This report examines the importance of an individual's linguistic capability and its impact on academic achievement. Main areas of examination include an historical perspective on linguistics, descriptions of formal linguistics and psycholinguistics and their role in understanding academic achievement, and the educational implications of…

The Oral Communication Program (OCP) was established at Radford University, Virginia, in 1988 as a comprehensive program of oral communication across the curriculum. The OCP has generated student and faculty involvement using a variety of information outlets such as meetings, retreats, and communication-intensive courses. Faculty from the…

One of seven multicultural, nonsexist activity guides related to language arts, this guide offers a variety of teacher-developed activities for instruction in oral language and oral expression. The activities, which are presented in ascending order of grade level from kindergarten through sixth grade, are designed to develop oral language skills…

This handbook for kindergarten through grade eight provides instructional objectives for student mastery in the basic skills of reading, mathematics, written communication, and oral communication. The section on reading is divided into the following strands: word identification skills; vocabulary skills; comprehension (literal, inferential, and…

An undergraduate course in rhetorical criticism at Wilkes University incorporated a major component on the rhetoric of the American Woman's Suffrage Movement. Considerable time was devoted to critiquing "traditional" approaches to rhetorical criticism from a feminist perspective and to questioning the appropriateness of various…

This paper reviews the literature on the causes of job burnout, a condition which has been linked with high personnel turnover, friction with co-workers and supervisors, increased dissatisfaction with both the job and the organization, job withdrawal, decreased productivity and absenteeism. The paper discusses the communication skills necessary to…

The decontextualized nature of literacy has been a recurrent issue in discussions of the consequences of literacy over the last twenty years. The central thesis of these discussions is that the nature of written discourse itself leads directly or indirectly to changes in cognitive processing, linguistic progressing, cultural development, and/or…

One of a series designed to help districts refine and upgrade their current curricular offerings, this resource guide deals with the development of a unified K-12 language arts curriculum that combines the four major language arts components of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Following a brief foreword and list of acknowledgments, the…

Written to comply with Connecticut's legislative mandate that educational programs be planned, ongoing, and systematic, this guide to curriculum development in the language arts for kindergarten through twelfth grade advocates a curriculum in which there is a balance between basic skills programs--speaking, reading, writing, listening and…

Gallaudet College provides education for preschool age through adult hearing impaired persons. Because of the lack of clear and continuous communication during their developing years, students who come to the school have not learned the English language well and have had communication problems most of their lives. To address these problems,…

The oral proficiency interview, a one-to-one conversational interview structured to elicit the best performance the student can sustain, is based on a scale and test developed 30 years ago by the Foreign Service Institute. Interest in it has increased substantially in recent years, and further research and development of the measure for use in a…

Intended to serve as a model to aid school districts in developing and reviewing their language arts curricula, this curriculum guide for the elementary grades lists in parallel columns topics/concepts, learning outcomes, and sample learning objectives for language skills in the areas of oral communication, reading, and writing. Topics and…

Intended to serve as a model to aid school districts as they develop and review their language arts curricula, this curriculum guide for secondary school lists in parallel columns topics/concepts, learning outcomes, and sample learning objectives for language skills in the areas of oral communication, reading, and writing. Topics and concepts…

Since engineering graduates and other technical students are frequently expected to document their projects as well as present such material orally, a Speech and Technical Writing course was designed at a New Hampshire college to prepare students for both technical writing tasks and oral presentations of their material. The course provides an…

This booklet outlines the instructions for 10 games that have proved to be effective in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses. The games presented are divided into four categories: dialog games, vocabulary games, structure focus, and pronunciation practice. "The Chain Game" calls for students to take turns asking each other…