A semantic differential technique was used to determine the connotative meaning of specific grades to college students. The 161 upper division undergraduates rated each of three specific grades on 20 semantic differential items. Two descriptive questions were answered: (1) What are the basic dimensions of the connotative meanings of grades? (2)…

This report discusses the problem of the meansings of words used in information retrieval systems, and shows how semantic tools can aid in the communication which takes place between indexers and searchers via index terms. After treating the differing use of semantic tools in different types of systems, two tools (classification tables and…

Implementation of curriculum innovations requires that teachers have both knowledge of the change and commitment to use it. In order to determine what type of teacher is most likely to perceive and practice a curriculum innovation effectively, an in-service project was set up and studied. Nineteen elementary school teachers with varying degrees of…

Since teacher attitude is an important factor in implementing curriculum change, teacher education programs are designed to communicate the spirit and philosophy of new curriculum programs. This study attempted to determine which factors contribute most to teacher attitudinal change. Sixty elementary school teachers from 7 adjoining Texas school…

Current views both of reading and of understanding spoken language conceptualize the process of deriving meaning as similar to hypothesis testing. The listener or reader is seen as selecting whatever information is required to confirm the hypothesized meaning. In the present study, 60 children (12 each in grades four through eight) reworded…

A Conference Role Semantic Differential was developed and field-tested as a brief, diagnostic measure of conference role performance of administrators. Principal components analysis of 52 staff member's evaluations of three institutional researchers yielded one task and three interpersonal skill factors which demonstrated the construct validity of…

The study examines attitudes toward blacks of 127 randomly selected county level white 4-H and youth professionals in 12 Northeastern States (a 98 percent response rate). The subjects were randomly divided between one control and one treatment group and administered the Situational Attitude Scale, a racial attitude measurement instrument…

These readings on language and culture are divided into sections on: "Principles of Language,""Culture and Language,""Structure of the English Language,""Ancestry and History of English,""Aspects of American English,""Americans and the Other World,""Language and Literature," and "Aspects of Applied Linguistics." Contributing authors include Noam…

English tenses are discussed in terms of a unique ordering of three moments of time: the moment of speech, the moment of the event and the reference point. The aims of the paper are to: (1) show the usefulness of introducing the concept of reference point in tense analysis, (2) provide an account of how to construe reference points semantically,…

Forty Mexican American and Anglo American university students were asked to rate 5 common Anglo American and 5 common Mexican American female names on a semantic differential. Divided into 4 groups based on sex and ethnic background, respondents were between 18 and 25 years of age and all claimed El Paso (Texas) as their primary residence for the…

The purpose of this study was to delineate the implications of language within an educational context as a means of facilitating self-actualization. Three premises identified in a priori fashion were drawn from the literature in linguistics, psychology, and general semantics, creating a three-part language continuum--acquisition, development, and…

The purposes of this study were to identify the best predictor or predictors of paragraph comprehensibility and to attempt to interpret that predictor as a skill. Forty-two passages of differing readability (ranging from grade 2.5 to 10.0) were analyzed for within word, within sentence, and between sentence characteristics. The measures used for…

The second volume in this series on Serbo-Croatian-English contrastive analysis contains five articles. They are: "On Contrastive Contrastive Grammar," by Eric P. Hamp; "Remarks on Contrastive Analysis and Translation," by Vladimir Ivir; "Formal and Semantic Considerations in Contrastive Analysis," by Jerry L. Liston; "On Differences in…

This investigation studied the development of certain predicates called factives, such as "sad,""happy,""know," and "true," by studying the semantic effects of negation on the complements of both factive and non-factive predicates. The subjects were 60 children, divided into three age groups of ten boys and…

A corollary of the principle that reading comprehension depends on language comprehension is that word skill plus language comprehension skill produces reading comprehension skill. This corollary points to word decoding as being the major source of differences in skilled reading. Various data supporting this claim have been collected from…