This study aimed to (1) measure and identify students' strengths and weaknesses in oral presentation skills, (2) examine students' perceptions of rating their presentation performances, and (3) investigate students' attitudes towards their oral presentation experiences. The participants were 47 Thai third-year undergraduate students in the English…

In this paper, we present an intelligent architecture, called intelligent virtual environment for language learning, with embedded pedagogical agents for improving listening and speaking skills of non-native English language learners. The proposed architecture integrates virtual environments into the Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language…

This study explores ninth-grade (15-year-old) students' oral presentations in language arts and art education. The main research question is: In which ways are the students' social positioning and use of verbal and non-verbal resources reflected in boys' and girls' oral presentations? In-depth analyses of video recordings of student presentations…

This paper outlines a clear rationale for developing speaking and listening as part of the curriculum for young children and highlights several approaches which teachers can adopt to promote effective talk: dialogic teaching (an interactive approach to developing learning through talk) will be explored as a way to counter the initiation, response,…

An annotated bibliography of 11 documents included in the ERIC system that are sources of information on teaching listening and speaking as an interactive process. (DD)

While rhetorical theory has long been concerned with the epistemological foundations of rhetorical abilities, the full potential of the structuralist perspective is far from realized. The study of speech acts and inventive processes discloses the underlying logic of linguistic performance. A speech act is conceptualized in terms of the…

Suggestions are offered for strengthening the basic speech, language, and communication skills of young children with hearing impairments, during ordinary periods of interaction at home. Suggestions focus on auditory training, speech drills, and reading, as well as formal and informal language instruction for all family members. (JDD)

This first in a series of five papers on communication reticence discusses the ways and means of discovering people with communication problems. The isolation of "reticent" individuals, or those with an excessive amount of anxiety in communication situations, from the rest of the population is best accomplished by simply asking people if…

"Communication apprehension" is a broad-based fear or anxiety associated with either real or anticipated communication with another person or persons. The purpose of this paper, the fifth in a series of five dealing with communication reticence is to speculate on the causes, correlates, and effects of communication apprehension. The…

When children begin formal schooling, their fundamental communication skills, speaking and listening, are well developed but limited in scope and range; it becomes the teacher's task to assist the children in achieving communicative competence. A developmental project called "Developing Communicative Competence in Children" identifies four…

This second in a series of five papers on communication reticence discusses the establishment of a setting for the treatment of communicationally reticent individuals. Eleven years of operation of a formal program at the Pennsylvania State University provides the basis for discussion of factors in the operation of the system. An eclectic…

The student who has come to be called "reticent" expresses concern about many oral, communicative behaviors, ranging from public speaking to meeting strangers and carrying on a few minutes of "small talk." A rhetorical method of instruction was utilized in a study conducted to determine the effects of treatment on a selected…

The purpose of this paper, the fourth in a series of five dealing with communication reticence, describes the residual effects of training in a treatment program for communicationally reticent individuals. A questionnaire to assess the specific problems which led students to seek instruction in the special speech sections of the Pennsylvania State…

Most instructional materials developed in the past 10-15 years do not provide for sufficient activities to allow the student to become involved in anything other than drill and memorization. Furthermore, in those situations where "communication activities" do occur, they are designed to teach the sentence as a structural, grammatical…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: the relationships among psychological differentiation, situational context, and linguistics; the effect of cognitive complexity and audience attitude on persuasive…