A teacher describes how she has incorporated oral assessment into her classroom. Having students comment on each other's work and extending classroom conversation are seen as ways to facilitate oral assessment. (PK)

Presents two methods of enhancing therapeutic relationships through having special education teachers observe and use students' verbal and nonverbal behaviors during social interactions. Discusses how teachers can identify students' predominant sensory modalities used to communicate experiences and can adopt behaviors similar to their students'…

Examines verbal interactions of mothers and fathers with their school-age children (9 and 12 years of age) during structured sessions. Mothers, more than fathers, tend to use more problem-solving behaviors with their 9-year-olds than with their 12-year-olds and boys discriminate more than girls in their use of problem-solving behaviors with…

Reviews the present status of the categories developed by the Writing Research Unit at the University of London for classifying discourse function. (HOD)

Examined the effect of increasing verbalization of positive self-referent statements on self-esteem scores in 30 children. The experimental group received teacher praise contingent upon verbalizing positive self-referent statements and made significantly more positive self-referent statements than control students. Self-esteem scores for…

Compares and analyzes speech samples of Mayan and American mothers addressing their infant children. Results indicate that although higher pitch has been described as a universal feature of baby talk registers worldwide, the Mayan mothers do not utilize this feature. It is suggested that pitch-raising strategies may be sociolinguistically…

Examines patterns of social interaction among 19 cancer patients ranging in age from 8 to 21 years and their caregivers (i.e., medical personnel, teachers, family, and friends). Conditional probability analyses of patient behavior following caregiver vocalizations at three phases of medical treatment indicate variability and change in patients'…

Investigates the relationship between the oral and written language of one college-level basic writing student who is a speaker of vernacular Black English (VBE). Reports that neither VBE patterns in the student's oral language nor other features of orality that previous research has identified account for his writing problems. (HOD)

Notes the applicability of communication science theory to the reference process, particularly in areas involving human behavior, and discusses the roles of both verbal and nonverbal communication (body language, paralanguage, proxemics, and environmental factors) in the reference interview. Forty-one references are provided. (EJS)

The use of interpersonal verbal routines such as greetings and thanks is examined as a universal phenomenon of human languages. Examples from Syrian Arabic, American English and other languages are used to show differing patterns of structure and use, susceptible of grammatical and sociolinguistic analysis. (Author/RM)

An important use for television is described by a professor of English at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, who emphasizes that effective speech is especially significant to the engineer. Student conversations were videotaped and played back for class evaluation. (LBH)

Many changes in job training and distance education have had a negative effect on the traditional oral communication class, while the need for better oral communication skills is increasing dramatically. Instructors now face the challenge of convincing administrators that the need for oral communication education is too important to be eliminated…

This book represents a strong consensus on the skills, knowledge, and abilities that all students should be able to master in language arts at specific grade levels during 13 years in the California public school system. Standards for each grade level are broken down into the following categories: Reading, Writing, Written and Oral English…

Follows a group of black college students during a semester course designed to enrich their verbal skills and their understanding of themselves through guided study of literary works by black writers. (TO)

A brief look at compressed speech, which offers opportunities for circumventing the information explosion and effecting economy in time. It also permits training in listening and encourages development of powers of concentration. (Author/HB)