A recent forum in "JFD" (28/3, 2003) evaluated the status of evidence-based practice in fluency disorders, and offered recommendations for improvement. This article re-evaluates the level of support available for some popular approaches to stuttering therapy and questions the relative value placed on some types of programs endorsed by the forum.…

The use of distance education for clinical skills development in the health professions has not been extensively described, due in part to the intensive nature of the relationship between the patient and practitioner. In the context of pharmacy practice, there are specific needs to develop new vehicles for clinical skills education due to growing…

This paper is an ethnographic record of an ongoing journey during which I have tried to understand the kinds of language ideologies that my students and I have constructed about the Korean language. My students are mainly Korean-American university students who have never successfully achieved native fluency in their heritage language, although…

The development of accent and fluency are traced in the speech of 20 Mandarin and 20 Slavic adult immigrants to Canada over a period of 10 months. The participants were enrolled in an ESL program but had no special instruction in either pronunciation or fluency. The immigrants' self-reported exposure to English outside of class was used to…

We find a general, language-independent pattern in child language acquisition in which there is a clear difference between subject and object noun phrases. On one hand, indefinite objects tend to be interpreted nonreferentially, independently of word order and across experiments and languages. On the other hand, indefinite subjects tend to be…

In this article, the author talks about the decline of fluent Alaskan Haida speakers. She features her mother's story as an example of why the Haida language is "on the brink." English language fluency as a tool for Indigenous survival is common to Native peoples, as is the desire to see languages flourish again. Alaskan Haidas…

This study examined word-finding ability, measured by accuracy and latency of response, in a group of eight preschool stutterers (mean age 4.2 years) and two groups of eight nonstutterers (mean age 4.4 years) matched according to age, gender, race, and receptive vocabulary. Results indicated that, as a group, preschool children who stutter and…

The pronunciation and use of /s/ in the isleno dialect of Spanish, a dying language spoken in a small ethnic enclave in southeast Louisiana, is examined. Today, there are fewer than 20 fluent speakers of isleno Spanish, which has been described as a fossilized derivative of the speech of Canary Island peasants with additions from Spanish sailors.…

The few remaining fluent speakers of the isleno dialect of Spanish vary their casual pronunciation of /s/ in a manner consistent with, but not identical to, other Caribbean Spanish dialects. The behavior of /s/ in the speech of nonfluent islenos parallels that of fluent speakers, differing only in the higher degree of aspiration and deletion. This…

Describes techniques for achieving emotional involvement and, therefore, better results on the part of his students in an intermediate level Russian conversation course. (Text is in Russian.) (DH)

This report is part of a general study of Reference Measures for Cognitive and Noncognitive Factors. The specific activity that is being reported is the development of "factor-referenced" tests or "marker" tests for several cognitive factors related to divergent production (i.e., ability to produce a variety of words, phrases,…

Is there a Vietnamese child in your classroom? How are you and he adjusting? The author, a former teacher at the Delat Normal School in Vietnam and now a graduate assistant at Southern Illinois University, gives some background material on the Vietnamese child to help you understand these children in your classroom. (Editor/RK)

Investigated the influence of Ukrainian-English bilingualism on first and third grade children's awareness of the arbitrary nature of word-referent relationships and on their ability to analyze linguistic input. (JMB)

Describes efforts of post-graduate student teachers of the Department of Education, University College Cardiff to equip non-English speaking children with sufficient knowledge of that language to be able to follow the school curriculum. Available from: Speech and Drama, Elizabeth Gradwell, Distribution Manager, The White Cottage, Allington,…

The article describes development in Illinois of the Department of Rehabilitation Services Sign Language Assessment Tool. The instrument is designed to evaluate the level of receptive and expressive sign language proficiency of rehabilitation personnel serving the deaf. (DB)