The two studies described in this monograph were designed to generate new ideas about the development of children's metacommunicative understanding and comprehension-monitoring abilities. Older subjects were more likely than younger subjects to detect inadequacies in communication; furthermore, younger children responded differently to…

Reports the results of a study that compared the effects of instruction in sentence combining to instruction in sentence reduction or element identification on growth in listening and reading comprehension. (AEA)

Describes 10 methods that have proven successful in improving the comprehension skills of problem readers, including the use of pictures, cloze-type exercises, and repeated readings. (FL)

This study shows that variations in paralinguistic stress cues, based upon Chafe's given--new and contrastiveness notions, can also influence which frameworks subjects use in comprehending ambiguous passages. Educational implications of schematic-triggering phenomena are discussed. (Author/GK)

Measures of comprehension of the content indicated no significant difference in the amount of information each group of students retained when the historical or biological content was presented to their particular group aurally at an expanded, normal, or compressed rate of speech. (Author)

Describes a French language course at the advanced level arranged for a group of Austrian railroad employees and based on the use of prerecorded excerpts from radio news broadcastings. Gives an account of the steps and tasks involved in progressing from a global interpretation to full comprehension. (MES)

Discusses the use of radio news broadcasts as instructional materials, citing some of the advantages they afford the user. Advantages include the homogeneity of mass media language, the frequency of news flashes, and the opportunity for individual work on related newspaper articles. Illustrates steps to move from global to total comprehension.…

Language comprehension performance on the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language (TACL) was investigated using three modes of test administration with 24 four-year-old children representing various categories of cognitive tempo. Results indicated that all Ss had similar expressive language abilities. (Author/SB)

Describes five uses of the overhead projector in English as a second language classes including crosswork puzzles, giving directions, dictation, spots as a way to consolidate the comparative and superlative using different sized examples, and other geometric shapes. (BK)

Referential communication skills of moderately mentally retarded adolescents (20 speaker/listener dyads with a mean age of 15.75 years) were investigated. In Study 1, S performance on referential communication activities (divided into three skill levels) was examined. Degree of idiosyncratic messages communicated was investigated in Study 2.…

Reviews several studies from the ERIC system that deal with the relationship between listening and reading skills and suggests resources for teaching listening skills. (GT)

Four age groups between 7 and 15 listened to a prose passage delivered at a slow or fast speech rate and structured to join or separate related pieces of information. A recall test followed immediately. Performance was correlated to subjects' age and sex. Implications for classroom teaching are considered. (Author/SJL)

Encoding voice information is a cognitively effortful, age sensitive process. For older adults, enhanced voice encoding under the intentional condition, relative to the incidental condition, was accompanied by a significant decrement in sentence recall. The age difference apparently reflects the diminished processing capacity of older adults.…

Listening was found to be a potential avenue for learning content area material. Further, findings underscore the value of a response format that minimizes involvement of expressive language in severely disabled students with identifiable expressive language difficulties. (Author)

Describes how, through the use of questionnaires and surveys conducted by the students, they can be aided to develop listening comprehension and to use their English in a social situation with native speakers who are strangers. The findings can be analyzed and assigned as a written report for homework. (PJM)