Describes a study of the intelligibility of three dialects--standard English, New Yorkese, and Black English--for working-class adult English learners. Results showed that comprehension was significantly affected by dialect and that learner judgments of the speakers in terms of job status, friendliness, and appearance paralleled the…

Describes an attempt to bridge the gap between the English learned in the classroom and the English encountered outside of class and to improve listening comprehension by putting engineering undergraduates through an experimental course in which a weekly academic lecture would be the point of focus. Discusses outcomes of the experiment. (SED)

Variation in three representative teacher input variables are compared across second language studies to derive viable hypotheses about instructional factors that contribute to second language development. The review indicates that, while the quality and quantity of comprehensible input are important, interactive pedagogical behaviors are also the…

Describes two teaching techniques for the foreign language classroom. The first involves the use of magazine pictures and simple drama techniques. The second, known as "task listening," asks students to listen only for certain things in a text and to carry out tasks such as completing maps, diaries, order forms, etc. (SED)

Reviews some of the research on listening comprehension and defines listening skills, such as comprehension of key points and "chunking." Describes an exercise using authentic oral and written material that is intended to develop reflective skills and suggests ways in which the exercise may be adapted for various learning levels. (SED)

Examines kindergarten and first-grade children's classifications and spellings and differences in their classifications of sounds from those of adults. In addition to these spelling, phoneme recognition, and phoneme deletion tasks, each child took the reading and spelling subtests of the Wide Range Achievement Test. (AS)

Reports on a study of language learners' comprehension of speech acts and discourse functions, referred to as pragmatic comprehension. Analyzes two types of learners' pragmatic misunderstandings: their failure to distinguish between phatic talk and referential talk, and their failure to identify the intended illocutionary force of indirect speech…

Suggests how transcripts of academic lectures and pseudo-cloze exercises developed from these transcripts may be used to help foreign students to become aware of the skills (e.g., recognition of conventions and cues which signal important information in lectures) involved in the process of listening to lectures. (SL)

The role of subvocalization in 12 learning disabled (LD) adolescent readers' comprehension difficulties was studied. Nondisabled and LD readers were compared on silent reading and listening comprehension of noun lexical, verb lexical, semantic, and inferential sentences under conditions of suppressed and nonsuppressed subvocalization. (Author/SW)

In a foreign language classroom, the students' job is that of mutual comprehension, among themselves and with the teacher, by not only attempting to understand but also understanding what is expected of them. It is this pattern of exchange that explains the slow rhythm and thematic progression of foreign language classes. (MSE)

Six journal articles (1972-1975) on auditory comprehension are presented, with their content and conclusions. These deal primarily with the objective evaluation of performance, giving suggestions for preparing and administering tests, example of game-type exercises, and other concrete suggestions. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

This paper discusses how to teach listening so that English-as-a-Second-Language students can develop a level of listening ability that is useful in the real world, not just in the classroom. It asserts that if teachers know the processes involved in listening comprehension and some features of spoken English, they can provide students with…

This book is designed to give beginning students immediate help with English pronunciation. The book concentrates on topics, such as rhythm, intonation, and sounds as grammar cues, that will make the biggest difference in students' ability to understand and communicate with others. With its graphics-based approach, the book makes it possible to…

As the instructional shortcomings of Focus on FormS and Focus on Meaning have surfaced, Focus on Form (i.e., drawing brief attention to linguistic forms while learners engage primarily in meaning) has slowly but steadily gained the attention of researchers and teachers. The research question underlying this study was whether Focus on Form could be…

Using a case study as illustrative material, the author argues that the linguistic growth of the child unfolds as a function of the interaction of several factors: Those that spring from within the child himself; those related to prenatal, natal, and post-natal events; and those that impinge on him from the environment. (Author/JM)