The identification and study of 20 syntactical patterns responsible for much of the structural ambiguity found in literary composition can develop in students an audience awareness. When they realize that such constructions as "a dull boy's knife" and "the club will be open to members from Monday to Thursday" can be misinterpreted, they take more…

In this article pertaining to the significance of the 1964 amendments to Titles 3 and 11 of the National Defense Education Act, special attention is paid to the funds allocated for reading and English instruction. After a brief explanation of the eligibility requirements, application details, and funding for the reading and English teacher…

This checklist is designed to assist English teachers and departments in analyzing and evaluating their current programs. It is divided into four parts: (1) the basic organization and procedures of the English program (25 criteria), (2) the physical provisions for English instruction, both facilities and equipment (11 criteria) and materials (2…

Two main points are stressed in this essay: (1) Reading literature aloud to students is not only educationally sound, but for many youngsters, necessary; and (2) In order to help his students become critical listeners of the literature that is read to them, a teacher must build bridges between the youngsters' experience and that in the literature.…

Hal Borland's "When the Legends Die" is especially appropriate for high school seniors because its central problem--a Ute Indian boy's search for his identity and expected role in society--is exactly that faced by these students. The novel is divided into four sections, each concerned with a specific stage in the development of the protagonist.…

Despite current emphasis on racial problems, few books present honestly the Negro experience in the United States. Adolescents' and children's books portraying Negroes in realistic situations have increased over the past two decades, but they comprise only 1% of the total output of books for young people. Textbooks that include Negroes or Negro…

When ninth-grade students are searching for help in expressing their newly discovered ideas, the principles of transformational grammar can be brought to their aid in the following ways: (1) Assign a provocative topic to the students which they are to discuss as fully as possible in one sentence. (2) Present only the kernel sentences of a…

English teachers have a responsibility to interpret for students the current linguistic insights into language and to lead them in an open-minded inquiry involving (1) careful observation of language data, (2) translation of this observation into rule-like descriptions, and (3) verification of the rules to determine if revisions must be made. In…

Phonological rules based on "stress-terminal pattern" (the principle that a phonological phrase has one primary stress and one terminal juncture requiring a mark of punctuation) can be used to improve punctuation in composition. These rules require that the writer be able to speak sentences at a normal pace with intonation appropriate to the…

The value of a transformational model of syntax can be illustrated by comparing the taxonomic grammatical description of a complex sentence to a transformation-oriented description of the same sentence. The taxonomic approach, an immediate constituent analysis, requires 10 steps to break the sample sentence into its grammatical components; the…

Linguistic criticism not only shows students the usefulness of grammar but also improves their comprehension of literature. For instance, a study of stress, pitch, and juncture in E. E. Cummings'"anyone lived in a pretty how town" adds meaning to the poem. Also helpful is an analysis of Cummings' tagmemic method of substitution slot-filling--use…

Students can be taught to create vivid, colorful descriptions. To train their senses and sharpen their word choices and images, they can be asked to (1) list specific adjectives to describe such an image-producing word as "ocean," (2) substitute sharply-etched verbs for general ones in a given sentence, (3) record day-to-day observations in a…

Students can learn to write verse by (1) perceiving that poetic materials are inside and all around them and making lists of items that appeal to their senses, (2) organizing their material through the use of imagery, (3) experimenting with various meters, particularly the ballad stanza, until they can arrange words in rhythmic patterns (4)…

The structural analysis of three short stories, arranged to proceed from an elementary to a complex level of form, can illuminate the secondary school student's understanding of literary structure. Representing plot as structure, the basic elements of Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" can be quickly reviewed to debate and establish the…

To minimize inconsistencies in hyphenation practices, written English should accurately transcribe spoken English by indicating every open- or plus-juncture with a hyphen ("Plus-juncture" is the special transition the speaker makes between two compound nouns.). Even young native speakers of English can readily perceive semantic and phonological…