This monograph, the sixth in a series on the development of the reading process, is concerned with the development of reading comprehension. In the first chapter, "Comprehension in Listening and Reading: Same or Different," Joseph H. Danks analyzes the evidence for the proposition that tbe comprehension processes for language in print and language…

The experiment was designed to see whether children differ from adults in the ability to understand nonverbal responses of other children. Ten third-grade children were secretly filmed while watching a very easy and a very hard math lesson. Third graders, sixth graders, and adults (college students) were asked to judge, based on a film of each…

This descriptive study was conducted to evaluate the need for critical reading-listening instruction in the second and third grades. The subjects were 203 second and third graders from two northwest Florida elementary schools. The subjects were tested in groups of 10 to 15 students with critical listening ability being evaluated by using a…

The "Tell-And-Find Picture Game" is designed to teach both speaking and listening comprehension skills to preschool children. The game is arranged to provide a cooperative experience for two players who take turns in the role of a speaker and of a listener. In order to test the effectiveness of the game in encouraging cognitive gains, a…

The present study explores accuracy and speed of responses by the five-year-old child to expanded and conjoined sentences. The following factors were considered: (a) number of transformations, (b) types of transformations, (c) auxiliary-type sentence expansion and (d) type of query (those designed to elicit responses which should reflect…

This paper provides background on the procedures currently used in the language interviews conducted by the Peace Corps in testing Peace Corps Volunteer/Trainee performance in host country languages. The purpose of these face-to-face interviews, which are based on the interviews used by the Foreign Service Institute, is "to give the student…

A project has been initiated to develop educational games for teaching cognitive skills to Head Start children. It is hypothesized that while a game format may be less efficient and less effective than conventional methods for the teaching of specific skills, the use of games in the curriculum will lead to significant improvement in attitude…

Since listening plays such a large role in communication and learning, audio tapes can function in an important fashion in the design and delivery of instruction. In addition, recent research indicates that compressed audio tapes, in which speech is edited electronically by a sampling method so that the words-per-minute rate is increased without…

Public speaking texts urge speakers to organize their message in order to increase their audience's comprehension of it. Tests were run to determine if listeners understand better when three message organization variables are employed in a speech: explicit statement of the central idea, explicit statement of the main points, and transitions before…

Using 64 fourth- and fifth-grade girls and boys as experimentals, a study was made of whether time-compressed speech, within the limits of 160-367 words-per-minute rates, is feasible as an adequate avenue for learning certain types of material when the subjects have been provided with extended, systematic training in its use through gradual…

The purpose of this preliminary report was to provide information on the New Approach Method, on program effectiveness which can be used for decision-making. The first fifty children, half boys, half girls, were tested for attitudes toward Reading-Related Activities. Immaturity of children caused a delay in the completion of this program, since…

The present study explores accuracy and speed of responses by the five-year-old child to expanded and conjoined sentences. The following factors were considered: (a) number of transformations, (b) types of transformations, (c) auxiliary-type sentence expansion and (d) type of query (those designed to elicit responses which should reflect…

This study was based on the hypothesis that involvement in the dialogue of a lesson may increase students' opportunities to understand the concepts being discussed and may enlarge the teacher's opportunities to diagnose and respond to students' learning problems. Sixty teachers from the Stanford University Secondary Teacher Education Program…

A sample of 90 children drawn from kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade participated in a study of ability to decode ambiguous and unambiguous verbal messages. Subjects were read 12 message stems, each followed by a question pertaining to the contents of the stem. For half of the messages, the meaning of the questions was unambiguous; for…