Assigned middle school and high school instrumentalists to listen and rate twelve performances: four without accompaniment, four with CD accompaniment, and four with piano accompaniment. Reports that CD accompaniment rated highest and piano the lowest. States that students consistently assigned the best feature and the aspect needing most practice…

Calls for greater attention to the perceptual processes involved in second language listening, and particularly to the part they play in breakdowns of understanding. Suggests employing basic auditory phonetics as a means of classifying, diagnosing, and predicting problems of lexical segmentation. (Author/VWL)

Explores three meta-analyses investigating the relationship between music and mathematics on: (1) correlational studies (n=20); (2) experimental training studies (n=6) instructing students in music performance, then testing them on mathematics skills; and (3) experimental studies (n=15) investigating whether listening to background music during a…

Examines differences in communication and listening predispositions and communication competence across ethnicity. Notes subjects were 275 undergraduates enrolled in an introductory communication course. Contributes to the discussion of the growing cultural diversity in the educational and work contexts of the United States. Provides further…

Describes the nature of social interactions within the context of tutorial sessions and describes the role of listening within the mentoring relationship as seen in fourth-grade at-risk children in a culturally diverse elementary school. Concludes that highly successful tutors were skillful communicators who modeled effective listening skills,…

It is argued that reading skills are neglected in the first phase of second-language instruction in secondary schools. This article develops this argument and discusses the status of reading and listening skills as well as textbook selection and utilization in different approaches to foreign-language instruction. (IAH)

An evaluation of the sentence verification technique (an experimental test of listening and reading comprehension) found that 19 seventh grade poor comprehenders' performances on subtests of the experimental test were significantly below those of 41 good comprehenders, and 94.6 percent of the good and poor comprehenders were classified correctly.…

Guidelines are offered for modifying the classroom environment to develop better listening skills in children with poor listening skills. Included are general considerations about the characteristics and needs of children with poor listening skills, specific activities in the classroom to enhance skills in these children, and whole-class listening…

Teacher intervention is often necessary to prevent independent study assignments from becoming lonely and threatening to gifted students. Active listening techniques can help teachers interpret comments that students make to gain peer acceptance or to mask their fear of failure. Students also need help planning, scheduling, and setting realistic…

Reading-disabled children (n=36) in grades four through eight were matched for reading comprehension and placed into two groups based on listening comprehension. Poor readers with normal listening comprehension had average or above intelligence quotients, conforming to the traditional definition of dyslexia and contrasting with poor readers with…

A sample of 2,232 children, aged three-five years, was administered the Preschool Reading Attitudes Scale to assess the developmental aspects of reading attitudes. Factor analysis on test-retest results for 360 subjects indicated stable and interpretable factors distinguishing three-, four-, and five-year-old students. (TJH)

The use of self-questioning strategies with orally presented materials was studied for 32 college students (30 females and 2 males). Results suggest that practice in a self-questioning information-processing procedure can effectively improve college students' comprehension of lectures. (SLD)

A study compared the effectiveness of high and low pressure methods of teaching Mandarin Chinese to American college students to determine whether students learn better in a lax, permissive, and interactive classroom, or in a classroom with a perceptible but positive tension emphasizing rapid response and memorized sequences. (Author/CB)

Discusses an article written by three Soviet teachers who analyze studies conducted in the area of foreign language teaching, particularly the teaching of Russian. Their focus is on the methodological principles of an approach that integrates the teaching of the four skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing). (CFM)

The intelligibility of three synthesized voices was evaluated by unfamiliar listeners (total n=120 secondary students) with or without listener training, using a 2 X 3 design. Results indicated that intelligibility for all three voices significantly improved following listener training. (Author/DB)