A method is described of deriving two alternative measures of divergent thinking ability as a single entity (avoiding the spurious effects of fluency) from student responses to open-ended questions traditionally used in tests of divergent thinking ability. (PN)

American education fails to prepare students for the world in which we live by not stressing fluency in foreign languages. Asiatic languages are becoming increasingly important. (Author/AF)

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…