Research on communication instruction for students with severe intellectual disabilities is reviewed, focusing on the pragmatic elements involved in accomplishing a successful communicative exchange. A federally funded project, called the "Conversation and Social Competence Research Project," is then described. The project sought to…

This practicum aimed to decrease the social isolation of preschool children with special needs in a mainstreamed day care setting by: (1) increasing initiatives by typical children towards four special needs children; (2) increasing social bids or responses by special needs children toward typical children; and (3) increasing positive…

A study investigated factors affecting participation, engagement, and retention of non-native English-speaking students (NNSs) in community college mainstream classes. The student sample included three classes in developmental English at a small western Massachusetts community college. Data were drawn from taped classroom observations and student…

Although it is often assumed that the larger the bandwidth of the connection to the Internet, the better, few studies have actually been conducted to investigate the impact of various bandwidth connections on student performance in online courses. The goals of this study were to compare student online behaviors under different bandwidth…

The value-added approach to the assessment of student outcomes examines actual or inferred changes in students' performance over time. It also attempts to separate the net effects of instruction from previous ability or simple maturation. Others may have different definitions of this concept, and this vagueness causes problems. Suggested ways to…

Arguing that the use of peer groups in a writing classroom theoretically supports the goals of the paradigm shift from emphasis on written product to writing process that has occurred in recent years, this paper examines the complexities confronting teachers who attempt to use groups for instructional purposes. Following a brief introduction, the…

This document provides data from an ongoing longitudinal study of the degree of continuity in individual development over time and describes the complexities involved in efforts to determine the nature of individual continuity. Findings from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of children in a day camp provide evidence for continuity in individual…

A study of repair in conversations between students of English as a second language (ESL) focused on: (1) strategies of negotiation for meaning used by students with a common language background (Spanish) when speaking English; and (2) the dynamics of repair during pair work, a frequently used technique for eliciting conversation. Verbal…

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…

Early speech-act theorists studied isolated speech acts, often in terms of single sentences invented by the investigator, an approach that had obvious limitations. It is now known that speech acts ought to be investigated by looking at utterances in their full interactional context. A hierarchical model of the structure of conversation that is…

A discussion of points raised by Dell Hymes in his article "On Communicative Competence" leads to a proposal for a clearer and more comprehensive theory of communicative competence based on two models, a matrix of discourse analysis and a model of communication interaction. Pedagogical implications of the theory are considered, including the…

Fifty-four high aptitude undergraduates and 46 moderate-to-low aptitude undergraduates were divided into four treatment groups and were given a pretest during which they learned and recalled a map of a small town in five successive trials. Two weeks later, each group was given a different treatment with a varying degree of explicitness of…

Three cooperating teacher-student teacher dyads identified as "most effective" and three dyads identified as "least effective" were compared and contrasted to determine characteristics that distinguished the more from the least effective experiences. Ten quantitatively scored instruments, administered to both cooperating teachers and student…

The project studied a critical aspect of school performance, how children know how to display interactional competence during classroom lessons. Using videotapes of classroom lessons and interviews with participants, the study analyzed the language used by teachers and students as well as their physical behaviors to infer the knowledge needed for…

A multivariate modeling approach was developed to assess the impact of changes in aptitude requirement minimums on U.S. Air Force technical training outcomes. Initially, interviews were conducted with technical training personnel to identify significant student inputs, course content, and training outcome variables. Measures of these variables…