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Current discussion of action theory is premised on the fact that many counselors may avoid action approaches because of previous misunderstandings. Article addresses 12 misunderstandings. Overall, action theory is presented as highly suitable for understanding human behavior and for counseling as it is based on a wide spectrum of research as well as using a language close to human experience. (Author)

Using the framework of systematic functional grammar, this study compares two modes of presenting the same scientific topic: in a physics textbook and in interactive teacher talk. Three aspects of scientific meaning making are analyzed: representations of physical and mental reality, lexical packaging, and the rhetorical structure of reasoning. Both the textbook and teacher talk use verbs of action to represent scientific processes but the teacher talk constructs the teacher and students as active participants in these processes, while the textbook constructs the readers as distant observers. The textbook contains more grammatical metaphors, which are frequently left unpacked, whereas in the teacher talk grammatical metaphors are always unpacked. Both the textbook and the teacher talk show similar thematic organization but while this is explicit in the textbook, in the teacher talk it is interactionally constructed. The authors conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for the socialization of students to science discourse through different instructional modes. (Contains 51 references.) (Author/MM)

One of the ways in which language testing interfaces with applied linguistics is in the definition and validation of the constructs that underlie language tests. When language testers and score users interpret scores on a test, they do so by implicit and explicit reference to the construct on which the test is based. Equally, when applied to new understandings of the way people use language, the challenge for language testers is to develop tests that embody these new understandings. This paper puts forward a relatively new theory of spoken language use in face-to-face communication--"interactional competence"--and discusses the implications of the theory for the design and interpretation of tests of oral communication. The theory of interactional competence seeks to explain the variation in an individual speaker's performance from one discursive practice to another. It is concluded that in validly assessing interactional competence, close attention must be paid to exactly what happens during performance assessments so that it is known exactly what configuration of interactional resources apply to the practice of assessment. It is also concluded that such testing provides a principled way of generalizing from performance in the discursive practice of a performance assessment to performance in other non-test contexts. Second language acquisition researchers must pay careful attention to the contexts in which they elicit interlanguage data. (Contains 32 references.) (KFT)

A research program at the University of British Columbia has investigated parents' influence on the career development of their adolescent children, focusing on parents' intentions, the actual activities they engage in, the interpersonal structure in which the activities take place, the ways in which parents and young adults construct the domain of parental influence in career development, young adults' interpretation of parental influence, and the content of actual parent-adolescent conversations about career choice. Research methods included critical incident, Q-sort, narrative, and content analysis, using information from over 500 parents and adolescents. Study findings included the following: (1) parents indicated that they did not want to influence their children's specific occupational choice, though many had an acceptable range of occupations they hoped their children would aspire to; (2) school figured prominently in the critical incidents that parents engaged in with their children; (3) many parents felt that they could lay a suitable groundwork for their children's career development by influencing them broadly to become responsible and capable people; and (4) the constructs employed by parents and adolescents in constructing the domain of parental influence of career development included responsibility, open communication, active involvement of parents, and encouragement of autonomy. Schools can help parents be effective if they address parents' intentional, goal-directed activities. Contains 15 references. (AC)

Discussion of oral communication between native and non-native speakers focuses on proficiency-related differences in interactions where the non-native speaker is experienced and those in which he is a novice. Research in oral proficiency development, discourse domains, and communication strategies is reviewed. It is argued that the ways in which oral proficiency is described in two of the most widely used testing instruments are unsatisfactory because: (1) the guidelines recommended by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) ignore the modularity of linguistic competence; and (2) the ACTFL and University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) rating scales assume a linear monotonic increase in competence in all components of proficiency. It is proposed that oral proficiency is a function of discourse domain as much as of lexical and syntactic knowledge, and that some components of oral proficiency such as communications strategies develop in a highly non-linear fashion, as learners learn to adapt their limited linguistic resources to overcoming the difficulties they face in communication. Therefore, learners who become experts at interacting with native speakers do not simply have more of what novices lack; factors underlying their proficiency are different and interact in different ways. A 42-item bibliography is included. (MSE)

A study of the discourse structure of oral language proficiency interviews focused on (1) one principal discourse variable, topic, for analyzing contingency and goal orientation in dyadic interactions, and (2) contextual factors (interlocutor, theme, task, participant gender). Data came from 30 dyadic oral interviews in English as a Second Language recorded in Brazil and Italy. The interview was part of the First Certificate in English examination of the University of Cambridge (England) Local Examinations Syndicate. Portions of the interview analyzed included three tasks: discussion based on photographs; relation of a printed passage to the photographs; and expression of personal preferences about items in a list of activities related to the interview's theme. The study was principally exploratory and descriptive. Results are discussed in terms of the characteristics of native-speaker/non-native-speaker oral interaction. It was found that the two parties made very different contributions to the discourse, with the examiner exerting a controlling influence and the examinee having a more reactive role. Contextual factors found to affect only candidate discourse included individual differences among examiners, especially gender, and task. Contextual influences on the examiner's goal orientation appeared to include gender and interview theme. The major influence on discourse as a whole was task. (MSE)

The functional hypothesis of language, based on the assumption that the referential function of language is paramount, is discussed as it applies to interlanguage, the second language spoken by less than proficient native speakers of another language. The presentation includes: (1) a review of the evidence of previous empirical investigations of the functional hypothesis in various different forms of language; (2) a description of two studies of English interlanguage in two learner groups with very different first language backgrounds (Chinese and Czechoslovak) that show how little functional constraints affect the form of interlanguage; and (3) a discussion of the consequences for learners if interlanguage is indeed a highly inefficient means of communicating referential information, and the options available to learners and interlocutors to repair misunderstandings. It is concluded that interlanguage is a poor vehicle for the communication of representational information, and that this weakness is not peculiar to any one group of learners. Rather it is a feature of all interlanguage, including dialects, languages of wider communication, and pidgins and creoles. This referential function tends to require a significant amount of repair through interaction if information is not to be lost altogether. Study data are appended. (MSE)