A college advanced speaking course designed with the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines is described. Students prepared and performed many communicative tasks, including narrating, describing, hypothesizing, supporting an opinion, debating, and interviewing for a job. Other components include pair and small-group work, audio and videotaping, and pre-…

To study the adequacy of the brief oral examination format as a basis for assessing oral skills, the study compared samples of 15-minute oral exams with 3-hour written exam results by the same students. The resultant average size of oral samples was about 77% of that of written samples, with good comparability, leading to useful conclusions about…

Presents data from validation study of American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency (OPI). Distinctness of OPI ratings from scores generated by Test of English as a Foreign Language and one other examination is assessed on basis of comparisons among 70 sets of scores from students of English as Second Language who…

In a study of the verbal environment, teachers' language was analyzed in two different interactive contexts: when interacting with a different number of interlocutors, and when talking to children of different linguistic competence. Results show that in both interactive contexts teachers tend to adapt their linguistic style to the characteristics…

A qualitative study is described investigating the university graduate student seminar presentation as a speech event and its status as a genre. Findings support Swales' (1990) contention that the graduate seminar is an independent genre related to the experimental research article, not merely an oral replication. (20 references) (Author/LB)

Analysis of "tutor talk" occurring between native or proficient nonnative speakers of English and limited- or non-English-speaking elementary students found that, although tutors used little sentence-level simplification, they made extensive use of conversational and tutorial strategies similar to those used by native and nonnative adults. (59…

Native speakers recorded utterances in three role-play contexts: speech to presyllabic infants, foreign language instruction, and adult conversation. For babytalk, speakers neglected, reduced, or modified lexical tonal information in favor of simplified and clarified intonation contours. The implications regarding tone acquisition in children and…

This study found that 61 children (ages 8-12) with specific language impairment performed more poorly on a comprehension task in which children were questioned about a story, even after taking into account "comprehension age." The effects of mode of presentation (orally or pictorially) and question type were similar for subjects and controls.…

A study of variations in the English and Portuguese phonology of native English speakers who emigrated to Brazil found that all subjects suffered a loss of English proficiency, with Portuguese proficiency adversely affecting the degree of English loss, particularly in casual as opposed to formal speech. (64 references) (CB)

Advanced adult nonnative speakers of English were taped in advising sessions to analyze two speech acts, suggestions, and rejections according to their frequency, form, and success. They were compared with native speakers. Results are explained by the availability of positive and negative feedback. (30 references) (Author/LB)

The oral performance of a sample of 87 undergraduates was evaluated first in a face-to-face setting and then through audio recordings of that same performance. Results confirm that effectiveness in oral communication clearly is not dependent on words and sounds alone but that paralinguistic and extralinguistic data also play a significant role.…

The first part of a larger planned investigation, this study examines the use of "por" and "para" by nine Peace Corps volunteers in oral interviews at the end of training and roughly one year later, to trace their acquisition over time, in two learning contexts. (24 references) (LB)

A 12-lesson college-level French unit using the same recorded text to teach three aspects of oral language (pronunciation, comprehension, and production) is described and documented. The activity attempts to use the unit vocabulary as much as possible in a variety of exercises to develop communicative competence. (13 references) (MSE)

Longitudinal data on conversations recorded from 1 child between 18 and 27 months of age and 3 children between 27 and 62 months were analyzed to chart acquisition of the word "if" and of conditional inference. Within six months of speaking their first "if," children produced "ifs" at the same rate and forms as…

By looking at how two Brazilian and two American businessmen patterned their speech during negotiations, the author indicates how different conventions in discourse organization may affect natural conversation. Stylistic differences, interactional problems, and implications for training business people are discussed. (18 references) (Author/LB)