Intended for classroom teachers, this book suggests some approaches to assessing children's language, describes some practices, and advises teachers of some of the problems in child language assessment. Chapter one provides illustrations of assessing child language usage, including looking at a piece of writing, administering a reading test,…

As Labov points out (1971), language is a social phenomenon, and therefore must be studied in its social context; sex based language differences, being part of language, must be studied in the same way. Specifically, sex based language differences can be studied by modifying the sociolinguists' notion of speech community and speech continuum, and…

Heterosexism, as defined in this paper, designates those central social structures that advocate heterosexuality as the only natural sexual interest. The cluster of social mores that constitute heterosexist attitudes is defined and described, with illustrations from various contexts showing both the subtle and the overt ways in which these…

Two speeches by Betty Friedan, author of "The Feminine Mystique" and first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), are examined in this paper. The first speech analyzed, "Tokenism and the Pseudo-Radical Cop-Out," was delivered at Cornell University in January, 1969, and the second, a "Call to Women's Strike…

Linguists of various theoretical backgrounds have likened second language (L2) acquisition to pidginization (Ferguson 1971, Richards 1971, Bickerton 1975a). This paper examines these two processes and suggests areas where a study of the process of second language acquisition in a natural setting might contribute insights to a general theory of…

This is one in a series of eight discussion pamphlets produced by the Writing Across the Curriculum Project dealing with some of the issues connected with writing in the schools and their relation to learning. This pamphlet contains five papers that are concerned with the ways in which writing changes under the influence of who it is for and what…

Three stereotypes of male-female behavior as manifested in language were investigated. The stereotypes are: women are more verbose than men, women use more modifiers than men, and women are submissive to men. Eighty students were randomly assigned to one of two conflict resolution conditions--a business situation and an interpersonal…

Eighty disadvantaged black third grade students were administered both reading achievement and oral language tests to determine whether the phonology, morphology, and grammar of Black English dialect have more effect on the below-average readers of the group than on those students making satisfactory reading progress. Student scores on the…

THROUGH THEIR LOSS OF FAITH IN TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR, MEN HAVE "SINNED" AND CONTRIBUTED SLIGHTLY BUT IMPORTANTLY TO THE CREATION OF AN AMORAL AND RELATIVISTIC SOCIETY. PROMPTED BY THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL PRIDE, SOME LINGUISTS SEEM TO ASSUME THAT GRAMMATICAL PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED BY RATIOCINATION ALONE. IGNORANCE OF THE PAST--ANOTHER SIN--AND…

RATHER THAN TEACHING PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR OR LINGUISTICS, NEITHER OF WHICH IS LIKELY TO INCREASE THE ABILITY TO WRITE, SPEAK, OR LEARN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, THE ENGLISH TEACHER SHOULD GUIDE THE STUDENTS INTO AN INQUIRY ABOUT THE NATURE OF LANGUAGE. SUCH AN INQUIRY WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE THAT LANGUAGE USAGE IS DETERMINED BY THE SOCIAL SITUATION AND THAT…

To determine whether children's language patterns are learned responses or inherently organized, this study observed children's responses to commands. The 13 subjects were middle class children aged 18 to 30 months. The children were rated as verbally mature, intermediate, or immature; and responses were classified as action, verbal, and relevant.…

This report describes the scope and aims of the Survey of Language Use and Language Teaching in Eastern Africa. An outgrowth of a series of ICSLP conferences (International Conference on Second Language Problems, jointly sponsored by the Center for Applied Linguistics, the British Council, and the Bureau pour l' Enseignement de la Langue et de la…

This Foreign Service Institute (FSI) introductory course in Italian is designed especially for use by U.S. personnel at overseas missions. The text is a field manual for instructors trained and operating under the supervision of an FSI Regional Language Supervisor. The fifteen units of the text cover basic vocabulary, pronunciation exercises,…

This document presents some of the issues involved in deciding on a national language for the Philippines. It is noted that the Philippines needs a national language which would be accepted by most of the forty-five million Filipinos. If the trend continues for the next five years and if the trend in the Philippines to shift Pilipino (the national…

The nature of linguistic variation is examined, particularly the ways in which phonology, morphology, syntax, and other aspects of language vary according to social and situational contexts. A distinction must be made between a difference in frequency of a linguistic variable that carries meaning, and a difference in frequency which carries no…