Purpose: To compare the perceived articulation rate of boys with fragile X syndrome (FXS) with that of chronologically age-matched (CA) boys and to determine segmental and/or prosodic factors that account for perceived rate. Method: Ten listeners used direct magnitude estimation procedures to judge the articulation rates of 7 boys with FXS only, 5…

This article concerns a central issue in education as an institutional activity: instructions and their role in guiding student activities and understanding. In the study, we investigate the tensions between specifics and generalities in the joint production of guided action. This issue is explored in the context of handicraft education--or more…

This study investigated the intelligibility and comprehensibility of natural speech in comparison to synthetic speech. The results demonstrate the type of errors; the relationship between intelligibility and comprehensibility; and the correlation between intelligibility and comprehensibility and key factors, such as the frequency of use of…

This study is concerned with the question whether, and to what extent, listeners' previous exposure to music in everyday life, and expertise as a result of formal musical training, play a role in making expressive timing judgments in music. This was investigated by using a Web-based listening experiment in which listeners with a wide range of…

While music is as old as humanity, conducting as a profession is relatively new. Although a nineteenth-century model has served as the template for the training of conductors, many undergraduate conducting students will spend their teaching careers working with inexperienced and/or amateur musicians. Additionally, the size of many ensembles in…

This article examines the role of direct instruction in promoting listening and reading comprehension. Instructional examples from 2 programs of intervention research focused on improving comprehension; the Story Read Aloud Program and the Embedded Story Structure Routine are used to illustrate principles of direct instruction. An analysis of…

Articles collected in this journal examine the phenomenon of listening, and define listening skills essential for teachers and students in the fields of speech and theater. Included are "Your Subject--My Business," an examination of teaching priorities in the area of oral communication; "Swing Your Spirit to Sound: Listening Assertively in the…

Effective listening comprehension skills are important as the world becomes increasingly global and television, radio, and the Internet become forums for English communication. However, many countries, such as Tunisia, do not use English as a first or second language, but as a foreign language. Therefore, realizing the importance of English, the…

Get your students motivated! As a teacher, you know how essential student buy-in is to instructional effectiveness: It is not enough to merely have students participate in the classroom activities you select--you need to get them to want to participate. In "Fun-tastic Activities for Differentiating Comprehension Instruction, Grades 2-6", you will…

A significant image of classroom lectures is the one presented in J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. At Harry's Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the most torturous class is easily History of Magic, which is, incidentally, the only class in the school taught by a ghost. Being taught by a ghost could be quite exciting: not so in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine teacher perceptions of the practice of co-creating leadership and its potential impacts on student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: Using a quantitative approach, the study compared the levels of the practice of co-creating leadership dispositional values and institutional conditions that…

The experiment investigated the benefit to second language (L2) sentence comprehension of priming word meanings with brief visual exposure to first language (L1) translation equivalents. Native English speakers learning Mandarin evaluated the validity of aurally presented Mandarin sentences. For selected words in half of the sentences there was…

Early intervention aims to prevent poor literacy outcomes associated with social disadvantage. This study examined whether the short-term positive effect of a preschool classroom-based oral language and phonological awareness (PA) programme was maintained and transferred to literacy 2 years later. The vocabulary knowledge, grammatical skill,…

Listening and reading comprehension of paragraph-length material are considered higher-order language skills fundamental to social and academic functioning. Using ecologically relevant language stimuli that were matched for difficulty according to developmental level, we analyze the effects of task, age, neuropsychological skills, and post-task…

The authors examined the cognitive benefits of physical manipulation. Participants were 76 kindergarten and first-grade students randomly assigned to 2 strategies: stories with pictures or manipulation. In the pictures strategy, participants listened to story content and viewed pictures. In the manipulation strategy, participants moved…