This study investigated written language in the form of personal and formal letters written by 10 people who sustained a stroke and 10 people who sustained traumatic brain injury, and compared their performance with 15 non brain-damaged people. In order to explore the writing skills of these individuals from a sociocultural perspective, a…

This study explores the ways in which academic writers employ expressions of attitude in the construction of evaluative stance in the introductory sections of research papers. The study draws on the theoretical base of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Halliday, 1994, Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004), and in particular on Appraisal theory as a…

Do different L1 (first language) writing systems differentially affect word identification in English as a second language (ESL)? Wang, Koda, and Perfetti [Cognition 87 (2003) 129] answered yes by examining Chinese students with a logographic L1 background and Korean students with an alphabetic L1 background for their phonological and orthographic…

The Touo language is a non-Austronesian language spoken on Rendova Island (Western Province, Solomon Islands). First language speakers of Touo are typically multilingual, and are likely to speak other (Austronesian) vernaculars, as well as Solomon Island Pijin and English. There is no institutional support of literacy in Touo: schools function in…

Zero-order correlation coefficients show significant relationships between orthography, phonology, rapid naming, visual and auditory memory, and reading and spelling for 143 second through sixth graders. Although coefficients ranged from 0.05 to 0.71, most were statistically significant (65 out of 78). In addition, multiple regression analyses…

In recent years, scholars and teachers in both the broad field of Composition Studies and the more specialized arena of Computers and Composition Studies have begun to recognize that the bandwidth of literacy practices and values on which their profession has focused during the last century may be overly narrow. In response, a number of educators…

This article has two goals: to report on the trialling of fourteen 1,000 word-family lists made from the British National Corpus, and to use these lists to see what vocabulary size is needed for unassisted comprehension of written and spoken English. The trialling showed that the lists were properly sequenced and there were no glaring omissions…

Vocabulary knowledge contributes to comprehension, fluency, and student achievement. The goal of vocabulary instruction should be to build students' independent word-learning strategies. This article provides research and theory in support of nine key ideas about words and vocabulary instruction. These ideas are important for middle and secondary…

Bilingual reading can require more than knowing two languages. Learners must acquire also the writing conventions of their second language, which can differ in its deep mapping principles (writing system) and its visual configurations (script). We review ERP (event-related potential) and fMRI studies of both Chinese-English bilingualism and…

In discourse analysis, connectives have been widely suggested as linguistic markers to indicate the logical linkage between utterances. However, the understanding of the interactions among various kinds of connectives in discourse has been limited. A method of quantifying the overall correlation between different kinds of connectives occurring on…

Three arguments lead to the conclusion that the English of business is the business of English. First, reluctance to fully appreciate the English of Business stems in part from a serious misunderstanding about the development of written language in the Western tradition. While studying folktales and the origins of myths has made an awareness of…

This text of Yup'ik (a southwestern Alaskan Eskimo language) orthography is intended for individuals wishing to read and write in Yup'ik as a first or second language. The first chapter gives details on the Yup'ik alphabet and contains a pronunciation exercise. Subsequent chapters present information, with exercises, on: vowels; double vowels and…

The manual is designed to teach writing to native speakers of North Slope Inupiaq, a regional dialect of Alaskan Inupiaq Eskimo. Spelling is emphasized. An introductory section for teachers details the use of the manual, chapter by chapter, and suggests classroom activities. The first chapter provides an introduction to the writing system of North…

This paper presents the theory of prototype semantics as a useful approach to understanding the relationship between language and culture in second-language texts as it relates word-meaning to social and cultural models. Second-language writing in English may use the same linguistic structures as first-language texts, but the significance of…

The Spanish psychological verb construction seems to be especially difficult for native English-speaking learners to acquire. Since some of the most common Spanish psych verbs, such as "gustar" (to please) and "encantar" (to delight), require a grammatical structure that is different from that of the English verbs frequently…