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This is an interpretive summary of information from a multiple case study of 11 school districts in California, Arizona, and Nevada conducted in the spring and fall of 1992 as part of a larger set of strategies to work on solutions to the challenges facing schools in metropolitan areas of the Pacific Southwest. Rather than presenting a set of empirical findings, this paper constructs a hypothetical district as a composite ideal, the "high-performance district." The high-performance district has a distinctive pattern of organization attributed to: (1) the school board, the superintendent and other administration, (2) the structure of authority and incentives, and (3) school programs and support facilities. Its programs are the logical outcomes of its history, and characteristically include innovation, a multicultural focus, high standards, and flexible organizational designs. The teachers are regraded as competent, treated as professionals, and provided with inservice educational programs. Community relations are characterized by respect for the cultural integrity of diverse households and opportunities for parent and family involvement. Four tables and three figures present information from the case studies. (Contains 12 references.) (SLD)

This document presents the final report on the evaluation of California's model student assistance program (SAP) demonstration projects implemented in five locations across the state from July 1989 through June 1992. The report provides an overall, integrated review of the evaluation of the SAP demonstration projects, summarizes important findings from previous evaluation phases, reports evaluation activities for the project's third year, and addresses four questions: (1) how successfully did the SAPs develop their administrative structures and organization? (2) who were the students who participated in the SAPs? (3) how effectively did the SAPs deliver services to students? and (4) did the SAPs have a positive impact on participating students? Section 1 of the report provides an introduction to the SAP project. Section 2 presents a review of the political and organizational development of the demonstration projects. Section 3 provides a summary of the 1990-91 process evaluation. Section 4 details the third-year evaluation effort which was dedicated to the evaluation of the impact on students of the SAP demonstration projects. Key issues include the development of the evaluation methodology, the analysis of data, and the interpretation of results. Section 5 includes an integration of all 3 years of evaluation findings, providing some of the insights and recommendations regarding the demonstration projects and the functioning of SAPs. (NB)

The Metropolitan Educational Trends and Research Outcomes Center conducts Improving Programs of Schools Serving Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Student Populations, a survey to identify programs that have successfully addressed the needs of ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse students. This report presents a cross-sites analysis of critical program elements at eight sites (six in California, one in Massachusetts, and one in Arizona) to demonstrate effective ways of helping students develop English proficiency, including instructional practices, curriculum development, and program implementation. The sites studied were chosen because their documentation and support data allowed analysis of critical elements. Across the sites, teachers shared a positive vision of children and believed that all children can learn. In the area of language acquisition, teachers emphasized natural language learning prior to form. A general theoretical orientation indicated that children learn best by doing, experiencing, and practicing. Across the sites, holistic rather than discrete skills instruction was practiced. An in-depth analysis of a staff development program at one of the sites is included as an example of the pedagogy, practices, and theories present across the sites. Contains 22 references. (SLD)

A magnet school has four essential ingredients: a distinctive curriculum; a unique district purpose for voluntary desegregation; an opportunity for school choice; and access to students beyond a district attendance zone. Most magnet schools have one of five types of curricular themes: the fine, applied, or performing arts; the sciences; social studies occupations; general academics; and traditional and fundamental schools. In a 1983 study of 45 magnet schools, 2 out of 3 had enrollments that were racially and ethnically representative of their districts, while the third provided a substantial mix of students by minority subgroups. A 1990 study showed that only one-fifth of magnets practiced selectivity in their admission of students on criteria other than race or ethnicity. Reading achievement data gathered on 32 of the magnets in the 1983 study showed that 26 magnets equaled or exceeded the mean scores for their districts. Well-developed and locally supported magnets can accomplish policy aims that include contributing to a district's attainment of full racial and ethnic equity. If practitioners seek to start up or improve upon magnets in their districts, their considerations should include whether or not district decision makers are committed to quality desegregated education. Notes on studies selected for use in this report are provided. (10 references) (EJS)

Destructive and criminal hate crime takes place more and more often among students in elementary and secondary schools. This sourcebook introduces school district personnel and collaborative agencies to programs and resources that might help curtail hate crime and reduce the bigotry that inspires it. Part 1 of this two-part sourcebook provides information, and Part 2 supplies usable resource materials. First, hate crime is defined to provide a clear set of criteria for determining whether particular behaviors fit this concept. Then, seven characteristics distinguishing hate crime from other crime against persons and property are enumerated, explained, and illustrated with examples. The next section chronicles the urgency and scope of the situation and shows that youth hate crime now outpaces adult hate crime. The following section discusses and debunks common misperceptions about hate crime. Next, sources of bigotry leading to hate crime are identified. This section focuses on the three causes of hate crime that can best be addressed through school-based strategies to reduce bigotry and eliminate hate crime. This includes a discussion of hate crime inspired by the Persian Gulf War. The final section in Part 1 explains why schools have a central role in resolving hate crime, particularly in view of the number of school-age participants. Part 2 describes hate crime policies, programs, and practices for use by schools and central district offices in curtailing hate crime, including a definitional checklist, school survey, curriculum sources, list of resource organizations, and references (63 items). (LLL)

This monograph introduces a conference addressing the educational issues of the edge cities of the urban Pacific Southwest. Edge cities on the outside of urban cores (edge cities) are currently facing many of the problems formerly experienced only in urban areas. Of the 30 fastest-growing cities of over 100,000 residents in the country, 19 are edge cities in Arizona, California, and Nevada where educationally disadvantaged students (EDSs) now constitute a significant percentage of the total number of children in school. Demographic data on EDSs, family composition, poverty status, language background, mother's education, and race/ethnicity are provided for Arizona, California, and Nevada. The combination of total population growth and the great increase in the number of EDSs to be served, including those of limited proficiency in English, challenges the edge cities. Changes in family structure also affect these cities. The effects of the changes on economic productivity and political participation and community and business responses are discussed. Data on how well schools in these areas are meeting the challenges indicate that the schools are least successful with non-Anglo, poor children. The SWRL is focusing on students in the edge cities through METRO, which hopes to develop an agenda that will assist edge cities in meeting the needs of the EDSs they serve. A 66-item list of references is included. (SLD)

The approach to computer-based instruction for third and fourth grade elementary students which is sketched teaches component placement, capitalization, and punctuation skills of addressing envelopes within the context of a simulated envelope. Part of a larger design for a complete program of composition instruction, this program comprises a set of materials for use on a microcomputer which can be used as a discrete unit of instruction. The skills taught are identified, i.e., placing the address and return address in the correct space on an envelope; capitalizing persons' names; capitalizing personal titles; capitalizing the names of streets, cities, and states; and using a comma to separate city and state. Then, the orientation procedures students undertake after they have loaded the program disk are discussed, the mainline instruction and practice is outlined, and the corresponding branching that occurs in response to students' performance on the tasks is described. The reporting system that provides information for teachers on the progress of all students using the program is also explained. (Author/LMM)

This description of an interactive instructional computer program in sentence combining for upper elementary and middle school students begins by summarizing the content of the program, which focuses on the instructional technique in which students are given two or more short simple sentences to combine into one longer, complex and/or compound sentence. An outline of the four lessons presented by the program--coordinate predicates, coordinate adverbs and predicate adjectives, coordinate direct objects and predicate nominatives, and three kernel sentences containing the syntactic structures presented in the first three parts--is followed by a description of the structure of the individual lessons, including branching that occurs in response to student answers and the procedures that terminate the program. A discussion of some of the problems involved in developing highly interactive instruction for teaching composition on a microcomputer, and a list of nine references conclude the paper. (LMM)

The first volume of a three-volume study on the relationship between writing research and instruction, this report is divided into three sections covering discussions among researchers, practitioners, and instructional experts; studies of writing research; and instructional applications. The first section describes a series of five research/practice conferences on the following topics: (1) the major areas of writing research, (2) the relationship between language and writing among nonstandard English speakers, (3) communicating writing research to interested audiences, (4) computers in composition instruction, and (5) writing as a job skill. The second section presents an annotated bibliography of literature studies, summaries of research on the composing process and on research methodology, and a paper on applying writing research. The final section describes two instructional components: a filmstrip on helping students improve the quantity and quality of their writing and two prototype composition units suitable for use at the beginning of the third grade. (MM)

The last of three volumes studying the relationship between writing research and instruction, this four-part report focuses on writing assessment. The first section details specifications for an instrument assessing student writing samples and the following composition skills: word processing, sentence processing, paragraph development, organizational skill, use of dictionary and reference sources, spelling, and writing mechanics. It also reports on the administration of such an assessment instrument to students from grades 1 to 6 in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The second section discusses specifications for competency based assessment of the following language arts skills: (1) listening, (2) grammar usage, (3) sentence structure, (4) capitalization and punctuation, (5) language expression, (6) spelling, (7) literature, and (8) study skills, media literacy, and nonverbal communication. The third section briefly describes the reading, mathematics, and language proficiency surveys and review exercises administered to entering high school students in the Sacramento City Unified School District, and the final section presents an annotated bibliography of assessment reports. (MM)

A large segment of poor readers in elementary school do not supply prosodic features to print; in other words, they do not use pauses, changes in pitch, or differences in emphasis to show their comprehension. Two methods that help children to supply reading intonation involve using phrasally segmented texts and teacher modeling of the correct intonation. In the first of two experiments with fifth grade students, children were asked to divide a story into phrasal units under three conditions: while listening to a normally intoned tape recording of a story, while listening to a highly intoned rendition, and while reading the text without any audio aids. Results showed that the more audio help the children were given, the more they were able to parse the lines correctly. In the second experiment, two groups of low ability fifth grade readers were given training in reading phrasally segmented texts. One of the groups was also exposed to teacher modeling of text. Tape recordings of student reading before and after training revealed increased sensitivity to phrasing, especially among students who had had teacher modeling. (Practice sentences for marking pauses and an example of phrasally segmented text are appended.) (MM)

The English spelling system and the teaching of English spelling are discussed in relation to students who are learning English as a second (or foreign) language. The systematic nature of English spelling is described and a brief summary is presented of sound-to-spelling correspondences and of other spelling rules. Specific difficulties which may cause problems for the learner of English are discussed, and teaching strategies are suggested; some sample spelling lessons are appended to the paper. (Author)

General features of local and national programs for assessing achievements referencing the common instruction are discussed within a single mastery achievement testing framework. The envisioned programs differ only in informative detail. Most such differences are viewed as amenable to formalization and the basis for distinguishing between local instructional management requirements and state and national stocktaking requirements for information on scholastic achievements is illustrated for selected knowledges and skills. The implications of the envisioned achievement testing programs for local, state, and national determinations of educational productivity are noted. It is contended that the earliest apt educational productivity estimates must be based on aggregate direct costs of education as inputs--perhaps with a "catch-up" cost portion removed by general agreement--and short-term absolute scholastic achievement effects as outputs. (Author) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt with in this document: Program Description.

Three studies of the relationship of Black English (BE) pronunciation to spelling performance are reported in this document. The first study explored a large number of BE pronunciation features. The second included control features that do not have differing pronunciations in BE and standard English (SE). The third examined final consonant clusters only. The studies indicate that differences exist in the degree to which various features of BE pronunciation are associated with BE-related spelling errors. Moreover, feature difficulty in terms of BE-related errors is not what might be expected on the basis of speech data. BE-related errors are more frequently made on grammatical than on nongrammatical features, and SE speakers make many of the same BE-related errors that BE speakers make, but less frequently. Appendixes containing materials and tables related to the three studies are included. (Author/JM)

The Southwest Regional Laboratory for Educational Research and Development (SWRL) is dedicated to the belief that individual differences among students do not stand in the way of universal quality instructional achievement in the nation's schools. Important steps towards the condition of universal instructionalized achievement are: (1) the explication of instructional proficiencies; (2) the frequent assessment of instructional proficiencies; and (3) the widespread sharing of the findings of proficiency assessment. SWRL believes that the development of the means to provide the availability of proficency assessment information is currently possible although as of yet a base of such information does not exist. Through research and development, formulated here as Achievement Monitoring in Schools (AIMS), SWRL has designed a program of instructionalized achievement monitoring that is cost-beneficial and time-and-resource feasible. AIMS can be justified through study of the following issues: (1) the issue of educational equity and the bases for insuring equitable education; (2) the issue concerning conservation of a teacher's instructional resources when sufficiently frequent proficiency occurs in a classroom equipped to accommodate AIMS; and (3) the issue of cost-attractive hardware and hardware-referenced inputs and outputs that are consonant with the objectives of achievement monitoring. The greatest obstacle to effective and equitable education are the absence of a comprehensive proficiency framework against which instructional status and progress can be assessed, and the absence of a system insuring that pertinent data be collected, retained, and shared. The AIMS program was conceived to provide this framework and data bank. (MM)

Effective instruction on a national scale is dependent on supplying competent teachers with comprehensive instructional materials and procedures that meet some kind of minimum criteria for accountability. Considerations included in a complete instructional system are: (1) outcomes; (2) assessment; (3) user experience data; (4) materials; (5) training; (6) reporting; (7) time and costs. The program must specify outcomes stating what the learners will be able to do as a result of instruction. When the outcomes are clearly stated, educators can validly assess whether a program is potentially worthwhile and appropriate for a particular population of students. Measures should be included that frequently assess pupil progress, and assessment materials should be directly keyed to a clearly defined set of outcomes. Empirical data regarding the development of an instructional program must not be overlooked. Data must be presented to indicate that outcomes have been consistently attained during previous use of the program in a wide range of situations and that learners and teachers have expressed satisfaction with the system. Included must be instructional and supplemental materials and activities that are keyed directly to the expected program outcomes and assessment materials. Materials for training teachers and other school personnel and for monitoring program performance are necessary. Time and cost effectiveness are the final considerations. (DMT)

The instructional leadership model presented here consists of three types of sequential processes: (1) Agreeing on achievement outcomes and standards. Once the teacher and administrator have agreed on what outcomes to teach, they can then agree on some indicators as to how well and at what rate students attain these outcomes. (2) Sharing achievement information. The teacher and administrator establish a simple, convenient information channel whereby the administrator is kept informed of student accomplishments as assessment occurs. (3) Working to improve instruction in light of identified learning deficiencies. The beginning reading program tested here is consistent with the instructional leadership model discussed in that it set achievement indicators, established an information base, and modified instruction to improve achievement. The findings suggest that the instructional supervision model presented can substantially improve pupil achievement in an outcome-based, classroom-verified instructional program. (Author/IRT)

The working papers that document the planning, construction, equipping, and operation of a laboratory facility dedicated to educational research and development (R&D) are organized into three volumes. Volume I sets forth the technical substance of the 12 working papers. This volume, Volume III, contains the technical attachments for Working Papers 6-12 stated in Volume I. There are 73 technical attachments in this volume. Some of the nine attachments for Working Paper 6 include an analysis of aspects of audit contrary to GAO standards, a summary of analyses of auditors' draft report, and an "acceptable" audit report. Working Paper 7 has 10 attachments. Some of them include the contracting officer's preliminary findings, the final decision of contracting officer, and HEW Grant Appeals Board Rules. The three attachments for Working Paper 8 are the proposal from the moving company, the housing questionnaire, and the guidelines for reimbursement of moving expenses. The single attachment for Working Paper 10 is the bidding documents for custodial and maintenance services. Three of the fifteen attachments for Working Paper 12 are functional specifications for components of an R&D equipment system, a budget summary for R&D equipment, and the contract for procurement of an R&D equipment system. (SK)

This volume contains working papers that document the planning, constructing, equipping, and operating of a laboratory facility dedicated to educational research and development (R&D). There are three volumes in the complete set. Volume 1 contains the technical substance of activity and sets forth the technical substance of the twelve working papers. Working Paper 1 describes the process followed by the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) for R&D in planning the new facility and the planning principles that were developed. The process followed in obtaining approval of the grant application is discussed in Working Paper 2. Working Paper 3 sets forth the procedures followed in selecting the contractors and establishing their fees, while Working Paper 4 reports SWRL's experience in applying the principles of construction management and fast tracking. The process used by the construction manager in estimating costs in establishing a construction budget is treated in Working Paper 5. Working Papers 6 and 7 indicate the nature of documentation that should be prepared by the grantee of an experimental construction project to insure a fair and accurate compliance to federal audit. SWRL's documented experience in consolidating and moving its operations to the new facility is contained in Working Paper 8, while the planning and activities for the building dedication ceremonies are described in Working Paper 9. Working Paper 10 describes the operations studies in the area of custodial and grounds maintenance services. The results of an operational study are included in Working Paper 11. Working Paper 12 discusses certain aspects of the R&D equipment and systems acquired under the grant. (SK)

The results of recent studies are presented which show that traditional auditory discrimination tests for children which require the examinee to distinguish one speech sound from another are ill-conceived and consequently of little practical value. Linguistic variables requiring attention in designing useful speech sound discrimination instruments are discussed. (Author)

Traditional tests of auditory discrimination require children to match successively-presented syllables in short term memory. In the normal course of events perceptual confusions occur as a mismatch between an utterance and stored linguistic data. A speech sound perception task based on matching-to-memory was constructed and administered to 80 children from four age groups. Results show that traditional tests underestimate normal children's perceptual control over phonological oppositions. The data also reveal a novel dimension of perceptual confusion data related to marked and unmarked feature categories. (Author)

Five papers summarize the development of the Elementary Communication Skills Programs in reading, composition, spelling, and expressive language, as well as the training system designed to accompany each program. These programs are intended for use in kindergarten through grade 4. Product development, field tryouts, revisions, and results for the period 1966-1974 are presented chronologically for each of the programs. (AA)

The application of conventional psychometric procedures to instructional product development is outlined. Selected non-psychometric requirements of developing and delivering effective instruction are described and the consequent implications for psychometric procedures set forth. Present instructional development technology is circumscribed in terms of state-of-the-art capability. (Author)

Instructional materials and procedures to be used by Spanish-speaking children learning English call for assessment strategies not normally employed. Assessment scores aid in the selection of students, in student placement, in identifying children in need of remediation, and in assessing student performance at the end of the program. Assessment scores, along with attendance records, are useful in evaluating program effectiveness and in conducting followup studies which evaluate student progress beyond the program. Assessment strategies and procedures are described which have been incorporated into SWRL's English Language and Concepts Program for Spanish-Speaking Children (LCS), a program proven to be robust at a high level of effectiveness. (Author)

A computer-assisted analysis was conducted of the punctuation skills taught in nine series of language arts textbooks. Each text was subjected to a detailed, page-by-page analysis of instructional content, resulting in a content-specific analysis of punctuation instruction at each grade level. The results indicated significant differences among the texts in the treatment of punctuation skills. Some texts, especially those stressing the primacy of oral language, gave the subject minimal attention. Those that gave greater emphasis to written composition tended to include a correspondingly larger number of exercises. Differences among texts also extended to the grade levels at which specific skills were introduced. The introduction of quotation marks, for example, began in five different series at five different grade levels. Seven other punctuation skills spanned four grades in level of introduction. Of the 34 different skills noted in the analysis, only six were taught in all nine textbook series. Seven of the nine series expanded punctuation instruction dramatically in the third grade. Another significant jump occurred in fourth grade, but it was difficult to locate commonalities among the texts beyond the fourth grade. In summary, it was difficult to detect a systematic pattern of instruction reflecting an expert body of opinion. (RL)

Although the design of the writing task itself may present assessment problems, the scoring of the piece of writing raises the greatest difficulties for large-scale testing of writing ability. A study investigated whether teachers and staff members of the Southwest Regional Laboratory (SWRL) (1) scored the same way, (2) agreed with each other in scoring, and (3) agreed with themselves when rescoring the same writing sample. Writing samples from 263 third grade and 248 sixth grade students were obtained from the 1980 composition section of the Survey of Essential Skills administered by the Los Angeles Unified School District. Samples were evaluated by the SWRL-developed methods. Results indicated that teachers and SWRL scorers highly agreed on their ratings. Even greater agreement was found among SWRL scorers alone, and when the SWRL scorers rescored writing samples, they were highly consistent in their scoring. (HOD)

A computer-assisted analysis was conducted of the capitalization skills taught in nine series of language arts textbooks. The results indicated that while textbook authors generally agreed on the inclusion of certain basic capitalization skills, significant differences existed with regard to introductory levels, grade-level sequencing, the amount of practice provided, and the number of specific skills taught. The fact that such widespread differences exist suggests that classroom teachers and language arts supervisors should examine their adopted texts carefully to determine the nature and extent of instruction that such texts provide, and the amount of supplemental instructional methods and materials in capitalization skills they need to develop. (RL)

Discussed and compared are mathematics competencies as prescribed in grades 1-6 for seven state and local school districts utilizing the descriptive method characteristic of the Competency Based Education (CBE) movement. General comments on the historical background of the minimum competency trend and its distinguishing characteristics in various states and local school districts are also included. (Author/MP)

This report describes a program that uses annotations in the teacher's editions of existing reading programs to indicate the characteristics of black English that may interfere with the reading process of black children. The first part of the report provides a rationale for the annotation approach, explaining that the discrepancy between written words and the way a black child reads them does not necessarily mean that the child does not understand what he or she reads. The second part describes the annotation approach and outlines many of the consistent characteristics of black spoken English to which the annotations can alert the reading teacher. The third section explains the procedures and criteria used in annotating the teacher's editions of the Ginn 720 and the Houghton-Mifflin reading programs. (HTH)

This paper reviews how various nonstandard dialects of English may influence written products and how writing may be taught to speakers of such dialects. Sections of the literature review focus on the speech patterns of black English, of other English dialects, and of other languages, and on how these patterns manifest themselves in written English. Other sections of the paper discuss comparisons of common error patterns across dialects, the arguments for and against students' right to their own language (the bidialectic approach), and suggestions for teaching English to students who do not speak standard English. The approaches to writing instruction that are suggested include (1) ignoring dialect influences and focusing instead on the writing process, on the rhetorical situation, and on the goals of writing; (2) including instruction on dialects in the composition curriculum, noting their appropriate use in certain kinds of writing, such as personal letters; (3) advocating the use of English-as-a-second-language techniques to help remove dialect influences on writing; and (4) combining the approaches in an eclectic manner that reflects the variety of students and their linguistic differences. (RL)

A study investigated the extent to which oral language forms influence the written products of Mexican-American students attending an inner city school in a low income neighborhood. For the study, writing samples from 78 third grade and 92 sixth grade students were analyzed for Spanish, interlanguage, and Chicano English features. (Interlanguage forms, produced by learners of English from a variety of language backgrounds, occur as English is being learned.) In the writing samples of the third grade students, 773 errors were identified; of these, 33% were considered to have possible influences from Spanish, interlanguage, or Chicano English. In the writing samples of the sixth grade students, 677 errors were identified; of these, 36% were considered to have possible oral language influences. (Prompts for the writing samples and lists of errors are appended.) (FL)

A study investigated errors in the writing of black students to determine how those errors were influenced by black oral English. Writing samples were gathered from 99 third grade and 68 sixth grade students in a school in an inner city, low income neighborhood. All errors in the samples were listed and analyzed. In the samples produced by the third grade students, 550 errors were identified; of these, 39% were considered to have possible influences from black English. In the samples produced by the sixth grade students, 437 errors were identified; of these, 33% were considered to have possible influences from black English. (Copies of the stimulus for the writing samples and lists of errors are appended.) (FL)

Punctuation and capitalization are basic, surface features of written communication. However, it was not until the nineteenth century that authorities recognized that punctuation marks should be primarily an integral part of the sentence pattern, not an indicator of pauses. Throughout the literature on punctuation two major purposes recur--to bring together and to separate. More recently, five major purposes for punctuation have been identified: to terminate and separate, to combine and separate, to introduce, to enclose, and to indicate omission. Generally, the rules for punctuation and capitalization are relatively standardized. Because of the large number of rules, however, errors can be expected--even among good writers. For most writers, the smaller set of rules that they know may be sufficient for adequate written communication. Nevertheless, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, and the punctuation of relative clauses are three problems that occur frequently. A review of the literature reveals that very little research has been conducted in the teaching of mechanics. Generally, introduction to mechanics begins with instruction in the rules, followed by mispunctuated or unpunctuated sentences that illustrate the need for appropriate punctuation. Whereas many people suggest teaching mechanics functionally--when students need it--they rarely have any suggestions about how to do this. (HOD)

Noting that the lack of prosodic information in printed text may be a source of difficulty for children who are learning to read, this paper explores the features of language underlying the acoustic and perceptual segmentation of sentences into meaningful units. Using evidence from studies in speech production and perception, the paper addresses two issues: (1) What principles of sentence organization should guide the physical segmentation of text as an aid for poor readers? and (2) What intrasentence units, if made explicit, would best facilitate children's induction of effective reading comprehension strategies? Throughout this inquiry, two types of sentence organization are discussed--syntactic organization, and information processing organization. The first part of the paper examines the nature of speech units by looking at sentence perception, and describes some assumptions of comprehension processes that serve as a conceptual framework for later discussion of several psycholinguistic approaches to the study of immediate processing units in speech perception. The second part considers studies of speech production and describes the prosodic features of spoken sentences and their complex relationship to syntactic organization and information "packaging." (HOD)

A study identified the homophones most commonly used in children's writing and showed how the relative use of specific homophones changes as writing skill develops. Homophones appearing in Rinsland's "A Basic Vocabulary of Elementary School Children," a vocabulary list compiled from a national sample of children's writing in grades 2 through 8, were identified by cross-matching with two extensive homophone lists. This procedure resulted in 217 homophone units consisting of 451 words. A tabulation of the grade-level frequency of each homophone was made, resulting in 49 "common" homophones--those occurring 10 or more times at 5 different grade levels. The remaining homophones were then placed in rank order. Since students in the higher grade levels provided more running words for the Rinsland study than did those in lower grades, the resulting composite was somewhat biased in the direction of older writers, but indicated that certain homophones were dominant at every grade level. Two homophone units--"there/their" and "to/two/too"--exhibit the greatest utility at every grade level. An important implication of these findings is that many homophone units generally considered the province of primary grade instruction should be reviewed and practiced throughout elementary school spelling instruction. (HTH)