Focusing on innovative forms of assessment in the United Kingdom, this article describes assessment strategies in mathematics, "oracy," science, and foreign languages. These strategies include not only problems in which students select a correct answer, but also practical problems in which students supply answers to open ended tasks.…

Research is reported that verifies the hypothesis that most hearing-impaired children whose auditory input is limited to the low frequencies (500 Hz or less) do perceive intonation differences. The four experiments reported used children ages 7 to 14. (MSE)

A phonological framework was used to describe the speech errors of 13 orally trained hearing-impaired children, ages 6 to 16. Among findings were that initial consonant inventories were larger than final consonant inventories and that production accuracy was significantly related to size of consonant inventories. (Author/DB)

This study compared the use of reference cohesion in oral narratives produced by 93 students with and without learning disabilities (LD), ages 8-13 years. Results indicated significant group, age, and task effects. The specific kinds of reference cohesion problems exhibited by LD students involved accuracy of use and distance between reference…

Discusses the reluctance of gifted students to present their work orally and describes a school program that taught the principles of presentation to 10 of the least confident students in a public-speaking class. The program improved the confidence and speaking ability of most of the students. (CR)

New board members can jeopardize their abilities to get things done if they don't take the time to understand how school boards work. Advises new board members to watch what they say and lists 10 statements new board members often make but should not. (MLF)

The article describes a method for controlling certain linguistic variables during the process of teaching reading decoding to children with oral language problems. (CL)

Language samples of 39 Down's Syndrome children (5-17 years old) were analyzed to examine the number of utterances, sentences, and grammatical forms used by Ss as a total group and comparatively in four age groups. (CL)

Describes the activities used during an inservice program conducted by Philadelphia's Affective Education Program to help English and language arts teachers improve students' communication skills. (DD)

Reports the findings of a survey commissioned by the Speech Communication Association's Task Force on Assessment and Testing. Concludes that many states are including speaking and listening skills in curriculum and assessment programs but that much work still needs to be done to develop an integrated oral communication program. (PD)

Reports on activities that the regular classroom teacher can incorporate into the speech arts curriculum that will help to eliminate the high incidence of vocal disorders in students. Includes a description of the mechanics of voice production and exercises designed to help children use their voices more efficiently. (FL)

Presents activities for students with or without behavior disorders that promote active learning of language arts skills, including creative thinking, writing, listing, and oral presentation. Activities begin with a lunch bag, can be adapted across grade or skill levels, and used from independent to large-group work arrangements. (Author/CR)

To improve oral communication skills of their students, teachers should provide opportunities for students to talk in class. Teachers are advised to: begin early, be sensitive to the individuality of students' speech patterns, and stress that there are different kinds of speech patterns for different situations. (JDD)

The national contest in oral reading held each year in West Germany provides guidelines for similar contests in other countries. On a point-count system reminiscent of that used internationally for sports events, participants are rated on their oral presentation, the difficulty of the chosen work, and their comprehension of the text. Adaptation of…

This document is designed to be a companion to the "Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000: Theoretical Framework." It builds on the original document with an extensive listing of additional sample task ideas for reading, listening, speaking, and writing benchmarks. The document provides additional examples of tasks for stage I reading…