Speech act theory-based, second language pragmatics testing (SLPT) poses problems for validation due to a lack of correspondence with empirical conversational data. Since conversation analysis (CA) provides a richer and more accurate account of language behavior, it may be preferred as a basis for SLPT development. However, applying CA methodology…

The first step in documenting children's progress toward important goals, such as developing strong oral language and early literacy skills, requires measurable outcomes. Measurable outcomes contribute to teachers' understanding of whether the gains they observe in children are meaningful by adding quantitative evaluation of a child's progress…

Caregiver use of dialogic reading (DR) strategies in home, preschool, and daycare settings has been shown to facilitate development of oral language and emergent literacy skills in toddlers and preschool age children. Training in the use of DR strategies may be provided "live" or via videotape. Using a randomized, control group, repeated measures…

Purpose: This study provides preliminary reference data for speech and articulatory rates of school-age children in conversational and narrative speaking contexts. Method: Participants included 36 typically developing children in 3 groups of 12 participants at ages 7, 9, and 11 years. Conversational and narrative speech rates were measured in…

Discourse intonation attempts to explain how intonation patterns in English affect the communicative value of speech, through the use of falling and rising tones along with changes in pitch. The teaching of intonation seems to sit naturally with communicative language learning, but it is not an easy aspect of English to incorporate into the EFL…

This study reflects a social constructivist theoretical framework in which the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a central element, as two teaching approaches, communicative language teaching (CLT) and explicit focus on form (FonF) are examined. Research questions include: Are CLT and explicit FonF conducive to reaching the ZPD? Is there a…

A model for describing the oral language competence of bilingual speakers is presented. The model provides for the evaluation of the speaker on the phonological (based on native-speaker judgment), morphological (based on the formal written language), syntactic (based, in part on the complexity of the constructions used) and semantic pragmatic…

An organizing framework is presented that can help integrate the large mass of apparently disparate work on written language. The starting point of the paper was collections of articles of reading, writing, and literacy, which seemed not to have a conceptual framework. Ways are discussed that knowledge from linguistics as an academic discipline…

This paper attempts to show that certain structural relations that contribute to creating text in spoken and written monologue also bind segments together in conversation. Methodology is based on a model of text as consisting of sequences of a problem-solution structure. Analysis of texts from 12 purpose-oriented telephone conversations focuses on…

There has been a consensus among linguists that laryngeal and superlaryngeal nodes are located under the root node and place node is under the superlaryngeal node. However, there is very little consensus on where manner of articulation features belong. A phonological analysis of the spreading and delinking process occurring in the educated Spanish…

The supplementary activities guide was written to coordinate with a kindergarten textbook in English as a Second Language (ESL) used in the Houston (Texas) Independent School District. It contains eight instructional units with worksheets, alternative activities, and blackline masters for convenient reproduction. Each unit consists of a series of…

Designed to assess a reader's comprehension of items differing in contrastive vocal stress, this test consists of 64 items divided evenly between eight sentence types: declarative active, declarative passive, interrogative, and imperative, with each in a positive and negative form. The element of contrastive stress is placed on nouns functioning…

It is proposed that many students are unable to distinguish between unguarded writing patterns and literate or expository ones, and it is becoming increasingly necessary in writing instruction to clarify and impose the distinction between these patterns. This problem is confounded by current trends toward exclusively spoken language in the…

Storytelling, a creative art form with a long history and considerable instructional potential, is increasingly regarded in schools and communities as literature. Recent papers and articles in the ERIC database discuss the use of storytelling in the classroom to develop language abilities, literature appreciation, critical thinking and…

Speech communication teachers can assist students in gaining more facility with language by helping them become active learners or problem solvers through: (1) experiencing an event; (2) reflecting on this experience which leads to (3) the formation of abstract concepts and generalizations about what has been learned; and finally (4) incorporating…