Although marriage enrichment programs have been shown to be effective for many couples, a multidimensional approach to assessment is needed in investigating these groups. The components of information and social support in successful marriage enrichment programs were compared in a completely crossed 2 x 2 factorial design with repeated measures.…

Changes in mothers' strategies for eliciting verbal responses (EVR's) as a function of child age were investigated in this study. Seven mother-child dyads were observed in their homes when the children were 16, 21, 24, 30, and 34 months of age. Mother EVR's were coded according to syntactic form, type of cue for child response, and complexity of…

At the heart of the enterprise of providing reading materials to new readers is the writer. The writer must write before the new literates can read and must write both effectively and interestingly. Although talent helps, acquired skills play an important part in writing, especially in expository writing. More important, to enable them to produce…

The intricate quilt pattern of child language development can be pieced together from the numerous swatches of each child's language fabric which have been gathered by watching, looking, and listening when young children write. The necessity of watching, looking, and listening is demonstrated by the example of a preschooler's verbal protocol which…

To gain insights into what makes student/teacher conversations about writing more and less successful, a sample of freshman composition teachers was asked to tape record all of their writing conferences. In addition, student writing samples were collected. In all, the tape recordings of 48 writing conferences were transcribed and prepared for…

A study investigated how children report epistemic modality and focused on two main questions: (1) How do children reproduce modal devices that are present in the original (to-be-reported) discourse? and (2) How do children use different linguistic means of quotation--direct, indirect, or other--in this situation? Sixty monolingual French-speaking…

Results of a study designed to gather evidence about the effect of student's overt verbalization on performance and retention after instruction on a set of geometric concepts are reported. The independent variable, overt verbalization, was manipulated following the procedure used by Pereira (l973) which involved an experimenter questioning…

The rhetorical functions of history depend on the domain in which history is used, with no connotations of interpretive priority attaching to the social or the academic realm. The appropriation of history in support of social causes as radically opposed as socialism and fascism fuels the temptation to subsume history under ideology, with the…

In order to improve instruction in basic speech courses, a program was developed adapting creative problem solving to speech preparation and to interactive speech communication. The program, called O-I-C--Orientation, Incubation, and Composition--and based on Howell's five levels of competence and their implications, begins with a thorough study…

The rhetoric program at the University of Iowa is an integrated skills program based on four assumptions: (1) writing and speaking are modes of communication, (2) writing and speaking are equally important, (3) writing and speaking can be taught together, and (4) the administration, relevant faculty, and teachers must believe that writing and…

Since 1969, the graduate school of business at the University of Michigan has been collecting data on newly promoted executives (chief executive officers, presidents, and vice presidents in business and industry). In 1980, the questionnaire was revised to include more questions concerning their academic preparation for a business career. Responses…

The major purpose of this study was to define the particular ways children's informal interactions in groups are important in their negotiations of playground games within school settings. Data, gathered over a 3-month period on the playgrounds of three elementary schools, consisted of 23 audiotaped records of children's spontaneously organized…

A study examined the manner in which conversants and observers of conversants attribute intent to messages in ongoing information-seeking conversations. College students were used to evolve and test three scenarios, in which evasion was more or less likely, and a system of classifying intention in information seeking conversations. Fifty-four…

The literature on the verbal behavior of teachers and their methods of testing students was reviewed. Studies included those on structuring (focusing attention on the topic), soliciting (including questions, commands, imperatives, and requests), responding (answering questions), and reacting (clarifying, synthesizing, expanding, or making positive…

This study investigated the effects of an older sibling's aid in an object sorting task on the younger sibling's conceptual style. Children aided by siblings used descriptive style less than children who worked alone; children aided by siblings four years older used inferential style more than children aided by siblings two years older. Children…