Many secondary school students' second language (L2) speaking skills suffer from deficiencies; the effects thereof are detrimental to their academic and career opportunities in a globalized world that highlights the importance of oral communication skills. Debate has been considered a potentially effective speaking pedagogical tool that can…

Jaw movement patterns were examined longitudinally in a 3-year-old male with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) and compared with a typically developing control group. The child with CAS was followed for 8 months, until he began accurately and consistently producing the bilabial phonemes /p/, /b/, and /m/. A movement tracking system was used to…

This response to Fey (EC 604 058) explores possible factors deterring clinicians from employing phonological constructs in assessment and remediation of children with speech disorders. Underlying concepts and target patterns that have helped expedite intelligibility gains are also explained. (Author/DB)

A vocal register is a series or range of consecutive frequencies that can be produced with nearly identical voice quality. On the basis of research three fundamental registers can be defined and described: pulse, a low range of phonation; modal, a middle or "normal" range; and loft, a high range, described by some as falsetto. These…

The use of behavioral objectives is challenged on three bases: feasibility, utility, and advisability. Behavioral objectives, however, are useful in teaching speech communication. They allow the teacher to start to pinpoint the items the student needs to practice in order to improve. If students are trained to decide which behaviors they wish to…

Research indicates that about 40% of the population fear public speaking. There is a wide variety of possible causes for this unwillingness to communicate: a lack of skills, social introversion, alienation, lack of fluency in English, and communication apprehension. Despite the fact that evidence indicates everyone may have some difficulty with…

Sixty college students were simultaneously audio- and video-taped to test the hypotheses that (1) the student who uses video tape for self-analysis in a basic speech skills course will show greater improvement in performing basic skills than will the student who uses audio tape for self-analysis; and (2) there will be a correlation among…

Discusses several hypotheses about the measurement of speech-communication proficiency which are being tested at the University of Hawaii and a testing instrument entitled Dy Comm'' (dyadic communication) which emerged from this research. (DD)

This article proposes a synergistic, interactive model of cluttering, a fluency disorder manifested in rapid or erratic speech rates, reduced intelligibility, and language deviations. Clinical strategies are presented in a framework of several working assumptions about cluttering. Despite encouraging reports, further research into the nature and…

The factor of timing on intelligible speech among normally-hearing persons was studied to determine some ways in which it differs from the speech of the deaf. Additional data was gathered on the temporal aspects of the speech of deaf and hearing children and hearing adults. The data corroborated earlier studies indicating that (1) deaf speakers…

To determine the effectiveness of group articulation therapy, 180 educable retarded children in special classes (average age 9, average IQ 70), all of whom had articulation problems, were rated on the Carter/Buck Prognostic Speech Test and a picture version of McDonald's deep test of articulation. Subjects were then randomly assigned to one of…