This study examined the impact of various degenerative dementias on access to semantic knowledge and the status of semantic representations. Patients with semantic dementia, primary progressive aphasia, and Alzheimer's disease were compared with elderly controls on tasks of category and letter fluency, with number of words generated, mean lexical…

This article focuses on the historical development of Kahuawaiola Indigenous Teacher Education Program, the first teacher education program specifically addressing the needs of Hawaiian medium education. The authors distinguish a P-12 language revitalization education approach from those of transitional bilingual and foreign language immersion…

A powerful tool for creating culture while, at the same time, a cognitively rigorous exercise, Indigenous-language immersion could be a key for producing both language fluency and academic success in culture-based schools. Drawing on seven years of critical ethnographic research at Ojibwe schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin, this researcher…

This leaflet provides a summary of research and recent advances in understanding stuttering. Stuttering is defined as a disorder in which the rhythmic flow of speech is frequently disrupted by repetitions of sounds or syllables. The leaflet outlines possible causes of stuttering, methods of measurement of fluency and work on a uniform method of…

A Language Fluency Project was set up to encourage eight culturally disadvantaged and mentally handicapped girls (11 to 13 years old) to verbalize more clearly and more fluently and to maintain a verbal interaction. The program consisted of having the group imagine that they were taking part in a television documentary program. Over a 20-week…

Some implications of the multi-dimensionality of attainment tests are considered and a factor analytic study is reported of the responses to a placement test made by incoming students of English at universities in Germany. (Editor/LBH)

Discusses how current applied and sociolinguistic research and theory, which reveals the naturalness of language variation and productive aspects of error-making, seriously challenges traditional second language learning practices and postulates. (EKN)

Expands the notion of the conceptual flowing theory developed in a previous study. Conceptual fluency theory suggests that learners have access to the conceptual structures inherent in the target language and culture in a systematic, sequential, and integrated fashion with other areas of language learning. (Author/VWL)

A study investigated the extent of anglicization of Solomon Islands Pijin, the primary language for Honiara, the nation's capital. It was found that the influence of English was not related to the creolization of Pijin but rather to the bilingualism of the speakers of Pijin and to their high degree of fluency and contact with English. (Author/CB)

Presents an interview with Dave Johnson. Considers how to handle classes with students who have not only differing levels of English language fluency, but also speak many different languages. Discusses particular kinds of poems or themes that work especially well for English as a Second Language instruction. (SG)

This investigation was undertaken to address questions about topic familiarity and disfluencies during oral descriptive discourse of adult speakers. Participants expressed more attributes when the topic was familiar than when it was unfamiliar. Fillers and lexical pauses were the most frequent disfluencies. The mean duration of each hesitation…

Medications with dopamine antagonist properties, such as haloperidol, and those with serotonin reuptake inhibitor properties, such as clomipramine, have been shown to improve fluency. To examine the degree to which each of these two pharmacological mechanisms might independently affect fluency, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, paroxetine,…

This study compares pauses, repetitions and recasts in matched task interactions under face-to-face and computer-mediated conditions. Six first-year English undergraduates at a Turkish University took part in Skype-based voice chat with a native speaker and face-to-face with their instructor. Preliminary quantitative analysis of transcripts showed…