Writing instruction today emphasizes the rules and conventions of rhetorical analysis and thus tends to isolate the students' personalities from their use of language. To be effective, writing instruction must begin with the exploration of events and issues that determine experience and with the ideas formed from attempts to understand life. One…

Blacks are said to be often called upon to serve in difficult administrative positions located in school districts with financial difficulties where personnel and/or students are in revolt, where discipline is non-existent, where academic achievement levels are low, and where the community is divided. Major problems that arise when examining the…

Many American servicemen have married Asian women and brought them to the United States. Asian wife-American husband families are unique compared to black-white or European-American marriages because they are both interracial and cross-cultural. Yet, few studies have been done to analyze their relationships and problems in adjusting to American…

A non-experimental, exploratory field study was designed to investigate the impact of a diagnosis of nonresectable lung cancer on eight subjects' relationships with others and plans for the future. Participant observation, systematic verbal and behavioral communications between subjects and investigator were the primary methods of inquiry. Such…

The communications barrier confronting the ghetto child, the child from Appalachia, or the reservation Indian is the standard middle-class English taught in most schools. Ways of dissolving this barrier are suggested. Speaking habits as well as thinking patterns of teachers must frequently alter. A child should be encouraged to verbalize and to…

The Western Alabama Cooperative Project attempted to develop better self-concepts, communication skills, classroom management techniques, and knowledge of multi-racial educational methods and materials among teachers and educators; the intent was to facilitate school desegregation. The program consisted of lectures and discussion groups. The…

To examine current communication and involvement patterns between municipal and educational governments in urban areas, a questionnaire was mailed to mayors of the nation's 50 largest cities. Responses to the questionnaires indicated that (1) incoming and outgoing communications about local school issues normally flow through the school…

An evaluation of an inner-city reading program which involved industry, university consultants, and the administrators and teachers of a large New Jersey high school led to several recommendations: (1) that schools and their faculties genuinely desire to participate in such a reading program, that school systems demonstrate their interest by…

The focus of this bibliography is on the use of variations of Standard English--often called "Nonstandard Dialects"--both in and out of the classroom. Black English, often thought to be synonymous with "nonstandard dialect" because of recent attention called to it, is the best known of the nonstandard dialects, although there are various regional…

This book is intended for both beginning and experienced teachers who face many difficult challenges in today's desegregated school. Teachers must come to feel and recognize the many contingencies of the desegregated classroom if it is to be a place for learning. Because social class segregates children as often as does race, the major question…

The purpose of this document is to review the growing body of literature focusing on poverty and communication, assess it, and posit directions for future work. In all, some 4000 different studies are examined to develop an overview of the communication environment of the urban poor. No more than 200 had some relevance to poverty-communication;…

This monograph outlines a course in the study of nonverbal or graphic symbols in communication, of language as symbols and of symbols within language. Performance objectives for the students are: (1) giving examples of the use of nonverbal and/or graphic communication symbols; (2) deducing that people assign different meanings to the same work and…

The essays published in this collection were written in response to the basic question, "To what extent is the language of politics/advertising/psychotherapy/education/bureaucracy/etc. facilitating or impeding our chances of survival?" The general topic here is the contemporary use of language and the semantic environment in America, especially in…

An innovative instructional program designed to improve children's skills in referential communication, especially in communicating descriptions and instructions, is evaluated. Insights gained into classroom organization and the teacher's level of adoption of the innovation are discussed. (MSE)

Taboo or forbidden topics of conversation are compared for Taiwan, the Republic of China, and United States. Emphasis is on the conveyance of conversational conventions in second language teaching. First, the concept of conversational taboos is examined, noting the non-transferability of taboos across cultures and languages. Four kinds of taboos…