How to deal with profanity and other unacceptable language in the classroom is a subject all of us deal with daily. And, if the problem isn't handled sensitively, it can be explosive. Presents a few practices that seem to reduce the incidence of profane language in the classroom. (Author/RK)

Examines the role of sound in reading Japanese Script and evaluates arguments for semantic versus phonological identification to determine the relative importance of phonological processes in reading "kanji" and "kana." Implications for the teaching of kanji to learners of Japanese as a second language are explored. (Author/JL)

Outlines recent and past debates on literacy pedagogy. Contends that more students are more highly literate today than ever before. Describes the following literacy pedagogy "ages": the age of reading as decoding; the age of reading as meaning making; the age of reading-writing connections; and the age of reading for social purpose.…

Presents action research in the classroom that involves a semantic feature analysis task to help students develop reasoning skills. (YDS)

College students learning about language and using this knowledge to learn how to teach reading and writing should participate in strategies that simulate systems in the language and strategies that they in turn will use in their own classrooms. Cognitive and constructivist strategies are interactive and thus more powerful than the traditional…

This article presents a case study of academic language instruction in a high school "English Learner Science" course. It illustrates how a teacher's understanding of academic language affects her instruction and students' opportunities for learning. We examine a transcript of classroom discourse for the "didactic tension" that exists between this…

One of the major findings in previous research on reflexive coreference in a second language is that learners of English violate the locality requirement of the reflexive form "x-self" more readily when it appears in the subordinate infinitival clause than when included in the subordinate tensed clause (a phenomenon called the…

Papers are presented from a conference that dealt with the similarities and differences between first and second language learning, ways of assessing the relationships, methodological procedures, and implications for development of procedures for teaching language handicapped children. The papers are presented under the following headings: (1)…

This article discusses the audiovisual image as sign; the classification of signs according to two different semiologies, and two different semantic theories; and the relation to different pedagogical approaches. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This book discusses semantic feature analysis, a strategy that helps teachers focus students' attention on vocabulary and increase their sensitivity to language. The first half of the book deals with the theoretical foundation, reviews the research, and describes the basic teaching strategy of semantic feature analysis. The book's second half is…

A study compared the instructional strategies of semantic mapping and semantic feature analysis with a traditional contextual approach for vocabulary acquisition. Subjects, 36 fourth, fifth, and six grade classes, were taught a set of 15 target words in each of the three instructional conditions for each of 3 weeks. Classes were assessed at the…

Students learn, understand, and retain knowledge best when they discover it themselves. In the area of semantics, the study of how meaning is conveyed through language, explicit knowledge may appear to be obvious once it becomes conscious, but unless people are explicitly aware of their implicit knowledge and assumptions, they may be at their…

This is an analysis of the linguistic problems posed by vocabulary instruction in an introductory English course. Three criteria should govern any method chosen for the teaching of vocabulary in an introductory course in English as a second language: (1) semantic relations within the lexicon; (2) vocabulary progression independent of grammar and…

The principles and practices of general semantics can be taught to college classes within the context of quality science fiction writings. The works of A. E. van Vogt and Robert Heinlein are particularly useful in exemplifying the details of general semantics. These works and some other science fiction are based upon the Korzybskian principles of…

This article consists of a practical semantic explanation of the embedding process in French and English, and outlines a methodology devised to facilitate the teaching of this process. (CLK)