Chapter III: Oral and Written Language

Abstract

IN THE period since the REVIEW last published its research summary on the language arts, perhaps the most significant development has been the appearance of the first two volumes of the report of the Commission on the English Curriculum of the National Council of Teachers of English. The first of these, The English Language Arts (77), described an over all modern language arts program from kindergarten thru college. The second, Language Arts for Today's Children (78), concerned itself with language arts in the elementary school. Succeeding volumes will deal with the high school, the college, and teacher education. The pub lished reports reveal the areas of agreement that exist among classroom teachers and research workers on the numerous issues involved in the planning of the language arts curriculum.Burrows (11) dealt with the teaching of the language arts in a, recent book on the education of middle-grade children. Burrows and others (12) revised their widely read book on the writing of elementary-school children.Much discussed and debated in the last two years was Fries's new book (38) on the structure of the English sentence which suggests a new approach to the classification of words and the structural patterns of sentences. This book is likely to be more influential among linguists than among textbook makers and teachers, at least in the immediate future. An example of the resistance which his analysis has met is the brochure by Warfel (101).Several recently published volumes are concerned with the study of language. Among these, one of the most useful is that by Carroll (14), who gave a readable and scholarly summary of linguistic, sociological, and psychological studies of language. His volume is an outcome of a report written originally at the request of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. Miller (72) described in detail the verbal behavior of children as part of a broader survey of research in communication. Gans, Stendler, and Almy (39) discussed the language problems of the young child in school. Smith (89, 90) continued her annual annotated lists of selected ref erences on English at the elementary and secondary levels. Carroll's book, already mentioned, supplied extensive bibliographies on many aspects of language and language teaching. Hunt (49) contributed a selected bibliography on communication, and Haugh (42) listed major references on the communication skills to date. McCarthy (64) supplied perhaps the most comprehensive bibliography on language development in children. A bibliography on child language by Leopold (59) included 107