A sociolinguistic study of pupil interpretations of the functions of teacher praise in lessons involved 165 pupils in six classes in a single multiethnic, lower socioeconomic status, elementary school. Procedures involved videotaping six language arts lessons in each classroom. After playbacks of videotapes, pupils were asked individually, "What…

A study was undertaken to investigate which of ten constructions are available to children of various ages for expressing conditionality. A modified sentence completion test based on use of the ten constructions was designed, field-tested, and administered individually to 20 students in each of five grades: kindergarten and grades two, four, six,…

The intelligibility of crosslanguage voice communication in American English was studied in situations where the phonemes of that language are uttered by American speakers and identified by speakers of German, French, and Mexican Spanish and in situations where they are uttered by speakers of German, French, and Mexican Spanish and identified by…

Based on the contention that knowledge of how and where children learn to speak is essential to the development of sound bilingual educational programs, a research project was undertaken to gain insights into how children learn oral language at school. Three bilingual and 39 nonbilingual classrooms at the preschool through the sixth grade level…

THE PRESENT PROGRESS REPORT DESCRIBES INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS FOR THE TEACHING OF ARABIC WRITING AND PHONOLOGY, BASED ON THE RESULTS OF (1) A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PHONOLOGIES OF AMERICAN ENGLISH AND MODERN LITERARY ARABIC, (2) AN ANALYSIS OF MODERN LITERARY ARABIC WRITING, AND (3) A WORD STUDY OF 11 ELEMENTARY ARABIC TEXTBOOKS. (FOR A…

AN EXPERIMENT TO IMPROVE THE METHOD OF TRAINING INTERPRETERS TO INCREASE SPEED OF TRANSLATION FROM ONE LANGUAGE TO ANOTHER, ONCE THE VOCABULARY BUILDUP HAS BEEN ACCOMPLISHED, INVOLVED THE USE OF THE TACHISTOSCOPE AND THE CONTROLLED READER, MACHINES USED IN SPEEDREADING COURSES. THIS INNOVATIVE PRACTICE HELPED TRAIN THE INTERPRETERS TO INCREASE…

THE SIX PAPERS IN THIS VOLUME ARE THE RESULT OF THE 1962 CONFERENCE ON PARALINGUISTICS AND KINESICS, ORGANIZED BY THOMAS A. SEBEOK AND SPONSORED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF INDIANA RESEARCH CENTER IN ANTHROPOLOGY, FOLKLORE, AND LINGUISTICS. THE PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE WAS TO EXPLORE THE INTERACTIONAL AND COMMUNICATIONAL CONTEXT OF THE HUMAN USE OF…

LANGUAGE ENCODING AND DECODING PROCESSES WERE EXAMINED BY DETERMINING THE ABILITY OF SUBJECTS TO PREDICT OMISSIONS FROM A NATURAL LANGUAGE TEXT WHICH THEY HAD PREVIOUSLY PRODUCED THEMSELVES, AND BY COMPARING THIS PERFORMANCE WITH THAT OF OTHER SUBJECTS TO PREDICT OMISSIONS FROM THESE SAME TEXTS WHICH THE SECOND GROUP READ AT THE TIME OF…

AUDIOLINGUAL TEACHING METHODS HAVE CREATED THE NEED FOR NEW TESTING TECHNIQUES IN THE FOUR LANGUAGE SKILLS OF LISTENING, SPEAKING, AND WRITING. VARIOUS CURRENT METHODS AND SPECIFIC STANDARDIZED TESTS FOR EVALUATING EACH OF THE SKILLS, INCLUDING PURE SKILLS TESTS WHICH UTILIZE ONLY ONE SKILL IN BOTH STIMULUS AND RESPONSE AND HYBRID SKILLS TESTS…

AN EXPERIMENT AT GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY WITH EIGHT COLLEGE FRESHMEN INVOLVED A SEMIAUTOMATIC METHOD OF TEACHING A RAPID INTRODUCTION TO THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF GERMAN DERIVED FROM AN OPERANT CONDITIONING ANALYSIS OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR. THE PREDOMINANT FEATURE OF THE PROGRAM WAS A MATCHING-TO-SAMPLE TECHNIQUE UTILIZING A TEACHING MACHINE AND CARDS. THE…

This paper makes three arguments reaffirming the overwhelming complexities inherent in any real history of the language of blacks in North America. (1) Although the study of black English, however that term may be defined, is desirable in itself and was profitable for white linguists during the 1960s and early 1970s, it did not and never will do…

Based on an examination of research on the language acquisition of children, the articles in this book are organized into three interrelated sections. Section one, "Language and the Young Language Learner," focuses on what and how children learn as they begin to acquire their language. The topic of language differences is also explored. Articles…

An investigation of the naturalistic acquisition of a second language phonology, based on the case of a native Icelandic speaker learning the fricatives and affricates of English, reveals that neither transfer hypothesis nor the developmental hypothesis alone provides an adequate explanation of second language phonological development. This…

Sixth-grade students were subjects in a study to determine whether they possessed a repertoire of situational language in which registers or speech styles were differentiated by language use. A methodology was developed to elicit and describe children's language in different social settings that require different situational uses of language. Four…

Recent studies of folk biology clearly reveal the detailed empirical knowledge of living things which is an important and characteristic element of pre-scientific cultures. This paper attempts a contribution to the study of such systems of knowledge by analyzing the comparable skills of a few American birdwatchers. The process of identification of…