Points out that, although Japanese students of English may be taught proper sound and word stress, sentence stress and intonation are usually neglected. A system of teaching these features is outlined. (CHK)

Addresses the need for replication studies in the field of second-language acquisition and discusses the problems surrounding standards of reporting research. Notes a lack of uniform standards in reporting second-language learners' proficiency levels and proposes ways to achieve more thorough reporting of research that will allow others to engage…

This study investigated the ability of 10 children (ages 6-7) with specific language impairment (SLI), 10 children of the same chronological age, and 10 children at similar levels of language functioning to maintain conversational topics. Results found that subjects with SLI contributed more inappropriate utterances and demonstrated difficulty…

In a study of second, fourth, and sixth graders who completed reading and language tests over 2 years, low-income second and third graders achieved as well as their normative peers on all subtests. However, around fourth grade, their reading scores began to decline. One possible cause for this slump may stem from lack of fluency and automaticity.…

Explores a way to use gossip in the language classroom to provide language fluency practice. Shows how certain interpersonal exchanges can be encouraged by exploiting the natural proclivity for talking about people. Activities stress social aspects of learning and are intended to provide learners with opportunities to talk and listen. (Author/VWL)

Barriers to communication between health practitioners and clients not fluent in English include stereotyping, misinterpretation of meaning, and mismatching of beliefs and models of care. Organizational practices may deter or encourage transcultural communication. (Contains 39 references.) (SK)

Conversational samples were elicited from three-, four-, and five-year-old normal-speaking children and speech rates were measured by the traditional overall method and by the articulatory rate method which uses only fluent sequences. The clinical utility of normative rates is discussed with regard to fluency assessment and intervention.…

Experimental studies are reviewed in which stuttering and speech disfluency were subjected to response contingent stimuli (RCS). Research issues are discussed, including response-stimulus contiguity, subject awareness, behavior definitions, stimulus control of responses, subject variability, effects of RCS on nonstuttered speech parameters,…

This article suggests that the notion of "conceptual fluency," which has been derived from the current research on the role of metaphor in language and cognition, can be used to draft a teaching curriculum around the notion that metaphor is the organizing principle of common discourse. (51 references) (MDM)

Using a qualitative discourse-analytic framework, this paper compares the planned spoken English of a native speaker of Chinese, whose English discourse was perceived to be hard to follow, with a native speaker of U.S. English. Differences in the use of lexical discourse markers, lexical specificity, and syntactic incorporation are discussed. (34…

The effect of a technique that gets English-as-a-Second-Language learners to tell the same story three times to different listeners with decreasing time for each retelling is examined. The technique allowed learners to perform at a level higher than their normal level of fluency. A transcript of a talk is appended. (Contains 12 references.)…

Stuttered sentences pronounced by 12 4- to 6-year-old children in spontaneous conversation were analyzed for length and grammatical complexity. Results indicated that sentences in which stuttering occurred within the first three words were significantly longer and more complex than sentences where no fluency failure was found. Implications for…

Notes that an earlier article in this journal introduced the process of building fluency in a language such as German by having students work through a set of procedures that touch on all communication skills. Shows how students can move from these beginning experiences to establish further control over the language. (RS)

Explored the effects of inherent task structure and processing load on narrative retelling task performance, analyzing task performance in terms of competition among fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Research with young adults found that degree of inherent task structure more strongly affected fluency of performance. Processing load influenced…

Gives background information on the journal's mini-series on reading assessment and intervention. States that over the past decade cognitive psychologists have learned that reading disabilities are primarily language-related disorders and neuropsychologists have advanced ideas on reading process. The mini-series seeks positive and significant…