Describes five classroom activities: helping students use strong nouns, strong verbs, and right adjectives; using acrostic poems for research reporting; improving student response in directed-reading (and directed-listening) thinking activities; using semantic mapping and cooperative groups to build descriptive writing; and math synonyms. (RS)

Using data from ethnographic studies of the use of French and English in Ontario and Quebec in a variety of settings during 1978-90, this paper discusses language choice as a political strategy, especially for ethnic mobilization. Codeswitching is described in terms of individual communicative repertoires and community speech economies. (41…

A case is made for the need for awareness among English language teaching professionals in Europe of the social and cultural factors influencing the use and spread of English in the European context. An argument is made for extending the view of sociolinguistics to include recognition of language as a social institution that influences attitudes…

Examines the use of English in Japanese business communication. Finds that English is an important element of Japanese international business policy and that an awareness of both Japanese corporate commitment to employee English proficiency and of the complexities of the use of English for special purposes benefits business communicators involved…

Discusses how hypermedia interfaces can use graphic design and language to help users of hypermedia programs to structure a cognitive approach to information retrieval. Argues that such interfaces should acknowledge the medium's limits, identify authorship levels, define a program model, provide overviews, and narrow the navigation functions. (SR)

Discusses orality as an historical feature of African American language habits. Provides historical evidence of the literate values and habits of African Americans since the early 1800s. Resists the tendency to deny variation in the habits and values of ethnic groups. (HB)

Thirty-two subjects (5 Broca's, 7 conduction, and 10 anomic aphasics and 10 normal controls) performed story retell and procedural discourse tasks containing familiar and unfamiliar topics, with familiar and unfamiliar listeners. Results indicated that topic familiarity significantly influenced verbal output in both normal and aphasic subjects.…

Despite replicating previous findings of a relationship between maternal descriptiveness and the proportion of nouns and maternal directiveness and the proportion of verbs in children's early vocabulary, this study of eight mother-infant dyads revealed no relationship between differences in mothers' interactional behavior and differences in the…

Finds that differences in the amount that mothers talk to their children are a function of both characteristics of mothers' language use and of their children's conversational participation. Shows that mothers who talked more to their children more frequently produced multiple utterances on a single topic and had children who talked more. (SR)

Discusses the ways that one English teacher researched her student's language patterns and used that information to adjust her teaching. Considers the difficulty of changing ingrained habits of nongrammatical usage in student speech and writing. (HB)

Investigates the determinants of adult usage of various syntactic and semantic cues in sentence interpretation. Native French speakers and advanced English/French bilinguals were tested for the strength of usage of word order, clitic pronoun agreement, verb agreement, and noun animacy cues in the assignment of the role in French sentences. (46…

The pedagogical use of commands in second-language learning is addressed. Current textbooks are shown to expose students to many morphologically complicated command forms, and it is suggested that command use may be facilitated by offering students a reduced system of commands. (33 references) (Author/LB)

Describes the writing problems of a poor, black, urban student who wants to succeed in college but doesn't know how. Asserts that language use, particularly the use of Black English, plays a major role in their lack of academic success. Offers drills and strategies to help with this problem. (PRA)

Investigates the grammatical and formal writing preferences of college professors, for the purpose of informing high school instructors about the students' future audience. Surveys professors' attitudes regarding disapproval of forms and stylistic preferences, and compare results with those of two other usage surveys. (PRA)

Discusses strategies for teaching nonsexist language. Advocates discussion of misconceptions about the history of linguistic reform, forms of address, and outdated, sexist textbooks. Suggests that students find samples of sexist language and rewrite them using NCTE guidelines. Alerts teachers to be prepared for resistance. Suggests further…