The value and uses of formative evaluation in the school context are discussed. Normative, criterion-based, and "ecological" approaches to formative evaluation are defined, and three general purposes are identified: to fine-tune instruction; to make instruction of larger numbers of students more effective, and to convey to teachers a more…

A study of interlanguage comprehension, part of a larger project by the Gothenburg research group, investigated the telephone conversations between advanced learners and native speakers of Swedish. In four of the eight conversations, the non-native speakers called the public library to get information on how to borrow books; in the other four the…

This collection of papers focuses on how adults communicate with children in institutional settings such as public schools and day care centers, and how professionals in the field of communication disorders communicate among themselves. Papers include: "Introduction: Linguistic Theories and Language Interaction" (Madeline M. Maxwell); "Inuit…

An analysis of utterances made by children and teachers in Norwegian day care centers over a period of several years suggests that from a communicative and functional viewpoint, young children's use of language depends on: (1) the kind of play activitiy; and (2) the preschool teacher's participation and language, which reflects her attitude and…

A study investigated how Chinese children and adults interpreted sentences containing universal quantifiers and existential quantifiers. The purpose was to get preliminary evidence on whether Chinese children understand scope relations and whether they know which relations are possible for particular syntactic configurations. Subjects were 192…

A study assessed the practical use of the simplified speech pattern approach to teaching lipreading in a tone language by comparing performance using an acoustic hearing-aid and a Sivo-aid in a tone labelling task. After initial assessment, subjects were given training to enhance perception of lexically contrastive tones, then post-tested. The…

Recent research on language learning and its implications for language teachers and others interested in language pedagogy and practice is summarized. The review takes the form of the following pedagogical questions: In what ways does knowing one language help and hinder the learning of a second?; What is "comprehensible input," and is it really…

A theory of how people learn certain procedural skills is presented. It is based on the idea that the teaching and learning that goes on in a classroom is like an ordinary conversation. The speaker (teacher) compresses a non-linear knowledge structure (the target procedure) into a linear sequence of utterances (lessons). The listener (student)…

U.S. research-doctorate programs in the humanities were assessed by a committee of the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils. Attention was focused on 522 programs in nine disciplines in the humanities that award research doctorates. The effectiveness of these programs in preparing students for research careers was assessed. Indices…

A collection of essays addresses aspects of the "Language Utilities," the general term for the area of the conjunction of computer science and linguistics. The following are English translations of the titles of the articles in the collections: "Industrialization of the French Language and Its Maintenance as an Important Language of…

A study of Greek speakers' ability to understand and produce two varieities of codes--Katharevousa (K) and Demotic (D)--is reported. The investigation was undertaken to provide evidence supporting or refuting the Greek government's decision to legislate Demotic as the official language of the country. A sample of 545 informants were tested with a…

A study investigated the retention and loss of school-learned foreign language skills. Subjects were 150 students of Dutch secondary schools with 4 or 6 years of French language instruction and 0, 2, and 4 years of disuse. Nine tests of general language proficiency, listening and reading comprehension, phonology, vocabulary, and grammar were…

Analysis of the discourse in an informal interview with a 14-year-old, female, Australian high school student takes a feminist poststructuralist perspective, applying concepts from ethnomethodology. In the course of talking about her social world, the subject articulates two distinct discourses of adolescent femininity. As an observable…

Since 1979, the Education Information Network in the European Community (EURYDICE) has been conducting seminars designed to improve understanding of the different educational systems of the member states and to facilitate network cooperation. The papers in this document were given by speakers both from the Irish Department of Education and other…

In order to build robust natural language processing systems that can detect and recover from miscommunication, the investigation of how people communicate and how they recover from problems in communication described in this artificial intelligence report focused on reference problems which a listener may have in determining what or whom a…