This reader is designed for adult learners of Marathi at the intermediate level. Many of the passages are in the form of conversations. They concern topics pertinent to Maharashtra culture and the everyday life of the people, such as recreational outings, professional life, marriage and the family, education, entertainment, weather and seasons,…

The flow of normal conversation is often impeded by error. These errors can be divided into at least three categories: phonological, lexical, and pragmatic. A study was designed to assess whether different kinds of errors affect conversation in different ways. Forty-four subjects listened to tapes of conversations. Each conversation contained…

Both evaluators and storytellers pull together the events they hear and see; they create unified, coherent entities out of the parts they gather. This guide considers two levels at which the understanding of the nature and methods of narrative writing, or storytelling, can be of use to the evaluator. The highest level is to use the notion of…

Dialogue from 30-minute samples from "Sesame Street" and "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" was coded for grammar, content, and discourse. Grammatical analysis used the LINGQUEST computer-assisted language assessment program (Mordecai, Palen, and Palmer 1982). Content coding was based on categories developed by Rice (1984) and…

A study investigated time factors in two-person telephone conversations, in which visual clues were absent. The lengths and occurrences of vocalizations, pauses, turns, switching pauses, and simultaneous speech were measured with the aid of a computer program. The timing patterns of three conversation types were compared: two Finns speaking in…

This text is aimed at those interested in learning the Wolof language, the most widely used language in Senegal, spoken by more than 80% of the Senegalese and Gambian people. This manual can be best used under the following conditions: (1) the instructor is Wolof born or speaks the language fluently, (2) the course is taught in intensive or…

This booklet is presented as a guide for parents of elementary school French language students who wish to learn the language along with their children. Divided into seven sections, the booklet presents: (1) language learning hints; (2) pronunciation help including practice in the repetition of phonemes and stress and rhythm patterns; (3)…

This booklet is presented as a guide for parents of elementary school German language students who wish to learn the language along with their children. Divided into seven sections, the booklet presents: (1) language learning hints; (2) pronunciation help consisting of practice in listening to and repeating German phonemes; (3) conversation…

This guide for parents of elementary school Spanish language students who wish to learn the language along with their children contains the following materials: (1) language learning hints; (2) pronunciation help including rhythm patterns; (3) conversation capsules (small dialogs and a selection of drawings to accompany the texts) permitting…

Recordings of various sound effects may be used to stimulate dialogue in foreign language classes. Examples are given. (CHK)

Describes a project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology concerned with making computer-assisted instruction more "human," communicative, and interactive for students learning a foreign language. The goal of the project is to create prototypes for beginning and intermediate courses in French, German, Spanish, Russian, and English as…

Discusses the sources of information in oral language. Uses converging evidence from prosody, pausing, structural and semantic parallelism, and stylistic analysis to argue for a series of hypotheses about the units that organize the construction of narrative discourse. Provides examples and appendixes. (JD)

Description of several computerized tutoring systems is organized around types of knowledge any tutor must possess--subject area, student's information, and how to teach and communicate. Data and control structures of Meno-tutor are described to illustrate use of artificial intelligence to model the student, a domain, and teaching strategies. (MBR)

Although role playing is a well-established and useful method of second language instruction, its success is often undermined by assignment of roles alien to the students' needs and experience. Redefinition of role playing to include the roles an individual assumes in everyday life will help the teacher plan more appropriate activities. (MSE)

Focuses on the narrative function to show how children can build on another speaker's turns in conversation and can build on their own utterances as they speak. Analyzes children's dialogs and narratives to highlight the primacy of the oral language arts as they are enacted in daily conversation and play. (HTH)