A program was developed for improving listening skills so as not to interfere with the cognitive processing of directions. The targeted population consisted of third, fourth, fifth, and eighth grade students in a growing middle class community located in the Midwest United States. Problems of decreased listening ability were documented through…

A fourth-grade teacher in a Spanish partial immersion program describes her search for and use of Latin American folk tales to enhance the curriculum and student learning. Excerpts from the teacher's journal over a period of a year, and covering the beginnings of two school years, reflect on her experiences and on student comprehension and…

A study examined whether the more inviting text structure of informational storybooks (compared to an information book) influences comprehension of scientific information. Ninety-six third-grade subjects were drawn from eight classrooms in four elementary schools in a mid-size metropolitan area in the southern United States. Within each class, six…

A study examined the development of reading, written expression and listening comprehension over 3 years. The participants were 77 students in Brisbane, Australia, who were identified by school staff as having a learning difficulty at the end of grade one and who were matched with the same number of normally achieving children attending the same…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine how well Down Syndrome (DS) adolescents and young adults, relative to other mentally handicapped (MH) individuals, comprehend single words and simple sentences. Samples of 26 DS and 26 MH individuals were matched on intelligence and chronological age and were administered audiological, language,…

This instructional guide for Alberta's (Canada) secondary school program in French second language instruction presents instructional plans and describes specific classroom techniques and activities for listening comprehension and oral production. Section 1 outlines the overall objectives and structure of the program. Section 2 addresses the…

Recent literature on individual differences in verbal ability indicates that people demonstrating high verbal comprehension are quicker and more accurate in identifying lexical items, as well as more rapid in parsing sentences. They are not, however, more sensitive to the general gist of a passage, and thus do not respond to priming from context…

This study gathered information on the acquisition of affixes in Urdu by native children. The research was carried out in the city of Irbid, in northern Jordan, and in the capital city of Amman. Data consist of tape-recorded, naturally occurring and elicited speech of 13 children aged 2.4 to 9 years. The children were native speakers of Urdu,…

The IDEA Oral Language Proficiency Test (IPT II), an individually-administered measure of speaking and listening proficiency in English as a Second Language designed for secondary school students, is described and discussed. The test consists of 91 items and requires 5-25 minutes to administer. Raw scores are converted to one of seven proficiency…

Selection procedures for the Wellington (New Zealand) Polytechnic Journalism Program were studied. An exploratory analysis of 1983 selection data was undertaken, resulting in elimination of one selection test and establishment of a provisional cutoff for 1984 applicants. In the principal study, the following four aspects were examined: (1)…

Impromptu speech is heard only once, at a rate of perception that depends on the speaker's delivery, and is specifically adapted to the listeners. These features trigger cognitive activities that facilitate translation. Impromptu speech is characterized by a constant interconnection between cognitive competence and language competence and between…

A study explored whether teaching the comprehension skills of inference, drawing conclusions, sequencing, and cause and effect would increase student achievement in reading and language while at the same time imparting social science content. Subjects, 197 eighth grade students in the experimental group and 192 eighth grade students in the control…

A study of the relationship of teacher attitudes toward and comprehension of Black English examined certain characteristics of a group of university graduate students in education in relation to their self-evaluations of Black English comprehension, stated attitudes, and types of interpretation errors. The characteristics of graduate students…

Preliminary results of a comparison of the language modifications made by teachers when telling stories to native English speakers and non-native speakers of English at various proficiency levels suggest that teachers need to do more than make the routine modifications in linguistic input to lower-level learners. Teachers need to: (1) act on the…

Because Australia does not include listening instruction in its higher education curriculum does not mean that Australians deny its significance as an important communication skill. Rather, the assumption is that the best place to teach listening is in the elementary schools, a contention that few educators would reject. Four specific…