Developed by a special task force of language arts teachers, this bibliography contains samples of some well-recognized sources to aid teachers oral communication. The citations are categorized as follows: (1) books providing a foundation of oral communication instruction, (2) books dealing with practical classroom application, (3) resources for…

Intended for teachers of adult basic education as well as teachers in job retraining programs, this book focuses on the development of written and oral language competencies required in occupational and training settings. The first four chapters offer a concise synthesis of recent research on adult learning and on workplace literacy for ten…

Written and developed to assist speech and language clinicians in the ongoing process of providing support for classroom teachers in their efforts to enhance the oral language of their students, this manual provides a rationale and intervention activities for improving oral language in the classroom. The manual first discusses research supporting…

Written for researchers and graduate students, this book--a collection of essays by cognitive scientists, socio- and psycholinguists, and English, reading, and language arts educators--explores theoretical and research questions associated with the relationships among oral and written language, listening and reading, and speaking and writing. The…

The development and validation of a Portuguese oral language test are described. The test consisted of five item types: personal conversation, giving directions, description of picture sequences, topical discourse, and oral task completion based on printed instructions. Three preliminary forms of the test were administered to a group of language…

As an extension of a two-year longitudinal study involving various aspects of children's writing, a study examined the function of children's oral language during creative writing sessions in typical classroom settings. Using ethnographic style techniques, researchers conducted 46 writing episode observations of seven fifth graders in the spring…

Funded through the Ohio Disadvantaged Pupil Program Fund, the Columbus Public Schools' Instructional Aide (IA) Program served 276 kindergarten children and 1,780 first-grade students during the 1987-88 school year. The goal of the IA program was to provide an educational support program for underachieving pupils. Instructional aides were trained…

Described in this manual are numerous skills-based oral language activities for Head Start and kindergarten children and for students in first through sixth grades. Activities are sequentially organized at four levels; all levels include activities in the areas of auditory discrimination, auditory memory, communication, syntax, description, and…

To explore how fifth grade students used their oral language in small group discussions to remake information, a study set up a series of small group tasks in the curriculum areas of social studies, current events, science, poetry, and mathematics for one class of 28 Canadian students. Students were randomly divided into seven groups of four…

This study is based on three sources: (1) an experimental try-out of four oral proficiency testing methods (oral interview, role play, reporting test, and group discussion); (2) an evaluation of the testing methods by a panel of experts; and (3) an analysis of the same testing methods by policy makers. The findings are reported in terms of the…

A study investigated the attitudes of English-speakers living in Finland toward English oral communication with Finns. English-speaking diplomats, businessmen, and their wives were surveyed with Likert-type and open-ended questions. Results indicated that Finns have a good command of English grammar, with difficulties in communication attributed…

This study focused on how French children aged 4, 6, and 8 years evaluate the conditions of use for modal expressions marking certainty and uncertainty in discourse. Children were shown films involving verbal interactions during which one of the protagonists produced a target utterance accusing another character of having performed a deed. Each…

Today's students are presented with a confusing perspective on writing that, on the one hand, defines the production of a written text as an act that simply transcribes thoughts and, on the other hand, defines writing as in and of itself an act of knowing. Teachers confound the student writer's schizophrenia by reinforcing the "product"…

To answer important questions for educators concerning language skills, this paper argues that children must acquire new skills in order to process written language, and that the need for developing new skills stems from differences between oral and written language that are more fundamental than differences in mode. The paper first describes how…

Discourse comprehension involves readers or listeners in constructing mental models using local text information, global text structures, and their general knowledge of the world. An analysis of the literature on children's understanding of spoken discourse reveals that young children are capable of forming mental models from texts, but that their…