The adult Soviet immigrant student's transition experience in the United States is examined from three perspectives: socio-historical, methodological, and linguistic. Emphasis is placed on the necessary adaptation of existing "survival skill" English as a second language (ESL) activities in order to accommodate the cultural perceptions…

This paper describes part of a larger study dealing with syntax and semantics of the child's early speech about motion and location. It suggests that goal, defined as the point at which a motion ends and a resulting locative state begins, is the organizing principle for the semantics of motion and location. The data presented here are from two…

Linguistic and pedagogical considerations about children's use of a second language in the classroom are discussed with reference to samples of speech obtained from ten to twelve year old children in Germany. The children had been taught the second language of English. The speech is examined in relation to functional and sociolinguistic criteria…

A study was designed to examine an underlying assumption regarding the use of the semantic differential in measuring the credibility and homophily of a communicator, namely, that responses to an ideal source position themselves at one extreme end of the scale, reflecting the monotonic function of the instrument such that the highest response…

Speech performance data, including hesitations in the stream of speech, fragmented words or phrases, retracings, and the use of intonation contours for noncommunicative purposes, are examined. It is proposed that these types of speech phenomena are indicative of underlying hypothesis testing and utterance planning strategies. Data produced by 48…

This book contains sets of basic objectives for elementary, middle, and high school language arts instruction that indicate the goals that the majority of students should achieve before high school graduation. Both exit objectives (to be mastered before high school graduation) and enabling objectives (specific behaviors/activities that help…

Recent research into the "forty-nine" songs and singing of the Kiowa Indians in southwestern Oklahoma is described in this paper. The paper first outlines the value of a process oriented approach to communication analysis that accents three primary variables: indexicality (the inherent situational nature of communicative acts),…

A Computer-Assisted Language Analysis System (CALAS) was developed as a syntactic and semantic analyzer of machine readable text in English. CALAS includes a set of computer programs, an algorithm for implementation, and human editors who assist the computer and its programmer in the processing of data. Data analysis is accomplished in three…

This report shows that verbal routines are not easily acquired by adult second language learners and it identifies some of the specific problems they have in acquiring routines. Empirical data concerning the role of verbal routines, (that is, fixed expressions which have been acquired as memorized wholes), in adult second language performance are…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 24 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: a social skills training program; facial kinesic correlates of terminal cancer patients; the relationships among indices of social cognition, motivation, and…

Thirteen manuscripts and extended reports on the nature of speech, instrumentation for its investigation, and practical applications of research are presented in this status report on speech research for the period of July-December 1979. The topics dealt with include speech perception, children's memory for sentences and word strings in relation…

In view of recent public demands for the establishment of minimum competency standards in a number of areas, including oral communication skills, and in view of classroom teachers' frequently inadequate training in speech communication, speech communication teachers have the responsibility of organizing and implementing oral communication…

Although the study of communication has been consistently recognized as a vital segment of legal training, it has not been universally adopted as part of the law school curriculum. A survey of 150 law schools was designed to determine the communication skills and training necessary for competent performance in both law school and professional…

The communication apprehension and interpersonal needs of college students in the People's Republic of China were examined and compared to similar data on college students in the United States, Korea, Japan, and Australia. The instruments used in the studies were the Personal Report of Communication Apprehension (PRCA) and the Fundamental…

One hundred and twenty kindergarten and second grade children from three different language environments were given a perceptual matching test and a verbal communication test to examine the relationship between language and cognitive performance. The object of the study was to focus on the cognitive processing demands imposed by the linguistic…