Speaking, listening, reading, and writing are all language activities. The human capacity for speaking and listening has a biological foundation: wherever there are people, there is spoken language. Acquiring spoken language is an unconscious activity, and, barring any physical deformity or language learning disability, like severe autism, all…

Begins by using the traditional psycholinguistic view of comprehension as a framework to compare the processes involved in listening and reading comprehension. Two other views of comprehension are then discussed. Finally, ways in which these different views of comprehension affect approaches to assessment and treatment are reviewed. (Author/CR)

Discusses the beliefs of children with learning disabilities about listening and the listener's role in repairing communicative breakdowns. Describes ways of using children's literature to enable students to reflect on the interactive roles of speaker and listener using stories with a theme of resolving communication breakdowns. (Author/CR)

Examines the ability of 30 normal and 30 learning disabled children across a three-year period to understand a sequence of instructions, communicate the steps in a sequence to others, and rephrase their verbal messages through a referential communication task. (HOD)

In a study that sought to identify the gains in English oral communication skills of Spanish speaking learning disabled students in the elementary schools, the Basic Inventory of Natural Language (BINL) and the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery (WLPB) were administered to two groups of students aged 8 to 12 years: an experimental group of 20…

One in a series on the status and progress of studies on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical research applications, this document contains 17 research reports. Topics discussed in the reports are as follows: (1) dynamic modeling of phonetic structure; (2) coarticulation as a component in articulatory…