In an effort to increase reading proficiency, five 9th- and 10th-grade students with behavior disorders were instructed to read along with an audiotape of vocabulary words. Results suggested significant effects due to practice. Minimal generalization from reading word lists to reading passages was demonstrated. (Author/JDD)

The Verbal Interaction Analysis System (VIAS) was applied to interaction between high school students and adult confederates. The VIAS successfully discriminated between two groups of verbally skilled students (n=8) and less skilled students (n=8). When these adolescent-adult interactions were conceptualized as interviews rather than conversations…

At the turn of the millennium, the term "spiritual" began to gain more prominence in the educational discourse in Hong Kong, both in official policy documents and in religious schools' descriptions of their own mission. Addressing each of these two cases in turn, a description of the context in which the increased use of the term has…

This paper reports on a project involving student recall of the dialogue in a movie and retention of the "anchor," which in this case refers to a videotape recording of "To Kill a Mockingbird." The project looked at how students retained knowledge over a few days and what kind of activities resulted from expertise with an…

Impromptu speech is heard only once, at a rate of perception that depends on the speaker's delivery, and is specifically adapted to the listeners. These features trigger cognitive activities that facilitate translation. Impromptu speech is characterized by a constant interconnection between cognitive competence and language competence and between…

Conference interpreting is an oral impromptu activity. Since texts delivered at conferences range from unprepared oral texts to prepared written texts, there can be clashes between the impromptu features of conference interpreting and features of prepared written texts. Knowledge of the field of discourse and of the predictability of text…

A text is the locus of many intersecting processes, the origins, character, and operative principles of which should be the main focus of its discussion in a writing class. These processes can be classified into the four major components of the communicative act: the writer, the reader, the social conditions of communication, and the historical…

The problems encountered by English as second language (ESL) students in selecting verb tenses for their written discourse were investigated. Tape recorded interviews with four freshman composition students who had been referred for intensive work on verb errors were analyzed for students' explanations of their errors and the contexts in which…

To test the hypothesis that paragraphs composed of sentences with identical or closely related topics (the grammatical subject and its adjuncts) would be easier to read than a paragraph whose sentence topics were only remotely related, two experiments on the readability of paragraphs were conducted. The first experiment involved subjective…

A study examined student mastery of meaning and use in reading and composing of five formal logical connectors (moreover, accordingly, hence, even so, and still) across school level and class type. Subjects were 100 remedial and nonremedial students from a high school, vocational college, and university who were asked to give a synonym for each…

The Situational Reinforcement series, a beginning-intermediate course in English for non-English speaking adults, is comprised of an introductory volume, "Nucleus Course in English," intended for 80-100 hours of instruction, and "Orientation in American English," Volumes I-III. Each of the four texts is accompanied by a corresponding workbook…

Examines telephone discourse of twenty children between two and five years of age for answerer rules, turn-taking, constructional units, conversational acts, closing sequence, and ability to take messages. Shows developmental differences, although mastery of discourse skills appeared only in response categories, and primarily at four and five…

Experience and research on the appropriateness and reliability of various criteria used in oral language tests are discussed. It is concluded that global marking schemes, which are less detailed, may enable the scorer to better evaluate communicative effectiveness, which includes both linguistic and paralinguistic factors. (MSE)

Connected speech of 134 healthy, Canadian French-speaking adults, grouped according to age and education level, was analyzed using an aphasia battery. Results demonstrated that older subjects with less education produced fewer content units and were less efficient in transmitting lexico-semantic information. Effects of age and education level on…

This study found that naturalistic conversation training improved the spontaneous speech production of two children (ages three and four) with speech production disabilities. (Author/DB)