This paper describes a formal communication game which requires the students to process other players' utterances for implicit meaning before responding. The game can be adapted for content and difficulty level. Students choose between two alternatives on dimensions such as structure and style. Sample games are included. (SW)

In order to ensure personal involvement in and eagerness for verbal communication, the German intermediate conversational course at Clemson University centers on love, marriage, and family life. Student proficiency in German improves, and the course generates enthusiasm as well as self-awareness and awareness of others. (Author/SW)

A system for developing students' conversational skills is described. The conversational practice is regular and systematic and can be handled by aides, substitutes or advanced foreign language students. It can also include humanistic or psychological techniques after the elementary phases. (KM)

Six exercises intended to promote conversation skills are presented, including five survival games situated in space, caves, the middle of the ocean, the Sahara desert, and the North Pole; and a game to select a prison parolee from a group of candidates. The games involve role playing and decision-making activities. (MSE)

Discusses the use of cooperative experiential learning as a method to help non-English speakers improve their English communication skills. Cites such factors as the necessity for cooperation and communication among students, the motivational character of natural conversation, and the "mainstreaming" of the limited English speaker. (PGD)

A program is described in which Spanish-speaking senior citizens volunteered to meet with first- and second-year language students twice weekly on a one-to-one basis for unstructured conversation. Both students and staff benefited, and results show the practical value of integrating such a conversation lab into the regular foreign language…

Presents the notions that: (1) training in free expression skills in a foreign language can be systematized and integrated with the acquisition of fundamental language skills; and (2) that the principle of "re-expression" can be used by the teacher to yield "free expression" in the form of spontaneous oral summary. (AM)

Paper presented at the TESOL Convention, March 1969. The author is Associate Director of the Michigan Migrant Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Michigan. (FWB)

Concerns research in the use of cloze tests to measure a particular language skill when a standardized paper-and-pencil test is not an obviously appropriate validating instrument. The conversational cloze test proved to be superior to a written or prose cloze test in measuring the students' oral ability. Statistical tables are given. (Author/PJM)

Presents a language teaching method designed to increase communicative competence through an application of speech act theory and the use of dialogs and the source language. (AM)