This volume contains six workshop papers, each of which deals with one or more aspects of communicative competence. These papers are primarily reports of certain techniques which have been found successful for teaching and testing the ability to communicate in a foreign language. "Communicative Competence: Safety Tips for Riders on the Latest…

Selected papers and discussions from the Conference of University Administrators held at University College of Swansea on March 31 - April 2, 1977 are presented. The characteristics of a departmental administrator are described, as well as his responsibilities and relationships with members of the staff in the department, with the central…

This insert to the Maryland State Board's regular newsletter, "Record," takes the place of an annual report. Its contents include an overview of higher education in the state, progress of the state plan, financing of higher education, equal educational opportunity efforts, accreditation, board responses to legislative recommendations in…

Results are reported of four community dialogues held in Seattle, Washington, involving members of the community, residents of the nearby Firlands Mini-Prison, and professionals working in various areas of legal and justice systems. The four dialogue sessions covered the following topics: (1) the correctional system as a reflection of social…

The annual report of the Coordinating Board, Texas College and University System for the fiscal year ending August 31, 1977 is presented. An overview of Board activities provides information on institutional authorization, higher education budget requests, institutional units in the College and University System, supply-and-demand career…

Three conference papers comprise the bulk of this report on understanding "new students" and their academic needs. "The Promise of Learning Through Developmental Programs", by Johnnie Ruth Clarke, deals with the effectiveness of developmental studies while shattering misconceptions surrounding the labels typically assigned these students, such as…

The Southeast Minnesota Educational Cooperative Service Unit (SMECSU) is an organization of public and nonpublic school districts that voluntarily joined together to provide educational programs and services which could best be done cooperatively. Of 54 school districts in the 11-county region, 23 public schools joined SMECSU the first year, along…

The conference reported here was held (1) to assist the Office of Health Resources/Health Resources Administration in developing a long-range plan and identifying strategies to improve the efficacy of women in the health system and (2) to recommend by priorities those actions which would have the most positive impact on the status of women in…

This paper, presented at a 1976 conference on the theory and practice of beginning reading instruction, introduces the theory that reading development occurs in stages patterned after Piaget's cognitive development stages. The stages include the prereading stage (until the age of six years); the decoding stage (first/second grade); the stage of…

The primary thesis of the "audread" model of language development is that children in a literate society first learn to think, then they learn to communicate and receive thoughts through oral language, and then they learn to communicate through written language (graphic representations). Four projects based on concepts from the audread…

Some basic pattern-analyzing functions that occur during the reading process are described in this paper. The functions deal mainly with the analysis of typographical factors such as word shape, spacing, and orientation, but they also interact with contextual variables. The research interpreted in the paper proposes an attentional model of reading…

The dependence of reading on speech is based on three assumptions: speech is the primary language system, acquired naturally without direct instruction; alphabetic writing systems are more or less phonetic representations of oral language; and speech appears to be an essential foundation for the acquisition of reading ability. By presupposing…

An exploration of specific deficits of learning disabled children, especially in the auditory system, is presented in this paper. Disorders of attention, perception, phonemic and visual discrimination, memory, and symbolization and conceptualization are considered. The paper develops several questions for teachers of learning disabled children to…

This paper discusses some specific issues about testing and relates the discussion to reading teachers and reading instruction. The issues that are discussed include the goals, criteria, and methods of classroom assessment. The paper concludes that teachers need to learn more about the process of assessment in order to use tests effectively, and…

A major problem that continues to plague United States education is the fact that large numbers of disadvantaged black students are not learning to read well enough to function in society. This paper discusses three reasons for the problem of teaching reading to these students. First, there exist no comprehensive developmental reading theories, no…