Although spoken language was the subject of attention among Soviet linguists for a short period in the 1920s, it has not attracted much attention since then. The main concern of Soviet linguists has been the forms of written language. Only at the end of the 1960s did linguists begin to record spontaneous speech on tape and study its forms. The…

A study investigated children's ability to understand the use of deictic terms in oral and written language. The three deictic categories examined were pronouns (I, you), locatives (this, here), and motion verbs (come, go). Three groups of 24 second grade students completed an oral language task, a written language task, and a picture selection…

A discussion of the implementation of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) second language proficiency guidelines in Florida's public schools and colleges includes a brief review of literature about the guidelines, background information on the oral proficiency movement, and a description of the effects of the movement…

A cross-linguistic comparison of syntax acquisition patterns examined preferential subject omission in the naturally-occurring speech of three Japanese toddlers from the Tokyo area and compared the findings to data on English acquisition. Results indicate that acquisition patterns of Japanese do not mirror those of English with regard to this…

Intended for college-level basic writers, the program described in this report integrates selected oral communication training with writing instruction. The first section of the report presents a rationale for the program--which uses oral activities to enhance students' development in the underlying rhetorical abilities of invention, audience…

A collection of papers on the use of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines for instruction and testing in less commonly taught languages includes: the 1986 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines; "Testing Speaking Proficiency: The Oral Interview" (Pardee Lowe, Jr., Judith E. Liskin-Gasparro); a…

The results of a series of three studies of classroom factors influencing English oral language development in Spanish speaking bilingual elementary students are reported. Teacher control of oral language practice, extra practice in oral language encoding for bilingual students, and similarities between the English proficiency scores of children…

In an analysis of stress and intonation, stress is shown to distinguish semantic and grammatical meaning on every level of language. It is suggested that the distinction between stress and intonation is particularly important in teaching English as a second language. Written texts and fabricated examples of dialogue are used, with a focus on…

Emphasizing language as both medium and object of instruction, the articles in this focused journal issue promote the interaction of students' language and teachers' language as a means to increased student awareness of, and facility with, language. The first three articles provide a context, methodology, and evaluation framework for language…

A listing of substantial, known adult speech error corpora includes seven major corpora in English, 11 in languages other than English (German, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Japanese, and Thai), information on seven collectors of smaller English samples, and two references for anecdotal samples, one in French and one in Welsh. Each major…

A study of the developmental patterns of reading proficiency of seven adult second language learners over a four-month period to determine the changes in their oral reading behavior and in their comprehension of written English is reported. The study looked specifically at oral reading and retelling. All subjects were beginning to low-intermediate…

Virginia's assessment of student learning outcomes has been lauded by national organizations for its respect of institutional autonomy while providing meaningful information on student learning outcomes. Virginia recently implemented a process by which each institution's plan to assess student learning outcomes are evaluated by peer institutions.…

The language of 29 Canadian children was sampled during the first two years of schooling in free conversations and in more formal school-like tasks as part of a three-year longitudinal study of the properties of oral language and their relation to other measures of cognitive, linguistic, and reading performance. The language samples were subjected…

A review of literature on error correction shows a lack of agreement on the benefits of error correction in second language learning and confusion on which errors to correct and the approach to take to correction of both oral and written language. This monograph deals with these problems and provides examples of techniques in English, French,…

The BISVUX Project was designed to investigate the linguistic knowledge requirements of adults and to determine the best way of catering to those needs (especially the need to speak the language) in teaching and in studies. Because surveys of the perceived needs of participants in Swedish adult high school English courses, adult learning…