The relevance to elementary foreign language instruction of certain findings of child language development (native language) and the psychology of language acquisition is examined. A set of premises is proposed for a new scheme for the teaching of German based on these findings, namely, that comprehension precedes production, that language…

Project 2 of the GUME research project on foreign language teaching methods considers whether the structures "some" and "any," and their combinations in English, are best taught by adherence to the habit-formation (implicit) theory or by adherence to the cognitive-code learning (explicit) theory. The experiment also investigates the effectiveness…

This conference report of the second annual meeting of the Society for Applied Linguistics contains 38 articles grouped under the following headings: (1) technology and multimedia instruction, (2) theory of translation, (3) the didactics of foreign language instruction, (4) a description of present-day language and linguistics, (5)…

After intensively studying for several years the thinking processes of members of a tribal group in Western Africa, the Kpelle, the authors examine the relation between culture and cognitive development. The following issues are discussed: (1) an analysis of the terms "culture" and "cognition"; (2) an ethnographic description of the Kpelle…

Presents an overview of the competing visions of the literature curriculum currently being advanced. Also presents the historical roots of the approaches, as well as the assumptions about learning and adolescents that each approach makes. (NKA)

Explores verbal exchange structure (2 people's cooccurring speech-act categories that accomplish some subtask within an interpersonal encounter) of two psychotherapeutic approaches used with 39 depressed clients. Analyzed verbal response mode frequencies in 1,630 segments. Exchanges showed distinctive temporal patterns across segments of sessions…

Second grade good readers (N=46) and fourth grade good and poor readers (N=46; N=48) were subjects in a study that examined linguistic cue usage by good and poor readers in a Southern metropolitan area. A secondary purpose was to compare the standard and phoneme cloze procedures with oral miscue analysis. The subjects were identified as good or…

Using current mind/brain research, this paper explores the "hidden curriculum" in the contexts of teaching, learning and supervision. It explains ways in which current research on the nature of learning can fit into today's typical, "clinical" teaching techniques. The importance of respecting individual modes of learning is stressed; further to…

A naturalistic study of two bilingual first grade classrooms was conducted to gain an increased understanding of the cultural literacy instruction beliefs in society and to better understand the process by which literacy instruction beliefs influence the classroom. One Anglo and one Hispanic teacher working in different midwestern school systems…

Neurological data indicate that the universal aptitude for functional language is biologically based, species specific, and developmental. The universality of functional oral speech is indisputable. Everyone, however, does not exhibit similar expertise in processing oral and visual language. Many people can speak two languages functionally but…

The phonological switching processes of 16 bilingual (Spanish-English) adults were observed to provide phonological evidence for the coordinate/compound theory of bilingualism. Each subject was categorized as a coordinate or compound based on responses to a questionnaire. Subjects were recorded reading a mixed list of Spanish and English words.…

The ability of children at different ages to distinguish instructions to "ask" from instructions to "tell" and the types of structures used to express these directives were studied. Subjects were 120 children, aged 2 years 6 months to 6 years 6 months. Children were instructed to either ask or tell an adult or another child to give them puzzle…

A study was undertaken to determine whether young children are aware of sociolinguistic and social interactional differences in language use and of the appropriateness of varied linguistic forms in particular situations, roles and relationship. The speech of 24 children ranging in age from 3 years, 9 months to 7 years, 1 month was recorded in…

The purpose of this research was to develop methods to study the effects of context on children's comprehension and production of temporal terms such as "before,""after,""next,""then," and "but first." A longitudinal study, using naturalistic and traditional laboratory methods, and three…

A pilot experiment aimed at discovering sex-specific language patterns as exhibited by males and females in conversation with same-sex and other-sex partners falsified the hypothesis frequently stated in the literature that males hold the dominant role in mixed-sex verbal interaction, at least in regard to college students. Twelve dyadic…