Since 1966 approximately 120,000 children aged 14 years or younger have been admitted to Canada as landed immigrants from non-English speaking countries {Canadian Citizenship Statistics, 1975). A substantial number of children born in Canada of immigrant parents do not know English well, if at all, because the mother tongue of their parents is used extensively in the home (O'Bryan, K., Kuplowski, O., & Reitz, J., 1976). To accommodate these children school boards have initiated and expanded English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) programs in their schools. These programs teach children regular academic subjects in an atmosphere designed to facilitate the transition from their mother tongue to English. During the course of program development for ESL, few attempts have been made to provide video aids for ESL teachers (Sherrington, 1973). However, television has the ability to provide services essential to effective ESL instruction. In order for the meaning of new words to be grasped, many concrete examples of a word must be provided (Titone, 1970). While a teacher may find this difficult, especially for action or abstract words, video aids can provide examples from widely diverse contexts. Video aids can also provide examples of speaking, listening, and writing. Cultural information, a requirement for effective language comprehension (Nostrand, 1966), can be provided incidentally. Television programs could even go beyond the instruction of the basics of language in an ESL setting. Programs such as the Electric Company have been shown to be effective in aiding English speaking students with reading problems (Ball et al., 1974). It is possible that such programs could be used to teach ESL students reading in conjunction with regular ESL instruction. Indeed, Paulston & Bruder (1976) have stated that, because of the substantial transfer of reading skills in one language to reading skills in a new language, reading instruction should begin early in ESL studies. Thus, the present study was designed to experimentally demonstrate that video can be an effective aid for ESL instruction.

Interest in the syntactic development of children's language has attracted the attention of linguists and educators during the last two decades. In his evaluation of this growing interest, Loban (1963) urged that the scientific study of language use new approaches for analysis and measurement. Endicott (1973) has stated that describing language for the purpose of research and curriculum design is essential. Information obtained from language research about the acquisition of syntactic patterns has important implications for curriculum design. The use of this information in the development of curriculum materials may effect change upon the oral language, written composition, and reading comprehension of school children. Among groups of educators most interested in the language processes of children are those involved in the teaching of reading. Researchers have begun to study children's language to determine its relationship to the reading process. Results of this research indicate that much written material is too complex syntactically for the persons for whom it was written (Bormuth, 1969; Granowsky, 1971; Glazer, 1973). Many researchers believe that information concerning the acquisition of syntactic patterns in children's language is critical in the development of reading materials. Research by Strickland (1962), Loban (1963), Hocker (1963),Ruddell (1965), Templin (1966), Robertson (1968), and Tatham (1970) confirms the importance of the relationship between children's familiarity with syntactic patterning and their level of comprehension in reading.

Two groups of college students learned the meanings of 15 unfamiliar words. One group (N=35) learned them through the pairing of word and definition; the second group (N=35) learned them through analysis of each word as it appeared in one-sentence contexts. Two posttests were given both groups. One posttest consisted of one-sentence contexts similar to those seen by the context group. The second test consisted of the definitions seen only during training by the definition group. On the context posttest the group that had seen only contexts did significantly better than the group that had seen the definitions (p < .01). On the definitions-only test there was no difference. The results indicate the conceptual meanings of the words were best acquired through an analysis of contexts. One means of teaching word meanings, or establishing words as concepts, might be to teach word meaning through context. This is an established method and it is safe to say that most specialists in the area would accept Dunn's (1970) position that out of the thousands of words each person knows and uses, relatively few have actually been taught' or learned through consulting a dictionary; context has supplied the rest (p. 440). The purpose of this study was to determine the relative effects of two methods of instruction in teaching the conceptual meaning of 15 unfamiliar words. In one method the controlling stimulus was a sentence with the unfamiliar word deleted. In a second method of instruction the controlling stimulus was the definition of the unfamiliar word. The dependent variables used to measure the effects of exposure to the context or definition condition consisted of controlling stimuli similar to those that were used during those two conditions. The primary objective was to determine how subjects would perform when the controlling stimulus was not the same as it was during the treatment condition. Reprints may be requested from Robert L. Crist, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, 61761.

Of the three segments of the English curriculum, language, literature, and composition, the stepchild seems to be composition. Few English teachers are likely to prefer teaching composition to literature, and composition seems to be most often neglected (Squire and Applebee, 1968) . Of the thirty-six English teachers who participated in the study reported here, only four preferred to teach composition. Since both the teaching and the evaluation of writing are so often frustrating experiences and the results of hours and even years of instruction so often unrewarding when the end product is considered; it is not difficult to sympathize with English teachers' preference for teaching literature instead of composition. At the same time, English teachers have complained of the general lack of research in the area of composition, such insufficiency making their task even more difficult and frustrating because of their need for specific evidence that might corroborate their practices, provide new insights, or give them direction for new or different approaches to the teaching and evaluation of writing. Attempts to measure the effectiveness of instruction in composition or the quality of the writing produced thereby are more often discouraging than rewarding because of the subjective nature of the task, the many variables involved,

Judging student writing is a difficult, time consuming task for both the classroom teacher and the researcher. Criteria of excellence for compositions remain ill-defined. This study is designed to define some easily measurable syntactic and semantic cues within student essays that predict and perhaps determine readers' responses, thereby facilitating the evaluators' task. In searching for the covert, quantifiable written cues that correlate with reader response, we rely on frequency counts to, as Braddock advises in Research in Written Composition, discover certain key situations which are indices of larger areas of (21) . Our larger area of concern consists of defining the basis for, or at least some predictors of, reader response.

ined groups in order to determine general patterns of response. For research as well as for teaching, there is also a need to effect a more minute analysis of one or two individuals. Such has been the technique of some of the psychoanalytic researchers, especially Norman Holland. In this study, the technique of minute analysis is employed to examine the ways in which the perception of reality and fantasy in an individual affects that individual's response to fiction and, poetry. Reviewed by A.C.P. and N.O.

The students in Swedish comprehensive high schools are, in relation to the socially and economically more privileged students, linguistically, academically, and attitudinally handicapped; and Swedish educators have apparently not been a great deal more successful in remediating the handicaps of their environmentally disadvantaged students than have American educators. During the last 25 years Sweden has made a series of school reforms, changing a highly selective educational system into a comprehensive system. The organisational reforms have opened the schools to new and large groups of students, who come from widely different home backgrounds and in that sense represent the whole society. Several countries are now reforming - or are planning to reform - their educational systems in the same direction as Sweden has done. Thus, the Swedish case is not a unique case, and the Swedish data may have implications beyond our own educational system. Some of the problems in the teaching of the mother tongue and literature which we are now facing in Sweden may soon be felt as problems in other countries too. In this paper I shall present some results from a special analysis of the Swedish data which has recently been published (Hansson, 1975) . In discussing the implications of these results I shall mainly pay attention to three aspects of the teaching of mother tongue: 1) What do the results show about the verbal education of the socially and culturally less favoured groups of students who have only recently been given access to higher education? 2) Are there any specific factors in the home background and in school conditions that seem to lead to low reading ability and little interest in reading? 3) Why are the Swedish so negative about the study of literature? The international analysis of the achievement of the best 9, 5 and 1% students has indicated that comprehensive school systems with large proportions of students still in school at the age of 18 do not yield fewer high-achieving students than more selective systems do (Purves, 1973) . In a comprehensive school system the average score of the age group still in school may be lower, but the achievement of the best students in such a system is of equal standard with that of the best students in a more selective system. Thus, the IEA-data do not support the view that school reforms, which open up the schools to

sources over the past several years (Templeton, 1969) . Literacy is no longer a luxury in this country; it is a necessity. Every child deserves a chance to become a skilled, competent reader. Our knowledge of the nature of the reading process and the acquisition of reading has increased noticeably over the past ten to twenty years, largely as a result of government funding of basic research on reading (Levin & Williams, 1970; Kling, 1971; Kavanaugh & Mattingly, 1972). To be sure, no adequate review of this progress is currently available, and the impact of these research findings on classroom practice has been minimal. As recently as this year (1974), a review of the psychology of reading introduces the area of research on reading acquisition: Despite all the current emphasis on literacy, the wealth of 'programs' commercially available, the 'learning specialists' who have set up in shopping centers and the arguments over phonics or whole word methods, it is the beginning phase of learning to read that we seem to know least about. All the talk is of what the teacher does or should do and not of what happens or should happen in the child. This is a very peculiar situation. There is presumably a learning process going on, but it is a rare psychologist who studies it. (Gibson Zc Levin, 1975, p. 264) Large amounts of money continue to be poured into the development and evaluation of competing reading curricula, with outcomes that are disappointing to say the least (Bond & Dykstra, 1967; Corder, 1971) . With few exceptions, these evaluation projects have fallen far short of minimum standards of experimental research in the behavioral sciences (Corder, 1971) . There is little one can learn from bad data. It is not surprising to find, on reanalysis, that the major outcome of the large First Grade Cooperative Reading study was the discovery that children of high IQ were more successful in learning to read than children of low IQ (Lohnes & Gray, 1972) . There have been at least three recent major efforts to synthesize the research

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Despite a large number of studies dealing with the relation of dialect to the teaching of reading, little attention has been given to the relevance of dialect studies to the preparation of materials for teaching spelling.1 It is by now quite generally agreed that the most efficient reading materials are those which allow the child to relate written English to the spoken English he already commands. This implies that the early reading vocabulary should be drawn from the word stock common to all dialects of English (or, according to some theorists, from the child's dialect specifically) , and that the grammar and phonology assumed by the lessons should as fully as possible reflect the language the child knows.2 In general, it is now taken for granted that the best materials for instruction in reading are those which

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1 This article is based on a master's thesis prepared by Miss Auguste under the direction of Mr. Nalven at Queens College, where he is a part-time faculty member. 2 B. Folta, comparison study in the syntax in speech and writing of grade one students using the initial teaching alphabet and students using traditional orthography (USOE Bureau of Research Project No. 7-E-145. Lafayette, Indiana: Lafayette Public Schools. 1968). 3 Lenora Sandel, comparison between oral and written responses of first-grade children in I.T.A. and T.O. classes (USOE Project No. 7-8220. Hempstead, N.Y.: Hofstra University, 1967). 4 A. Mazurkiewicz, A comparison of I.T.A. and T.O. reading, writing, and spelling achievement when methodology is controlled, in The initial teaching alphabet and the world of English, A. J. Mazurkiewicz, ed. (New York: ITA Foundation, 1967), pp. 59-63.

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