A study of one of the most recurrent and persistent obstacles in learning English as a second language, the use of tense marking, is presented. The analysis is based on audio recordings from a Vietnamese community in Northern Virginia, representing four age ranges from 10 to 55 years, two lengths of U.S. residency (1-3 years and 4-7 years), and…

A study of classroom interaction in Ontario's French immersion programs is summarized. Transcripts of classroom interactions were analyzed for teaching practices that tend to decrease or encourage student speech. Results suggest that the use of language in immersion classrooms is not significantly different from language use in regular classes. It…

The use of proverbs and other sayings in English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction is discussed. The proverb is defined and its distinguishing characteristics are examined. The methods and reasons for using these characteristics today are discussed, and examples are given. The specific use of proverbs in teaching oral communication,…

To determine what recent research indicates about similarities and differences between reading and listening and current classroom practices in listening at the junior high level, and to discover whether teachers consciously and systematically provide a bridge between informal oral language and formal text language, a study was completed by…

A study designed to examine the variation that occurs in the request production of children between the ages of 6 and 7 observed the kind of requests children make, what they request, whom they ask, and how they formulate their ideas. Twenty native French-speaking children divided into two age groups (6- and 7-year-olds) were asked to complete two…

A study investigated whether the interrelatedness of parents' storybook reading to children and their developing competence in oral and written language carried over into out-of-home care. Subjects, about 40 children ranging in age from 18 to 36 months in 4 representative daycare centers and their 4 adult teachers, were observed during planned…

A study investigated the effect of adult correction of grammatical errors during the language learning process. Four girls and four boys, ages 2 and 3, were interviewed individually, tape recorded and asked to repeat an adult sentence exactly. Overt mistakes were corrected either with an overt correction with expansion or with expansion only,…

The guide contains suggestions for University of Tennessee, Knoxville foreign teaching assistants to improve their command of spoken English. The first section offers four speech improvement suggestions requiring little or no extra time, including speaking English as much and as often as possible, imitating native speakers, asking for the correct…

A study compared selected language features of children in five different reading programs. Selected for study were two first grade classes from each of five urban school districts that were using either the Lippincott, Language Experience, Houghton Mifflin, Open Court, or the Ginn 720 basal reading programs. A prereading test was administered to…

Storytelling has long been a part of our culture, and teachers should recognize its value as a pedagogical tool. The Word Weaving program, an experimental storytelling program, includes folk tales, literary tales, adaptations, and original and true stories from the teller. In it, all stories are simply told to a class without a book in evidence.…

Materials are presented from a workshop designed to provide an opportunity for bilingual education researchers and practitioners to share knowledge, experiences, and concerns related to assessing language proficiency. The sessions included: (1) "Formal and Informal Evaluation of Oral English Language Skills," by William Russell; (2) "Assessing…

Six practical components of listening comprehension and sources of listening materials are considered. Listening comprehension depends on: (1) the sonic realization or actual physical hearing of language, (2) the segmental/suprasegmental form (phoneme distinction), (3) the musical pitch and rhythm, (4) lexical phrasing, (5) the purpose of the…

The 53 teaching strategies accompanying the 10 performance objectives in this guide for grades kindergarten through 12 focus on specific kinds of oral language. Each of the objectives is designed so that after the completion of the program students will be able to (1) use appropriate levels of language for given situations; (2) present both…

Because language delay tends to persist, is predictive of later learning problems, and is closely associated with psychiatric disorders, it is important to identify language delay as early as possible. In this study, language delay at age 2 was investigated in 502 children who attended physicians. Language assessment is not routinely carried out…

To relate the way in which children structure stories at different age levels to their performance on other tasks or to their general stage of cognitive development, a study required subjects of four age groups to participate in working memory tasks in two different paradigms and to generate stories involving a variety of characters. The structure…