SOME EXPERIMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES CONDUCTED DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY UTILIZING PHONETIC ALPHABETS AS TRANSITIONAL MEDIA FOR INITIAL READING INSTRUCTION WERE SURVEYED TO PROVIDE A HISTORY OF THIS ASPECT OF EDUCATION. THE ACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES SURROUNDING EACH OF THE MAJOR USES OF SUCH TRANSITIONAL MEDIA ARE CONSIDERED IN DETAIL. THE…

This study investigated the relationship between perception and production in children's phonological learning to determine whether perceptual confusions could account for the patterns of substitution and deletion found in 2-year-olds' speech. A total of 14 children were presented pairs of toy stimuli, with each pair composed of a familiar item…

In an absolute frequency judgment task, 130 sixth graders received either high-frequency (Hi-F), low-frequency, high-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Hi-M), or low-frequency, low-meaningfulness (Lo-F/Lo-M) words selected from the 1944 Thorndike-Lorge list. Subjects were asked to either pronounce the words aloud, listen to the examiner prounounce the written…

The purpose of this study was to determine the part of a word upon which first and fifth graders depend most in word recognition and to determine whether any change occurs between grades one and five. Fifty-six first grade students and sixty-three fifth graders were tested. The children individually read sixty words from flash cards presented by…

A study was conducted to explore the relationship of the pronunciation of /r/ to social class and age in the speech of whites in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Tape-recorded interviews were conducted with a sample of informants representing a cross-section of ages and social classes in the city. Conversation was elicited on a number of topics of common…

This paper discusses some of the factors involved in deciding which variety of English to teach in areas of African where English is the language of education. Three main alternatives are recognized: American English, British English, or African English. Until recently, English was taught almost exclusively with British materials, and students…

The first chapter of this grammar of prose Tamil introduces the alphabet and orthography. Following chapters deal with parts of speech and verb constructions. A final chapter deals with colloquialisms and foreign words. Appended are lists of abbreviations, grammatical and temporal terms, and other information useful to the student, as well as a…

This study was designed to compare children and adults on their initial ability to identify and reproduce novel speech sounds and to evaluate their performance after receiving several training sessions in producing these sounds. The novel speech sounds used were two voiceless fricatives which are consonant phonemes in Arabic but which are…

The primary objective of this study was to find out if young (normal-hearing) children could be taught a novel vowel sound by means of visual information alone, that is, without benefit of auditory presentation of the sound or instructions on the shaping of the vocal tract for its production. A second objective was to find out whether the rate and…

This study compared accuracy of word identification in oral reading of materials in which polysyllabic words were spatially divided with performance on undivided materials of comparable difficulty. Retarded readers in junior high schools were tested with two forms of the Gilmore Oral Reading Test. The experimental form presented polysyllables…

This annotated bibliography contains listings of books for use by students in beginning (1 and 2), intermediate (3 and 4), and advanced (5, 6, and 7) levels. For each of the levels, the books appear in one of three categories: basic textbooks, supplementary language skills, and reading skills. Pronunciation books are listed separately, some of…

A DISCUSSION OF THE LINGUISTIC AND PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF HAUSA (A LANGUAGE OF WEST AFRICA) ACCOMPANIES A TEXT WHICH CONSISTS OF BASIC SENTENCES, NOTES, AND GRAMMATICAL DRILLS. THE BASIC SENTENCES ARE DIALOGS TO BE MEMORIZED, AND THEIR ENGLISH RENDERINGS ARE MEANT TO BE SITUATIONAL EQUIVALENTS, NOT LITERAL TRANSLATIONS. THE NOTES EXPLAIN…

It is shown that a sentence spoken in a foreign language (here, English), though grammatically and lexically correct, may not evoke the proper reaction, because of incorrect intonation. Teaching texts have neglected this field. Some suggestions are given for avoiding misunderstandings caused by faulty intonation. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Twenty-four deaf and 24 hearing children were asked to locate three target letters (c,g, and h) in prose. Target letters were either phonemically modal (pronounced, as g in badge) or nonmodal (silent, as g in rough). Hearing children, as expected, detected significantly more modal than nonmodal forms, while deaf children detected the same number…

The present investigation examines three hypotheses concerning the development of temporal coordination of consonant clusters in the speech of children at four age levels. Results reveal that five and seven-year-olds can be separated from older children and adults on the basis of absolute duration of consonants. (CHK)