This study examined the discourse skills of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children by comparing their oral and written narratives produced for the wordless picture book, "Frog, Where Are You?" (Mayer, 1969), with those of school-age-matched hearing peers. The written stories produced by 42 Italian 7- to 15-year-old children with…

Purpose: This study describes written and spoken narrative skills of school-age individuals with Down syndrome (DS). Method: Twenty-one students with DS (age 6;6 [years;months]-19;10) and 17 reading-matched, typically developing (TD) controls (age 4;9-10;9) were matched using Word Identification subtest raw scores (Woodcock Reading Mastery…

Communication impairment is a defining feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Little research attention has been devoted to establishing standardized methods for defining and identifying language impairment in children with known or suspected ASD. The present study examines the feasibility and utility of the Oral and Written Language Scales…

Compares readers' and listeners' perceptions of powerless language features. Examines whether oral versions of powerless messages generate higher credibility ratings than written versions. Finds that subjects note more hesitations in writing but more hedges on tape, and that placing powerless speech in the written transcript reduces…

A study investigated the consistency of faculty and peer evaluations of the oral communication skills of 44 fourth-year pharmacology students. Substantial agreement between faculty and students was found. Peer evaluations were independent of their own communication skills. In addition, a significant correlation between oral and written…

Conference interpreting is an oral impromptu activity. Since texts delivered at conferences range from unprepared oral texts to prepared written texts, there can be clashes between the impromptu features of conference interpreting and features of prepared written texts. Knowledge of the field of discourse and of the predictability of text…

Discourse is basically interactive. This is clear in conversation, but the concept can be extended to written language. Written text can be analyzed as spoken discourse. The methodology of English text studies has adhered too much to a textual approach and even extended it to spoken data. Another approach would be to begin with the spoken form of…

A study investigated the communication strategies used by students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in electronic mail interactions with native speakers of English. Subjects were 22 university students in Taiwan paired with a like number of pre-service EFL teacher trainees in the United States. The discourse of 87 e-mail entries by the…