understanding of humor calls for a specific competence. It appears that second language learners fail to develop this competence even when they reach native-like proficiency levels. A review of the literature suggests that the notion of humor competence in second language learning has not been examined. Humor competence can be…

Provides examples from two classroom exercises: an exercise in which the opening verses of the King James Bible are rewritten in various modern styles, and an exercise in which words in well-known book titles are changed to show the power of the original titles. (GT)

Suggests two techniques to help students look carefully at language. The first involves students in reacting favorably, unfavorably, or neutrally to a list of words and then discussing the list; in the second, students create a brand name and an advertising campaign for green beans. (TJ)

Presents a systematized framework of contexts to help reduce ambiguity and confusion in teaching "falloir" and "pouvoir" in the "passe compose" or "imparfait." (AM)

Provides three exercises to help students appreciate the power and control symbols have, and learn that words have different meanings for different persons. (TJ)

Examines the question of whether translation is possible, relating it to the question of linguistic and cultural constraints on translation, and to the question of the relationship between language and thought. Recommendations are made for the improvement of the study of translating. (AM)

Designed to assess comprehension of written ambiguous and polysemous structures, this instrument is a series of written statements that include varying degrees and types of ambiguity. In the first part of the test students are asked to identify (from a choice of three) semantically acceptable paraphrases for an initial sentence. Then students must…

Semiotics, the study of signs, is a relatively new and highly controversial area. Symbols, icons, and indexes represent the three types of signs. Semantics, pragmatics, and syntactics represent the three basic semiotic areas, with pragmatics having a growing influence in oral language and reading. A comprehensive view of curriculum is implicit in…

Discusses the semantic functions of the English future formations: "will/shall,""to be going to," and the present tense. Points out that these all have modal as well as temporal significance, making the traditional teaching of the English future imprecise and misleading. (IFS/WGA)

There is little use spending time and money implementing multicultural programs which have little or no effect. Discussed are two techniques, the sociometric test and the semantic differential, which can be used by teachers to evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts to reduce or perhaps eliminate prejudice and discrimination. (RM)

In this five- to ten-hour presentation, intermediate and advanced students of Russian learn how prefixation affects all types of motion in terms of displacement, transitivity, and perfectivity. The features of the prefix are detailed. Throughout, changes in government (subject, object, and prepositional complements) are explained in relation to…

The modal "should" can be taught by first delineating its meaning of "good advice," then proceeding to its meaning as expressing the speaker's sense of duty, propriety, and expediency, and finally dealing with its meaning of "reasonable expectation." The elements of "must" implicit in "should"…

Second language learners must acquire a generative system of grammar. There is, as yet, no way of describing notions in generative terms. Long-term syllabuses will have to continue to be syntactically based, but the incorporation of notions from a checklist is acceptable. (Author/JB)

Discusses the noun-plus-adjective construction in contemporary German and problems in translating this pattern into English. (AM)