This number of a journal devoted to ideas for teachers of English as a second language (ESL) contains the following articles: (1) "Using Authentic Discourse in Teaching the Conditional" by Helen Hoyt Schmidt, (2) "Better Communication through Summarizations" by John Battaglia, (3) "A Look at Discourse Analysis" by…

The importance of students' nonverbal communication in classroom interaction is pointed out in this short essay. Several examples of nonverbal communication are provided in order to illustrate the confusion in classrooms which can result from teachers' lack of understanding of pupils' conscious and unconscious attempts to communicate nonverbally.…

Research has established that classroom verbal interaction typically involves turn taking cycles described as "teacher solicits,""pupil responds," and "teacher reacts." A study examined the question/answer cycles occurring within 36 videotaped language arts lessons conducted by six elementary school teachers and made inferences regarding what…

This series, designed for use in inservice teacher workshops, addresses the question, "How do children and teachers use language to get things done?" The transcribed classroom discourse presented and discussed in each volume illustrates functional language in a real context based on the videotaping of undoctored events from kindergarten…

A two-year long study investigated the influence of being in a mainstreamed classroom on nonhandicapped children's abilities to communicate with the handicapped. The study involved three groups of students: (1) 66 nonhandicapped, nonintegrated (those in classes without handicapped children); (2) 24 nonhandicapped, integrated; and (3) 55…

This two-part learning module provides information and several exercises to help classroom instructors understand and improve their personal communication styles. The module first identifies two broad types of communicators: those who think before they talk and those who think while they talk. It then provides a series of exercises to help the…

This report presents the findings of a 17-month project whose aim was to analyze the complexity of language use in the classroom through the examination of one classroom event or key episode type: the "service-like event." This term covers those situations during periods of individualized instruction in which a child who is not working with the…

This observer's manual is designed to familiarize people with the System for Integrated Language Communications Observation (SILCO), which rates the degree of integrated language communications instruction occurring in elementary classrooms during 40-minute time blocks. Sections of the manual discuss SILCO's development, organization,…

This overview describes a system for measuring instructional and management parameters of teaching through a method of classroom observation in which live observers and video tapes record teacher and learner behavior (both verbal and nonverbal) and the social-political-physical characteristics of the setting. Presentation is in 3 sections: (1) the…

This bulletin discusses the following four important aspects of the teaching process: surface communication, and enactive, iconic, and symbolic representations of reality. The author begins with a discussion of surface communication in which he explains that our skin constitutes a barrier to communication. He states that we must, therefore, devise…

A study of the dynamic organization of content through the sequence of communication behaviors in the classroom attempted to 1) systematically analyze observed and classified communication behaviors of teachers and students in the classroom which relate to content; 2) display the data thus generated so that elements, sequences, and organizations…

Fifteen 1968-69 home economics education graduates who would be beginning teachers during the 1969-70 school year participated in a study designed to compare self concept of beginning teachers at two stages, identify classroom verbal behavior patterns, and determine if a correlation exists between self concept and verbal behavior. The Total…

The communication of messages from teacher to student often includes visual representation of the material under study. The place of mass media in the classroom becomes increasingly important as materials are developed and made available. Films and filmstrips of all types can be utilized in many ways, some of which have been the subjects of…

The assumption that the dyadic communication pattern (one teacher-one student) is the most effective pattern for encouraging language and speech development among elementary and preschool children is tested in this study. Fifty-six 4-year-old children from the Task Force Head Start Program of Buffalo, New York, were observed in four different…