Clozentropy procedure is a method whereby researchers pretest messages to determine their levels of comprehensibility among given audience members. It is often used to measure the English language proficiency of foreign students. The procedure utilizes a passage of prose from which words are deleted on either a random or systematic basis and…

Course designers and teachers of English as a second or foreign language need a pedagogical grammar, that is, a collection of linguistic statements about English which specifies the linguistic behaviors that an ESL/EFL learner will need to acquire and which can easily be used in the preparation of materials and lessons. Pedagogical grammars…

The effect of sentence length and syntactic structure on the repeatability of sentences by native and foreign speakers of English was investigated in this study using 18 native English speakers, 30 advanced foreign students, and 114 intermediate level foreign students. Eighty-four sentences were presented for repetition, varying according to word…

Effects of varying latencies upon articulatory productions in the stimulus-response paradigm were studied. Zero latency was compared to latency equal to stimuli and to latency with silent rehearsal of muscular movements. Thirty children with misarticulated /r/ from kindergarten, first, and second grades participated as subjects. Stimulus /ra/ was…

The present study evaluated methods by which speech samples for equal appearing interval scaling of articulation defectiveness could be prepared with a minimum time expenditure. Ten public school speech therapists rated 40 one minute edited and 40 unedited speech samples on a nine point equal-appearing interval scale. The speech samples were…

The purpose of this study was to establish answers to the following questions: (1) Does a cross-age teaching program provide a situation in which school children can extend their role repertories by enacting the role of the tutor to younger children? (2) Can the language used by children in the role of tutor be classified under categories derived…

The present final report covers the various activities of the Center for Research on Language and Language Behavior at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor during the final year of its operation before its closing on January 31, 1971. A prefatory section lists completed projects and the availability of individual reports. Included in this…

Lexical development in mentally retarded and normal children was indexed using the Free Word Association Task. Approximately 170 institutionalized and noninstitutionalized retarded children and 59 normal children were administered the 40-word stimulus list consisting mainly of adjectives and nouns. Responses were categorized according to apparent…

This study was designed to learn more about relationships between sex and the expressive and comprehensive language development of the kindergarten child. Thirty-four kindergarten children (17 males and 17 females) were given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and the Vocabulary Subtest of the Weschler Intelligence Scale for Children…

The purposes of this study were to: (1) investigate the nature and extent of specific teaching, and the grade placement of language skills in primary grades; and (2) investigate experimentally the validity, reliability, and practicality of several different methods for measuring achievement in capitalization and punctuation in Grade 2. Phase I…

The author addresses the need for a new acoustic recognition strategy, extending the position that any adequate grammar of a language must distinguish between auditory and articulatory knowledge. Reviewing the existing literature and theories of language and its acquisition, the author discusses their limitations and inadequacies in accounting for…

The hypothesis of this Canadian study was that attitudes toward authority of French-English bilinguals would differ from the attitudes of French and English unilinguals toward authority. Student subjects responded to questionnaires using Likert scales to measure hostility, acceptance, anxiety, and neutrality toward authority. Analysis of variance…

Communicative relations among children and adolescents are considered from the concept of reciprocity (or perspective of others ) and its development. Research reveals that from the ages of two through four, and often through five also, the child's speech is primarily lacking in communicative message. It is found that the major difference in…

This paper discusses the relationship between linguistic reconstructions and their historical validity using the case of Old Japanese (8th century A.D.) vowels as an example. Reconstructions throughout the paper include only those cases in which the modern reflexes and phonological correspondences between two or more genetically related languages…

The author reports on a study designed to determine the effects of figurative language--particularly the metaphor--on persuasive discourse, by comparing hypotheses developed from the theories of Michael Osborn, Jean Piaget, and Charles Osgood. In addition to a figurative language variable (metaphor versus literal), other variables in the study…