Stressing that advanced foreign learners of English must be exposed to spontaneous speech if they are to develop their powers to speak and comprehend under conversational conditions, the author presents suggestions for preparing tape recordings which will give students the chance to hear natural conversation in the language laboratory. (FB)

Interesting dialogs which involve the student emotionally are advocated as a means of introducing new structures and idioms to the language student. (FWB)

How slides may be used to combat student remoteness and the excessive standardization of presentation which many teachers find objectionable in language laboratory work. (FWB)

Discusses an introductory course in basic conversational Spanish that raised enrollment. It is noted that the course interested students who desired a basic knowledge of spoken Spanish and those students who feared failure in regular courses. It was found that some students later enrolled in regular courses. (Author/AMH)

Describes conversation courses offered by the New York branch of the Alliance Francaise to adult native English speakers. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

A method for enlivening an English conversation class is suggested wherein the goal is to get every student to participate by saying something in English, and learning corrections until later. Class periods are divided into controlled language practice, free language practice and a short period of listening comprehension. (CHK)

Reports a teachers' conversation group that was part of a course in a Japanese as a second language teacher education program. Explains the rationale for using this format and quotes part of a story one student wrote and two stories told by other students on a theme in the written story. Relates these two stories to histories of students'…

A description of a German conversation class organized around video production projects includes the pedagogical rationale, course format, and detailed descriptions of individual taping projects. (17 references) (Author/CB)

Reports on 7 case studies of a 15-hour conversational English program for Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong college students. A comparison of pretests, course work, and posttests showed a small rise in the scores of four students and a nonsignificant drop in the scores of three students. (contains 13 references) (MDM) (Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse for…

Briefly discusses the theoretical and empirical literature regarding the "negotiation of meaning" as a construct, presents and discusses selected findings from a longitudinal study of an intact Spanish conversation course at the college level relative to learner-to-learner conversation and the "negotiating of meaning," and…

"Xiangsheng," a Chinese oral art form, are written and performed using idiomatic, colloquial Beijing speech and thus provide excellent material for studying spoken Chinese. Suggestions for preparing xiangsheng as teaching materials and teaching xiangsheng in the classroom are offered. Chinese character transcription, pinyin transcription,…

Using a type-case analytic approach, this study investigates the teaching/learning process in an intermediate-level college Spanish conversation course to answer questions about the development of communicative competence. It demonstrates constraints and limitations and suggests the need to reconceptualize theoretical and methodological approaches…

Suggests that oral skills classes provide the ideal forum in which to address discourse issues, and that target-language discourse norms, particularly as they relate to another cultural belief system, must be taught explicitly. (Author/VWL)

This case study investigated spontaneous interpersonal communication in a high school Spanish classroom, using instructional conversation as a framework for analysis. Instructional conversations are collaborative, extended verbal exchanges in which students develop a coherent topic, supported by the teacher's contingent questions and feedback. The…

Prepared for the adult or college student who wants to attain a speaking knowledge of Spanish spoken in Hispanic America, this book places more emphasis on communication and comprehension than on grammatical depth. It does not presuppose a knowledge of Spanish or experience with a second language. Emphasis is on repetition. Each lesson includes…