Writing appears to have originated from a modest system of counters or tokens used to keep track of economic goods and transactions. This system of recording appeared in 8000 B. C. in Mesopotamia, or what is now Iraq. The tokens' consistency in shape and size during the next 4,000 years attests to the stability of the agricultural economy and way…

Research supports Samuels' focal attention hypothesis for acquiring reading responses to novel words presented in isolation. (RB)

Describes two systems used in identifying the content structures of a number of passages of approximately 600 words, and discusses the implications of the research for developing future instructional materials. (RB)

The article discusses the process of uniting inherently-linguistic and extra-linguistic factors in communication, examining the reasons for paralinguistic phenomena, their nature and tasks both in oral and written communication, and the ways in which they affect the entire system of the language. (CLK)

As part of the activities at the Research Institute in Education of Learning Disabled Children, work was carried out with a group of about 30 children (grades 4 through 6) disabled in the comprehension of written language. Most of these children, when reading, went beyond using prior knowledge to provide schemata and interpretations; they…

This discussion argues that the development of children's definitions is shaped by a particular orientation to word meaning characteristic of literate language use. This orientation is marked by increased attention to the linguistic form of expressions. To test this argument, a study was undertaken in which eight common nouns, familiar to most…

The change of emphasis from the written product to writing as a process manifests another important change--one from logical to phenomenological consciousness. Phenomenologically speaking, writing is both "immanent" in the writer and "transcendent" outside the writer. It is thinking of general concepts that actually occurred…

EXPERIMENTAL TECHNIQUES ARE PRESENTED WHICH SHOW THAT IT IS POSSIBLE FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO LEARN, IN A RELATIVELY SHORT TIME, WHAT ORDINARILY ARE CONSIDERED TO BE ADVANCED SKILLS. PRESCHOOL CHILDREN OF 2 AND 3 YEARS OF AGE CAN LEARN TO TYPE ON AN ELECTRIC TYPEWRITER, TO PRINT, TO READ, AND TO TAKE DICTATION. THE CAPACITY TO LEARN THESE SKILLS…

INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS AT THE ELEMENTARY LEVEL OF THE CHINESE WRITING SYSTEM ARE PRESENTED TO TEACH THE STUDENTS (1) HOW CHARACTERS ARE PUT TOGETHER, (2) HOW TO TELL ONE CHARACTER FROM ANOTHER, AND (3) HOW TO ANALYZE NEW CHARACTERS INTO APPROPRIATE CONSTITUENTS FOR PURPOSES OF DICTIONARY SEARCH. THE MATERIALS ARE BASED ON AN IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENT…

This paper considers such contracted forms as "I'm,""he's,""we'd," and "isn't" or "won't." It is often assumed, the author states, that every contracted form is derived by surface-level phonological rules from a non-contracted and semantically equivalent counterpart. The author presents evidence to…

Associations were obtained from 40 subjects (Ss) each at National Taiwan University and the University of Maryland to words presented either vocally or in writing. The words varied in frequency of occurrence for both languages. American Ss produced more associations that the Taiwanese Ss under all conditions. In both samples number of associations…

A FIRST-LEVEL READER IS PRESENTED, PRIMARILY FOR THOSE STUDENTS WHO HAVE A SPEAKING KNOWLEDGE OF PANJABI AND SOME KNOWLEDGE OF PANJABI GRAMMAR. THIS VOLUME CAN BE USED IN A GENERAL PANJABI LANGUAGE COURSE AS A SUPPLEMENT TO CONVERSATIONAL MATERIALS, OR BY ITSELF IN A COURSE ON THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE. A GLOSSARY AND A BRIEF GRAMMATICAL APPENDIX HAVE…

Discusses the use of the two past tenses in French, specifically in literature and news reporting. (AM)