When laboratory facilities are insufficient, techniques can be used to help mature students develop aural/oral competency. Techniques include simultaneous large and small group repetition of specially designed readings, note-taking from recorded and live conversations for further activities, random partnering pre- and post-class, telephone…

The manual is designed to be used in workshops to train English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teachers and contains a series of exercises for teaching oral skills from dialogues to pronunciation, with some practice in listening comprehension included. An introductory section contains notes to workshop participants and facilitators. The exercises are…

Classroom use of role-playing in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction in Japan is described. The purpose is to improve students' verbal and nonverbal communication skills and to link and use previously built schema, in both structured and improvised situations. Units designed around a short listening passage, a short reading passage, and…

This paper examines the rating scale data of oral proficiency tests analyzed by a Rasch Analysis focusing on an item map and factor analysis. In discussing the item map, the difficulty order of six items and students' answering patterns are analyzed using descriptive statistics and measures of central tendency of test scores. The data ranks the…

Three presentations are provided from Symposium 14, Workforce Diversity, of the Academy of Human Resource Development (HRD) 2000 Conference Proceedings. "Cross-Organizational vs. Localized Participation: A Case Study on Workplace Diversity Dialogues Implementation" (Martin B. Kormanik, Daniel A. Krieger, Timothy E. Tilghman) compares…

We, the two authors of this article, have used dialogue journals for many years: Pearly with primary school students and George with secondary, tertiary, and adult students. Below, we share our ideas and those of others about this valuable learning tool. In the examples from our students' journals, names have been replaced with letters. [This…

Assessed language quality of 15 four-year olds with three conversational partners: a center-care teacher, an older child, and a younger child. Data coded included number of turns, utterances, gaps, statements versus questions, contingent responses, and amount of self-talk. Found that children take more turns with an adult but produce fewer…

Outlines a series of components essential to the construction of an interfaith dialog as a transformative experience: (1) study and reflection with and in the presence of the other; (2) an ongoing reevaluation of self-understanding in light of new information; and (3) formal and informal sharing of truths. (MJP)

Discusses the ways languages of Europe render the "given"-"new" distinction on the basis of data collected by means of presenting speakers of various languages with the task of reconstructing a route on a map. The article raises questions about the nature of "wh"-pronouns in English and about what is shared by these…

Describes the development of the field of instructional science through a hypothetical dialogue. Topics discussed include programed instruction; behavioral psychology; learning theorists; cognitive psychology; concept learning; military training; applied versus basic research; behaviorism; computer-assisted instruction; educational evaluation;…

Overviews differences regarding goals and approaches for foreign language (FL) education and identifies obstacles to consensus. The author situates the different discourse communities interested in FL education, and the contexts providing the "raison d'etre" for these differences. Two responses to this overview and the author's reaction to them…

Tests applicability of dialogical research methods (psychosocial methods of P. Freire) to the investigation of three groups of six to eight Chicano college students. Vignettes incorporating isolation, achievement, or ethnic identity are used to initiate dialogs. Experiences of ethnicity and education from these dialogs can help improve academic…

Fourth and fifth grade learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled students, who participated in a socially mediated writing intervention emphasizing the process of writing, writing strategies, and the role of teacher-student and student-student dialogue, were compared to a similar group of students who had not participated in the intervention.…

This article is divided into two parts. The first discusses theoretical issues related to the software program introduced, and the second deals with practical issues, including technical and pedagogical considerations in implementing the program. (Author/VWL)

Studied partner and site novelty for mother-infant, stranger-infant, and mother-stranger face-to-face interactions. Found that adult-infant vocal timing measures at age 4 months did predict attachment and cognition at age 12 months. Comparison of mother-infant and stranger-infant interactions suggested the dynamics of infants' early…