This study compared literacy learning for kindergartners as 12 teachers read 10 popular alphabet books aloud, emphasizing meanings or phonemes, and used centers for independent practice with an alphabet book on audiotape or CD-ROM over a period of four weeks. Researchers taught half the teachers to read the books with an emphasis on phonemes…

English prepositions are generally considered difficult to teach to nonnative speakers, for a variety of reasons: the large number of possible meanings for many prepositions, which change according to the context in which they are used; the lack of a written guide to usage; and, for native Arabic speakers, the commonly-used grammar-translation…

This work is an attempt to explain the rationale and thinking that contributes to the "communication strategy" approach and to illustrate the practical applications of its ideas to second language teaching. It also proposes an approach to teaching based on two major goals: first, to incorporate the better features of audiolingual methods into a…

English teachers do not take their subject--language--seriously enough; command of language is what students need to find themselves and cope with the forces of society. (JH)

The 16 lessons in this course--the result of experiments conducted with 7th-and 8th-grade pupils at Nettelhorst School in Chicago--deal with "the relationship between language and thought, with the scientific use of language, and with some misuses of language." Each lesson has two parts: (1) a "Teacher Summary" which gives the basic semantic…

Consisting of nine individualized inservice packets, the Teaching Teen Reading Series describes reading procedures applicable to instruction in all subjects in the elementary, middle, and secondary school. This sixth packet is designed to enable the teacher to help students expand word meaning, using the technical vocabulary of their content…

The nature of common language errors for learners of second languages is explored, and it is found that the errors cannot adequately be explained in terms of the theory of language interference. A new rationale for these errors can come from an investigation of the perceptual strategies common to error analysis, and thus it is postulated that…

This article examines some of the ways in which language has been organised for language teaching. Their deficiencies are examined and some possibilities for the future are suggested. (Author/NC R)

An attempt to show that a threshold level would furnish conditions for a renewed methodology and greater student creativity. The acquisition of communicative competence would be constructed around two types of activities: analysis of the conditions of speech production and systematization of two levels of grammar. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

A program for teaching relational vocabulary in classroom settings has three receptive steps for identifying the target word and three expressive steps for using the target word. These methods focus on the systematic modification of both example presentation (including non-defining characteristics and situational distractions) and response…

A vocabulary instruction program for intermediate grades is described. The program improves comprehension through use of such features as multiple exposures to words in various contexts and engaging students in active thinking about word meanings. This method of instruction is compared with instruction that offers only definitional information.…

Discusses a foreign language pedagogy that facilitates teaching for communication and teaching grammar, which is defined as a system for converting meaning into language. The teacher is advised to do in the classroom only what cannot be done elsewhere. Four instructional tactics are described. (SED)

Describes a study which compared a traditional approach to second language vocabulary instruction with the semantic field approach, which is based on the association between five related words and a key word that could be mentally substituted in context. Findings lend support to the use of the semantic field approach. (SED)

Analyzes and compares the content of four reading journals for the years 1973 and 1983 on eight categories of comprehension instruction and three categories of comprehension follow-up and reveals an increase in the number of articles focusing on comprehension issues and practices. (DF)

This paper studies the lexical changes between pre-1949 Mandarin and the pu-tong-hua of today. The extent of change and the identification and description of a few cases of linguistic change are considered. The relative significance of these changes and remarks on pedagogy conclude the paper. (Author/CFM)