In this study, the authors compared the phonological accuracy and patterns of sound change of boys with fragile X syndrome, boys with Down syndrome, and typically developing mental-age-matched boys. Participants were 50 boys with fragile X syndrome, ages 3 to 14 years; 32 boys with Down syndrome, ages 4 to 13 years; and 33 typically developing…

Background: The discovery of clinical markers for specific language impairment (SLI) in children can assist in the accurate identification of children with this disorder, and in a description of the disorder's phenotype for genetic study. One challenge to this type of research is the fact that languages vary in the most salient symptoms of SLI.…

The speech and language developmental progress of children with hearing loss educated using an Auditory-Verbal approach was compared to that of a control group of children with normal hearing. The experimental group consisted of 29 children ages 2-6 years with a mean pure tone average in the better ear of 76.17 dB HL at 0.5, 1 and 2 kHz. The 29…

Golden West College's (GWC's) Interpersonal Communication course was designed to help students develop communication skills, understand the criteria used in selecting the most appropriate way to communicate, implement these choices effectively through verbal and nonverbal means, and evaluate the effectiveness of these choices. Students learn the…

Intended for teachers and administrators who wish to assess student oral communication needs before designing an appropriate program, this guide provides a review of tests for measuring acts of speaking and listening. The guide surveys and discusses procedures for assessing speaking and listening skills among school children and focuses on…

Recognizing that speech is an important component of the language arts and that the English curriculum is the most natural place for speech skills to be fostered, this handbook examines several methods of developing speech competencies within the secondary school English classroom. The first section, "Looking at Speech," examines the…

This collection, including the proceedings of a colloquium at TESOL 1979, includes the following papers: (1) "Classification of Oral Proficiency Tests," by H. Madsen and R. Jones; (2) "A Theoretical Framework for Communicative Competence," by M. Canale and M. Swain; (3) "Beyond Faith and Face Validity: The Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix and the…

Northern Kentucky University has implemented a proficiency testing program to screen candidates for admission to the teacher education program. When students are at the sophomore level, four tests are administered: (1) reading proficiency, measured by the Iowa Silent Reading Test; (2) writing proficiency; (3) speech and listening proficiency; and…

During a 3-year period, 20 preschool deaf children were matched and given auditory training by the Verbo-tonal method using two different amplification systems (one which amplified from 200 to 5000 hertz and the other from 20 to 5000 hertz). There were three main goals: (1) to compare two different amplification systems to determine if the…

Eighty-four hearing-impaired postsecondary students were involved in a study of the criterion validity and reliability of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf rating scales for assessment of contextual speech intelligibility. Results revealed generally high overall validity and reliability coefficients, though write-down procedures were a…

This paper discusses several commonly used maximum performance tests of speech production, including phonation volume, maximum phonation duration, maximum fricative duration, fundamental frequency range, maximum expiratory pressure, maximum closing force, and maximum repetition rate. The published normative data, adequacy of these data for…

Experience and research on the appropriateness and reliability of various criteria used in oral language tests are discussed. It is concluded that global marking schemes, which are less detailed, may enable the scorer to better evaluate communicative effectiveness, which includes both linguistic and paralinguistic factors. (MSE)

A study divided 40 children (age 7) into groups consisting of white normal language and language impaired and African American normal language and language impaired. African American English speakers with normal language scored significantly lower on the Test of Language Development-2P compared to white normal-language subjects, but did not differ…

The purpose of the research was to develop an articulation test for Spanish-speakers and to field-test the instrument in both a monolingual Spanish-speaking environment and a bilingual Spanish/English environment. Such a test is needed because there has been little available to enable the diagnostician, whose clientele includes Spanish-speakers,…

This book is a survey of all the modern language examinations in the United Kingdom at "GCE"'O' level, Scottish 'O' grade, and "CSE" Mode 1, available in 1979 in French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, as well as the "16+" examination offered by a consortium of boards in the north of England. It is an attempt…