The fourth of seven booklets on adults with learning disabilities, this manual examines the assessment and remediation of written language problems. Spelling assessment activities are described, including lists of questions designed to investigate auditory skills, tactile skills, and visual skills. Also considered is assessment of punctuation,…

This discussion focuses on reading problems arising when bilingual children must learn two different scripts, and how the nature of the relationship between the two scripts may influence the child's ability to transfer and develop reading skills. First, models of normal and abnormal reading in English are described. The significance of these…

Arguing that being "literate" carries a different expectation from even the recent past, this book asserts that schools must explicitly teach the nature of language, and that students must be given clear criteria for, and support in, achieving excellence in controlling the different types of written language used in their various fields…

Intended for teachers in Tasmania, this booklet discusses making sense of language, the nature of written language, language and context, and organizing knowledge of the world. Chapter 1, Understanding Reading, contains a general discussion of the reading process as well as sections on the beginning and continuing reader, planning a reading…

A study of the functions and structure of referential third- person pronominal chains in spontaneous English conversation as compared to those in written English is discussed. The study found the frequencies of these pronouns and of their chains to be generally much higher in the spoken corpus than in the written corpus. In the spoken corpus,…

The results of studies of English adverb usage undertaken by Swedish university students participating in a research and writing skills program are summarized. The studies focus on the incidence of structural and semantic types of adjuncts used in two samples of spoken and written British English. Frequency distributions are charted and…

To determine the relationship between oral and written language conventions at the macro and micro levels, a study analyzed various elements of stories generated by children. Subjects, nine above average readers between grades 4 and 9, were asked to tell a story and then to write a story. Sources of stories, overall plot organization, and number…

Although spoken language was the subject of attention among Soviet linguists for a short period in the 1920s, it has not attracted much attention since then. The main concern of Soviet linguists has been the forms of written language. Only at the end of the 1960s did linguists begin to record spontaneous speech on tape and study its forms. The…

This report states the issues involved in the use of communicative tests, oral and written, to assess grammatical correctness among students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Experience with two English tests administered at the beginning and end of the practice teaching period of Dutch students training to become EFL teachers indicates…

Noting that young children's initial writing efforts are often dismissed as insignificant scribbling, a study explored children's emerging understandings about written language as indicated by the changes in 47 preschool children's autographs. Throughout a school year children were asked to write their names and draw pictures of themselves.…

A study examined whether Canadian twelfth grade students' papers would rate differently when they were written in different modes and whether there are significant differences between global (modified holistic) scores and rhetorical effectiveness (modified primary trait) scores for the same papers. Fifty students wrote on two transactional topics…

A study investigated children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms in oral and written language. The three deictic categories examined were pronouns (I, you), locatives (this, here), and motion verbs (come, go). Three groups of 24 second grade students completed an oral language task, a written language task, and a picture selection…

The book presents the Makah alphabet decided upon in a public workshop held by the Makah Language Program in 1978, before which there was no standard Makah orthography. The 10 vowels and 34 consonants of the alphabet are presented in relation to English sounds. The book groups vowels sounds together but devotes a page to each consonant telling how…

The ability of foreign students to read non-scientific material efficiently is important for rapid social and cultural integration. This report describes the reading comprehension section of a French language course aimed at foreign students at the Nancy Science Faculty. Exercises are presented which cover morpho-syntactic, communicative and…

The present study concentrated on the writing vocabulary of Mexican American children (grades 1-8) in order to answer the following questions: (1) Are there regional differences in the writing vocabulary of Mexican American Children? (2) Is one justified in translating directly from English into Spanish? (3) Is there a need for the development of…