This paper discusses a practicum that developed a pilot program in interpersonal communication, creating a pattern of courses that would instruct students in the use of listening/talking skills for dyadic and small group situations. The paper shows how the need for this program was established and assessed and how a multidisciplinary committee…

The four papers in this collection discuss language perception and comprehension and report on experiments in those areas. The first paper, "The Influence of Non-Linguistic Knowledge on Perceiving and Verifying Sentences," discusses the reliance of language perception and comprehension on the interaction of linguistic and world…

The report of the Bullock Committee of Enquiry was published in January 1975, under the title "A Language for Life," and presented extensive recommendations concerning all aspects of English teaching, including reading, writing, talking, and listening, the role of initial and inservice training, and monitoring of general levels of…

This paper reports the outcomes of a correlational study that examined the relationships between visual and auditory perceptual skills, on the one hand, and comprehension that is independent of decoding, on the other. Five sets of test scores--a visual perceptual test (Coloured Progressive Matrices), an auditory perceptual test (Auditory Motor…

The purposes of this study were to determine if training in listening would result in the improvement of both reading and listening skills among black students, and if there would be any differences between the results produced by a passive approach to teaching listening, a direct approach to teaching listening, and the offering of no special…

This study investigated children's performance with the passive-transformation when both the mode of presentation and the mode of response were verbal. The study was also designed to provide a framework for the examination of theoretical issues regarding strategies in speech perception. Kindergarten and first-grade children individually heard 6…

The purpose of this study was to determine with precise measurements of time and carefully constructed posttests whether sighted students in a college course would save time and achieve higher scores when listening to cognitive information using variable time compressors as compared with students listening using normal speed tape recorders. The…

This study investigated the effect of the sex of an oral interpreter and the sex of the dramatic character portrayed on audience evaluation of performer effectiveness and audience comprehension of the passage presented. Two interpreters, one male and one female, each performed six monologues, three of which were feminine and three of which were…

The purpose of this module is to facilitate the establishment of Listener Programs manned by trained volunteers. It was developed as a support material for a program originated by the author in which volunteers serve in a listening capacity for elementary and secondary school students on a part-time basis. This module seeks to provide…

"The Listener Program Handbook" gives basic information to counselors and volunteers who intend to participate in a volunteer listener program in an educational setting. Included are: (1) guidelines for recruitment of volunteers; (2) guidelines for orientation of volunteers, parents and students; (3) job descriptions for both counselors…

A group study method was selected for Tanzanian educational radio campaigns based on the theory that adults are more motivated to learn when they are actively involved. Groups of approximately 12 adults and a group adviser followed the pattern of reading, listening, discussing, decision making, and action. The instructional materials used…

The short-range purposes of this study were (1) to determine parental attitudes about the appropriateness of two varieties of Black English for their children in three contexts (classroom, neighborhood, and home) and in four language arts areas (listening, speaking, reading, and writing), and (2) to show how parents' attitudes are related to their…

Previous studies show that a listener has the potential to receive recorded information at a rate far exceeding the rates that are used for conversation and for the production of tape recordings. However, few studies have examined listeners' rate preferences. Thus, 48 elementary school children in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade listened to a series…

This curriculum guide for the language arts program is divided into four major sections. Section 1, Decoding, discusses such topics as visual discrimination, identifying colors, sight words, likenesses and differences, accent, compounds, contractions, possessives, abbreviations, syllables, hyphenated words, choral reading, correct phrasing,…

The purposes of this study were to examine the degree of comprehension shown by a group of college students when listening to a lecture at the normal rate of 175 words per minute and at the time-compressed rate of 275 words per minute for forty minutes, and to assess students' attitudes toward the new medium of time-compressed speech by means of a…