Reports that by combining a phonetic writing system with instruction in carefully selected clusters of related Chinese characters, Chinese schools can start children on productive reading at an early age with texts closer to their developed cognitive levels. (FL)

Describes how a teacher with little background in science helped her students write puppet plays as part of their learning about the science of rainbows. (FL)

Explores ERIC materials on various theories of language development and their implications for vocabulary development in classroom settings. Provides suggestions for enriching the school language environment to promote vocabulary growth. (HTH)

Examines the role of suprasegmental phonology in speech processing and its implications for reading instruction; also reviews evidence for the hypothesis that prosodic features cue the boundaries of perceptually functional units in spoken sentences, thus assisting the listener in the segmentation of verbal information. (FL)

Decries teachers' use of questions with the phrase "tell me," arguing that this locus of authority in the classroom interferes with children's understanding of the function of language. (HTH)

Describes the unorthodox methods used by a high school English teacher to get the meaning of such literary terms as "classicism,""romanticism,""realism," and "naturalism" across to her students. (RBW)

Considers an alternative interpretation of the effect of so-called women's language and its appropriateness in society. (CRH)

Discusses word games and activities that encourage students to use dictionaries and alternate forms in their writing. (HTH)

Three experiments conducted with normal adults in both Israel and the United States show that the answers people give to questions vary with the category of the target and its distance. (FL)

Notes research showing that narration and opinion writing are two different crafts and that children differentiate between the two when they write. (FL)

Concludes that there are about 88,500 words in printed school English and that even systematic direct vocabulary instruction could not account for a significant proportion of all the words children actually learn, nor cover more than a modest proportion of the words they will encounter in school reading materials. (FL)

Notes that modern rewriters transform traditional folk stories for reading texts, adhering to strictures imposed by popular ideas about childhood, language, and learning. Proposes to improve the quality of folktales and learning by restoring original language in folktales. (FL)

Notes that poetry writing can be a natural and interesting part of the language arts curriculum. Offers an approach to teaching poetry to intermediate grade students that leads them to accept and like poetry. (FL)

Presents (1) suggestions of a sex-related frequency variation in vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar; (2) evidence of increased sensitivity to sexist language in the manuscripts submitted to the National Council of Teachers of English; (3) a proposed substitution of "Dear Reader" for "Gentlemen" in business correspondence; and (4) a description…

Looks at research and practice in the area of idioms and offers suggestions for teaching them effectively. (FL)