Presents the results of a study aimed at (1) examining the nature of oral production processes during foreign-language learning (Spanish); (2) utilizing retrospective verbal report protocols for collecting improved data; and (3) proposing teaching strategies based on the qualitative data of subjects' self-revelations. (AS)

Investigates the interaction of lexical and non-lexical processes in spelling through lexical priming of non-lexical spelling in Polish. Explains that orthographic choice for nonwords was assessed under free and primed spelling conditions for both adults and children using direct and associative priming. Finds that lexical orthography influences…

Examines 11 types of uses of the English word "with," demonstrating that speakers who use the word have an implicit knowledge of its multiple meanings and uses, which far exceeds their explicit knowledge of the word. (CB)

Examines how Spanish is taught to Hispanic bilinguals. Discussion focuses on how the oral proficiency movement directly affects the teaching of native Spanish speakers. Key issues and problems stemming from the language teaching profession's attempts to apply the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Educational Testing Service…

Approaches the analysis of proper names from the point of view of communication. An attempt is made to show that the various uses of proper names can be accounted for in terms of the assumptions the hearer makes about the speaker's thought as expressed through her utterance. (Author/VWL)

An investigation looked at the relationship between control and coreference in three- to eight-year-olds' (N=81) performance of an act-out task. Results replicated previous findings that demonstrated five developmental stages (involving subject-oriented, object-oriented, mixed subject-object, and adult approaches) in chidren's interpretation of…

Identifies and describes the features of spoken discourse that native speakers of English consider to be indicative of level of intellectual functioning. Discourse criteria include detail, coherence, story construction, storytelling performance, and metacomments. (SR)

Offers a brief historical overview, playfully presented, to remind the reader of the relationships between orality, literacy, and the current electronic social condition. (SR)

Examined strategies used by 12 kindergarten nonreaders who tried to relate spoken words to segments of written sentences. Results suggest that children may first succeed in establishing correspondences between temporal order of spoken words and spatial order of written words when a sentence contains only one functor word. Results show the complex…

Identifies motives for the inversion of various preverbal elements to the end of sentences in Beijing conversational discourse, focusing on such communicative functions and organizational mechanisms as thematization, repair, and afterthought appendage. (32 references) (CB)

Investigates the extent of variation in children's language performance in a picture description task arising from mode (oral or written) versus degree of demand for decontextualization. Finds that children manipulated the wide range of the oral form of the contextualized/decontextualized continuum more skillfully than the written form. Finds no…

A study of utterances marked by exemplification particles ("par exemple, disons") in Montreal oral French attempted to describe constraints governing choice of discourse variant. Variables examined include position of particle in the utterance, extendibility and reality of the example, order of constituent elements in argumentation, and…

Examines public speaking (PS) practices within the Osage Nation. Settings for formal occasions of PS and PS within the context of speech act, event, and situation are addressed. Methodological-biographical notes on Pratt as informant, ethnographer, and author and a discussion of learning and speaking among the Osage are appended. (Contains 49…

Examines the rating scale and the testing procedure of the oral interview for evidence of discourse competence. The paper suggests that a careful examination of the processing capabilities might serve as a valid indicator of their discourse competence. (24 references) (GLR)

Investigation of oral adult-child interaction among Romani-speaking Gypsies in Hungary revealed that modifications typical of child-directed speech in other languages are also found in speech addressed to Gypsy children. It is argued that early introduction of children into particular ways of speaking reflects their importance for Gypsy culture…