Recently the relevance of dialectological study to reading instruction has become apparent. The teacher speaks one language while the child, often disadvantaged, speaks another. The ability to identify utterances is attributed to human tolerance called the phoneme concept, a generalization of a potentially infinite number of sounds into a small…

This treatment of Thai phonology for beginning students begins with a simplified presentation of tones, consonants, and vowels. The descriptions use a minimum of linguistic terminology and the Thai examples appear in phonemic transcription. Following the introductory section on phonology are 18 pronunciation exercises which drill the tones and…

In standard American Spanish, the velar nasal surface variant of systematic /n/ occurs only in syllable-final environments, when the immediately following segment is a velar consonant. In many American Spanish dialects, however, "ng" may also optionally appear phonetically in other phonological environments. Cuban Spanish is such a…

Much research has focused on the question of whether phonological rules can and should be stated more appropriately in terms of the syllable than other units, notable segments and various boundaries. Formulation of rules without reference to the syllable obscures the motivation and unity of alternations. French has rules for consonant deletion…

This study is a sociolinguistic analysis of the variant pronunciation of /aI/, a selected phonological variable, by white informants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Through a purposive sampling procedure, 56 informants were interviewed to determine their pronunciation of /aI/. Informants were ranked according to education, income, and occupation to…

This style manual, published by the National Education Association (NEA) for writers and editors, has been prepared to update and clarify questions of literary usage. The manual contains sections on abbreviations and symbols, capitalization, dates and time, division of words, foreign words and phrases, italics, lists and enumerations, numbers and…

This paper provides background on the procedures currently used in the language interviews conducted by the Peace Corps in testing Peace Corps Volunteer/Trainee performance in host country languages. The purpose of these face-to-face interviews, which are based on the interviews used by the Foreign Service Institute, is "to give the student…

The present study tested the hypothesis that the ability to speak a second language authentically or like a native speaker was related to an individual's sensitivity to cues in interpersonal situations--his empathic capacity. A test of empathy consisting of silent film clips shown at various speeds was shown to subjects who were asked to indicate…

Previous research has found that spoken rehearsal is superior to silent rehearsal during verbal discrimination learning. The frequency theory posits that verbal discrimination (VD) learning improves as the frequency differential between the correct and incorrect member of each pair increases. Erlebacher, Hill, and Wallace (1967) tested this…

This study was designed (1) to contrast the performance of grade 2 children on the pronunciation of words which had been systematically taught through the basal reading program during grade 1, with words which had not been taught and were encountered at higher levels in that same basal reading program; and (2) to compare pupils' ability to…

Children's pronunciations of vowel clusters in synthetic words were analyzed in relation to common English words containing the same vowel clusters. Subjects were 436 elementary-school students of both high and low reading levels from a suburban, an urban, and a rural community. Independent variables were grade level, sex, reading level, community…

Children's pronunciations of vowel clusters in synthetic words were analyzed in relation to common English words containing the same vowel clusters. Subjects were 436 elementary students of both high and low reading levels from a suburban, an urban, and a rural community. Conclusions of the study, reported in Part 2, were (1) pronunciations more…

Children's pronunciations of vowel clusters in synthetic words were analyzed in relation to common English words containing the same vowel clusters. Subjects were 436 elementary students of both high and low reading levels from a suburban, an urban, and a rural community. Discussion of the problem and procedures of the study are found in Part 1,…

The study was designed to determine the extent to which auditory and visual stimuli influence certain sound productions of 250 children (preschool-third grade). (Author)

Discusses the importance of pronunciation in teaching English as a second language. The role of stress in English is emphasized in particular. (KM)