A comprehension task employing English animate third person pronouns was run on 100 children from three to seven years of age. Results show that comphrehension of forms beyond chance level first appears at age five, with continuing improvement through ages six and seven. Mastery of gender distinction preceded number and case. (Author/PJM)

Using dichotic listening methodology, 25 musicians and 25 nonmusicians were compared on four cerebral lateralization tasks: melodies, tonal patterns, rhythm patterns, and verbal stimuli. Musicians demonstrated superior performance on the music tasks. Results are interpreted in terms of superior cognitive strategies of musicians as a function of…

Discusses research in listening comprehension and proposes model for listening comprehension activities in college French conversation courses. (BK)

Notes how the guest lecture portion of a team-taught writing course for engineers produced the need to teach the students listening skills. Describes class activities that ensure student development of writing, listening, and speaking skills in conjunction with the lecture series. (RL)

Discusses three experiments which investigated the role of convention and context in understanding indirect requests. Experiments 1 and 2 showed the wide variety of conventions used and how context determines conventionality. Experiment 3 showed how conventional requests take less time to process than nonconventional ones. (Author/PJM)

Describes and gives example of use of national radio broadcast to administer English as a second language test in Israel. Purpose of program is to test listening as distinct from speaking. Results have been encouraging. (BK)

Experiment I showed that hearing subjects outperformed deaf subjects on a lipreading task, possibly because they could supplement lip-read stimuli with stored auditory information. Experiment II demonstrated that sighted subjects did not use stored visual information to supplement auditory input, for they performed no differently from congenitally…

Reviews research on the relationship between the receptive language arts skills (reading and listening), on the relationship between the expressive skills (writing and speaking), and on the relationships between receptive and expressive skills. Reports on teaching materials that reflect these interrelationships. (RL)

Describes an experiment designed to determine the effect of missing syntactic cues on listeners' comprehension of grammatical sentences heard through noise. Comparison between sentences containing function word deletions and sentences with a more clearly displayed syntactic structure suggests that deletion of minor cues hinders comprehension under…

Discusses the use of two-way radio in teaching a foreign language. Students perform a game, conducted totally in the target language, in which two teams compete in locating a hidden message. One team must find and decode its message before the adversary team. The message, of course, is in the target language. (PJM)

A modified version of the traditional dictation exercise is recommended in order to answer two unmet needs which caused such exercises to fall into disfavor: the systematic teaching of specific points, and the use of authentic linguistic samples. (JB)

Discusses auditory practice (listening) as a factor in the learning process and as a goal area. Refers particularly to the "terminal" nine-year school. Motivation is high, because auditory skill can be developed to a higher point earlier than speech production. (IFS/WGA)

Research indicates that communication deficits are associated with development and maintenance of marital distress. Describes a behavioral premarital intervention program, based on these findings, designed to improve couples' future relationship satisfaction and communication patterns by enhancing communication and problem-solving skills.…

Investigates the effects of achievement incentive (extra credit) on the comprehension of time-compressed speech. Shows strong empirical support for using achievement incentive to enhance the effectiveness of compressed speech instruction. (JMF)

This study represents one effort to systematically examine concrete instances in well-defined settings, with some knowledge of the variables involved--the input as well as the feedback and the output of the encounter groups. (Author/KMG)