Focuses on the turn-taking patterns of Deaf signers and compares them with turn-taking patterns found in spoken interaction. Reports on research involving conversational data obtained from two Deaf friendship groups that aimed to establish whether Deaf interactants orient to a one-at-a-time model of turn-taking or whether there was any evidence to…

This study examined the relationship between emotion regulation, language ability, and reticent behavior in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and their typical peers. Participants included 43 children with SLI and 43 typically developing children, for a total sample of 86 participants. Children were selected from 2 age ranges: 5-8…

The aim of this article is to investigate the effect of creativity on performance in oral narrative tasks. Participants in the study were Hungarian learners whose creativity was measured with a standardized creativity test. We examined the relationships among 3 aspects of creativity--originality, flexibility, and creative fluency--and different…

In order to investigate whether addressees can make immediate use of speaker-based constraints during reference resolution, participant addressees' eye movements were monitored as they helped a confederate cook follow a recipe. Objects were located in the helper's area, which the cook could not reach, and the cook's area, which both could reach.…

Vocal folds undergo osmotic challenge by mouth breathing during singing, exercising, and loud speaking. Just 15 min of obligatory oral breathing, to dry the vocal folds, increases phonation threshold pressure (P[subscript th]) and expiratory vocal effort in healthy speakers (M. Sivasankar & K. Fisher, 2002). We questioned whether oral breathing is…

Children are coming to classrooms across the United States with a need to develop their oral language. With the increased promotion of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, commercialized programs are being provided for teachers to use to build oral language in their students. The authors believe that schools and teachers can best enhance…

This paper is a project report on the experiment of an English public speaking and debating course with advanced level English majors in College of Arts and Science, Yangtze University. The paper analyzes the validity of the course, introduces the design rationale, the design and experiment process, and students' responses. The paper suggests that…

Among the challenges many teachers face in facilitating the improvement of speaking skills are sparing sufficient time for practice to enable students to achieve fluency in speaking through internalizing the structures, and establishing a balance between fluency and accuracy. This study aimed to seek an answer to the question as to whether…

Deaf and hearing students' knowledge of English sentences containing universal quantifiers was compared through their performance on a 50-item, multiple-picture task that required students to decide whether each of five pictures represented a possible meaning of a target sentence. The task assessed fundamental knowledge of quantifier sentences,…

This longitudinal mixed-methods study compared the oral fluency of well-educated adult immigrants from Mandarin and Slavic language backgrounds (16 per group) enrolled in introductory English as a second language (ESL) classes. Speech samples were collected over a 2-year period, together with estimates of weekly English use. We also conducted…

Background: While spoken language deficits have been identified in children with developmental dyslexia, microanalysis of sentence production proficiency in these children is a largely unexplored area. Aims: The current study examines proficiency of syntactic production in children and young adults with dyslexia and typically developing…

This paper presents a brief summary of processability theory as proposed by [Pienemann, M., 1998a. "Language Processing and Second Language Development: Processability Theory." John Benjamins, Amsterdam; Pienemann, M., 1998b. "Developmental dynamics in L1 and L2 acquisition: processability theory and generative entrenchment." "Bilingualism:…

English has gradually become the lingua franca of medical publications and conferences across Europe, with scholars from "smaller" languages opting for English because of the greater scientific impact and prestige associated with a wide international audience; at the same time, however, this transition has disrupted well-established textual…

Phonological awareness (PA) is the ability to analyze spoken language into its component sounds and to manipulate these smaller units. Literature review related to PA shows that a variety of factor groups play a role in PA in Mandarin such as linguistic experience (spoken language, alphabetic literacy, and second language learning), item type,…

This paper examines language development of Samoan students in bilingual contexts in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In the absence of valid and standardized assessments tools in Samoan, one was designed to test reading comprehension and oral language development for Samoan students using common narratives as a base. For reading comprehension, the tool…