Showing papers on "Written language published in 1973"

Development and Disorders of Written Language

Abstract: Volume 1 under this title, published in 1965, was concerned mainly with the development of a "Picture Story Language Test." The present volume includes further analyses of the results for normal children and comparative findings for exceptional children: those with reading disability, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbance, speech handicaps, and learning disability. Specific disability in acquiring facility with spoken, read, and written words has been recognized as a syndrome in children since the end of the last century, although speech disorders were recognized long before that time. Difficulties in all three fields frequently occur in varying degrees in the same child. Speech disorders are obvious and reading disability is being recognized more and more, but writing disability has been neglected, probably because it is not so obviously handicapping. Samuel T. Orton, in his classic book, Reading, Writing and Speech Problems in Children , published in 1937, called attention to the

Language Disorder, Convulsive and Electroencephalographic: Acquired Syndrome in Children

Abstract: A progressive loss of comprehension and production of language occurred in three patients over a period of weeks to months, then plateaued into a stable, prolonged aphasia. The language disorder was associated with seizures which either preceded or shortly followed the onset of language loss. The seizures responded easily to anticonvulsants. Recovery from aphasia was incomplete, but comprehension of written language preceded comprehension of oral language. It is postulated that the pathophysiologic process involves bilateral temporal lobes, and that the origin is either a slowly evolving focal encephalitis or is related, in some unknown way, to convulsive disorder.

Reading and the Audio-Lingual Method.

Abstract: The audio-lingual approach, while valid for developing oral fluency, has been over-applied to the detriment of developing fluency in reading Yet as a tool for learning, reading is often more important to students than understanding the spoken language Attempts to design adequate reading programs for advanced students in ESL classes should take into account recent findings in reading research, and current attention to the characteristics of written vs spoken English is necessary, as is an awareness of culture and semantic pitfalls for the non-native reader

Adapting TESL Approaches to the Teaching of Written Standard English as a Second Dialect to Speakers of American Black English Vernacular.

Abstract: A realistic behaviorial objective for students enrolled in an English as a second dialect course is a kind of functional productive competence. This competence consists of the ability to discriminate Black English Vernacular features and instances of cross-dialectal interferences in their writing, and the ability to translate these into their appropriate Standard English equivalents. Adapting TESL approaches-especially Contrastive Analysis, and employing TESL techniques such as acting out dialogues in both BEV and student-rendered Standard English, "disguised" controlled composition, and "disguised" pattern drills-the Brooklyn College program draws extensively on the students' own cultural tradition. A sample curriculum unit exemplifies the approach developed by the Language Curriculum Research Group.

The Influence of Writing-System Characteristics on Learning to Read.

Abstract: THIS PAPER SUMMARIZES the work of those seeking to analyze orthography and the experimental, historical, and cross-national data which bear on the behavioral effects of writing system characteristics. English writing is shown to involve a blend, thought to be optimal, of two levels of representation. One level is soundrelated (phonographic representation) and forms the basis of word-attack skill. Another, deeper level of representation is meaning-related (orthographic representation) and is the basis for greater reading speed. The behavioral effects of writing system characteristics vary across levels of reading experience and are explained in terms of a two-stage associative model. Reading is viewed as involving mediation processes which depend, in part, on reading experience. Hence, the effects of increased reading experience involve not only changes in the functional stimuli for reading as Gibson has proposed but also changes in the nature of the responses to those stimuli.

Written language and the sense of audience

Abstract: This theoretical discussion and model are early fruits of the Schools Council Writing Research Project, which has studied the development of writing ability in the age group 11 to 18. The major results are yet to be published. The model presented below, which seeks to distinguish various types of audience‐orientation in pupils when they are engaged on a piece of written work, and another model which sets out function categories (Britton, 1971), are of interest in themselves. Apart from the use which other researchers may wish to make of them, teachers will find here a proposed new way of understanding their pupils’ written work, and of how writing tasks in school are influenced by the sense of audience. The theory lying behind this model, which occupies the first part of the article, has wide implications for all forms of written communication.

Non Standard English Usage in the Writing of Black, White, and Hispanic Remedial English Students in an Urban Community College.

Abstract: Community College instructors tend to assume that errors made in the writing of blacks and whites differ in type and frequency. Thus, in many remedial programs in schools with large Black populations, the instructional strategy focuses on "correcting" non-standard vocabulary and grammatical constructions thought unique to the Black dialect. The same is true in the instruction of other minority groups including nonnative speakers of English. However, it seems that there are great differences in usage within those communities just as there are differences within the white community.

The Russian Literary Language: A Comparative View

Abstract: The first written language the Russians learned was not their vernacular, but the so-called Old Church Slavonic, brought to them as a Church language when they were Christianized, at the very end of the tenth century. At the origin, this Old Church Slavonic was an obscure Macedonian dialect, of Bulgarian type, spoken by Slavonic peasants and shepherds on the outskirts of a great Greek city, Salonica. It had, however, the unexpected luck of being known and spoken by two Greeks, natives of Salonica, two brothers, one a learned theologian and a linguist, another a monk and a former high administrator of the Byzantine Empire. Later the two brothers were canonized and are now known as Saints Cyril and Methodius. With the help of their native Greek, they succeeded in elevating the Macedonian vernacular of Salonica to the dignity of the first Slavonic written language, even more than that to the status of a fully-fledged liturgical language. The birth certificate of this language bears the date of 863. Phonetically and morphologically it was purely Slavonic, but in its syntax, principles of word-formation, and vocabulary, it was strongly influenced by Byzantine Greek. This Old Church Slavonic was imported to Kiev and Novgorod, as the language of the Church, at the end of the tenth century. At that time the non-divided Common Slavonic language, which still existed in the middle of the first millennium A.D., had already been split into individual Slavonic languages, but the young scions were still so close one to another that Old Church Slavonic could be accepted and understood without any difficulty by the Eastern, as well as by the Southern and the Western Slavs. Everywhere it was welcomed as a form of the local vernacular, but of a higher, and sacred, nature. Nowhere was the need felt to translate it into the vernacular. It was but natural that in the Middle Ages the language of the Church should become the language of theology, of philosophy, of science, and of literature (almost exclusively religious), briefly a 'literary language' in the broad sense of the word. And Old Church Slavonic became all that in ancient Russia, as well as in

A measure of code elaboration for written language.

Abstract: A multidemensional measure of code elaboration for written sentences is proposed and applied in a research setting. The rationale for such a measure is presented from Bernstein's conception of code elaboration and from the various techniques or grammatical viewpoints which serve as a basis for a large body of research on code elaboration. The methodological grounds for construing written sentences as sufficiently similar to spoken language for the construction of a meaningful index of elaboration for written sentences are developed. The approach involves an adaptation of immediate constituent analysis. A description of the index formation for aspects of elaboration is provided, and the interrelationship among the indicators is presented. The measurement strategy developed may be applicable in the reanalysis and utilization of all forms of written sentences from sociological research whenever the methodological stipulations outlined can be met.

Phoenician Go Home? (A Response to Goodman)

Abstract: Why "Teaching reading by use of a syllabary" occasions so polemical and intemperate a response is one of many mysteries we cannot solve. After all we didn't invent the alphabet. Dr. Goodman appears to believe that the alphabet was a dreadful historical mistake. He suggests that children can most effectively learn to read by "treating each English word as if it were an ideograph for the meaning" and that literate adults bypass phonology since "deep structure and meaning are directly accessible from the written language." Our position is that the alphabet was a useful invention because the phonological principles it embodies are central to the learner and are employed in significant ways by the fluent reader. It would seem perverse for the speaker-listener to learn an entirely new system of relations (among written words and meanings) when the alphabet will allow him to build upon a system he already knows (the relations among spoken words and meanings). Dr. Goodman questions our work both on logical and empirical grounds. We turn first to his claim that our original discussion employs faulty logic. According to Dr. Goodman, since one moves from grapheme to meaning through oral language ("G O M"), one can do so as well without oral language ("G M"). Similarly, one might argue Egg -* Tadpole -Frog, hence forget about the tadpole and straight to the frog. Or, applying this "logic" to Dr. Goodman's formulation of reading, one might schematize the facts as Written language Visual detection -> Meaning, hence Written language -> Meaning, from which it follows that one should be able to read with one's eyes closed. Dr. Goodman questions the efficacy of phonological principles for reading in the following ways (our answers appear parenthetically ) : 1] Isn't the purpose of reading to extract meaning from print? (Yes.) 2] Isn't learning to read just like learning to talk? (No.)

2. Shadow and substance of specific language disability: A longitudinal study

Abstract: Throughout the years there have been uncounted numbers of students such as those described in the following pages Bizarre though their stories may seem, similar situations are being experienced frequently around the country today The drama, the hopes and frustrations, the struggle not only to overcome but to survive in a society where it is assumed that one has com mand of our written language, are being repeated over and over These people (young and old) have specific language disabilities—— "dyslexia" Specific language disability has run a gamut of labels No matter what we call it, this is a specific problem It affects any area of language (speech, reading, spelling, and/or writing) and sets the person with normal hearing and vision and average intelligence apart from his peers in dealing with our language Although there is a tendency to sugar-coat the word "dis ability" and call it an "inability," the fact is that these people are disabled as surely as if they had lost any of their faculties

Semantics: An Aid to Comprehension.

Abstract: Visiting professor of reading instruction at Phoenix Community College, Ben Goldfield has taught on a number of Arizona campuses. Interested in the effect of language on thought and behavior, he also ivrites poetry. B Some semanticists contend that "cooperation makes human society possible" and that this partnership be ween people depends greatly on linguistic agreements. How can we work together if we think we understand each other when, in truth, we do not?