Some priorities in psycholinguistics research

Abstract

The paper attempts to identify some research areas for consideration by scholars in the region. A pre-research component is suggested - that of setting up data files of studies done in the region on language, psychology, and related fields, in English and in the national languages, along the ERIC system and akin to the project Literature Search in Reading. The areas of developmental linguistics (speech and language acquisition) and differential linguistics (speech and language differences) are suggested as priorities, The paper cites research that has been done on the cloze procedure, readability, bilingual processing, and writing patterns as they relate to decoding problems and suggests the extension of these studies particularly in terms of language units larger than the sentence. The testing of communicative competence is also listed as one of the priorities. Finally, the paper calls for new research models with multiple data collection strategies which will increase the interaction between researcher and teacher and which should reflect the cultural behaviour traits of the subjects under study.