Using Automatic Speech Recognition Technology with Elicited Oral Response Testing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cox, Troy L.; Davies, Randall S.

2012-01-01

This study examined the use of automatic speech recognition (ASR) scored elicited oral response (EOR) tests to assess the speaking ability of English language learners. It also examined the relationship between ASR-scored EOR and other language proficiency measures and the ability of the ASR to rate speakers without bias to gender or native…

Un Test contrastif oral pour l'evaluation des difficultes lexicales dans l'apprentissage de l'anglais L2 (An Oral Contrastive Test for the Evaluation of Lexical Difficulties in Learning English as a Second Language).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haeusser, Christiane

1978-01-01

The test described here is a particular type of diagnostic test; it is part of a series of tests designed to explore systematically areas of potential lexical difficulty in the English language for French-speaking students of English. The lexical units are considered under their formal, morphological, syntactic and semantic aspects. The test has…

Contributions of Print Exposure to First and Second Grade Oral Language and Reading in Chile

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strasser, Katherine; Vergara, Daniela; del Río, M. Francisca

2017-01-01

This study examines the contribution of print exposure to oral language (expressive vocabulary and listening comprehension) and reading (word reading and reading comprehension) in first and second grade in Chile, and tests whether the contribution of print exposure to reading comprehension is mediated by language and word reading skills.…

The Evaluation of Oral/Aural Skills within the BA Finals Examination: Analysis and Interim Proposals.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crawshaw, Robert

An examination of the principles and techniques of oral testing in British university-level final examinations in modern languages discusses: (1) the shortcomings of present oral testing procedures; (2) the theoretical controversy surrounding the design and value of oral proficiency tests, arising from research in English as a second language…

Development of a test and flight engineering oriented language. Phase 3: Presentation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kamsler, W. F.; Case, C. W.; Kinney, E. L.; Gyure, J.

1970-01-01

The format material used in an oral presentation of the phase 3 study effort is given. The material includes a description of the language ALOFT and a terminology comparison with other test languages.

The Structure of Oral Language and Reading and Their Relation to Comprehension in Kindergarten through Grade 2

PubMed Central

Foorman, Barbara R.; Herrera, Sarah; Petscher, Yaacov; Mitchell, Alison; Truckenmiller, Adrea

2016-01-01

This study examined the structure of oral language and reading and their relation to comprehension from a latent variable modeling perspective in Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. Participants were students in Kindergarten (n = 218), Grade 1 (n = 372), and Grade 2 (n = 273), attending Title 1 schools. Students were administered phonological awareness, syntax, vocabulary, listening comprehension, and decoding fluency measures in mid-year. Outcome measures included a listening comprehension measure in Kindergarten and a reading comprehension test in Grades1 and 2. In Kindergarten, oral language (consisting of listening comprehension, syntax, and vocabulary) shared variance with phonological awareness in predicting a listening comprehension outcome. However, in Grades 1 and 2, phonological awareness was no longer predictive of reading comprehension when decoding fluency and oral language were included in the model. In Grades 1 and 2, oral language and decoding fluency were significant predictors of reading comprehension. PMID:27660395

Speak up! Oral Examinations and Political Science

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buehler, Melissa J.; Schneider, Laura U.

2009-01-01

Testing assessments of undergraduate political science students is predictable and stagnant. A missing, yet valuable, testing assessment tool that can contribute to the repertoire of political science is the oral examination. Borrowing this testing tool largely from foreign language departments, oral exams require students to "think on their…

Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition Oral Language and Reading Measures Effects on Reading Comprehension in a Referred Sample

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parkin, Jason R.

2018-01-01

Oral language and word reading skills have important effects on reading comprehension. The Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-Third Edition (WIAT-III) measures both skill sets, but little is known about their specific effects on reading comprehension within this battery. Path analysis was used to evaluate the collective effects of reading and…

The Development and Validation of a Spanish Elicited Imitation Test of Oral Language Proficiency for the Missionary Training Center

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Carrie A.

2013-01-01

The Missionary Training Center (MTC), affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, needs a reliable and cost effective way to measure the oral language proficiency of missionaries learning Spanish. The MTC needed to measure incoming missionaries' Spanish language proficiency for training and classroom assignment as well as to…

The Effects of Different Lengths of Pretask Planning Time on L2 Learners' Oral Test Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Lanlan; Chen, Jiliang; Sun, Lan

2015-01-01

The effect of planning on second language (L2) learners' oral performance is a hotly debated topic in the field of second language acquisition. However, studies on the effect of different amounts of planning time have been quite limited, especially in a testing context. The present study investigated the effects of different lengths of…

Assessing English Language Learners' Oral Performance: A Comparison of Monologue, Interview, and Group Oral Test

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahmadi, Alireza; Sadeghi, Elham

2016-01-01

In the present study we investigated the effect of test format on oral performance in terms of test scores and discourse features (accuracy, fluency, and complexity). Moreover, we explored how the scores obtained on different test formats relate to such features. To this end, 23 Iranian EFL learners participated in three test formats of monologue,…

The Fluidez en La Lectura Oral (FLO) Portion of the Indicadores Dinamicos De Exito en La Lectura (IDEL) and the English Language Portion of the Illinois Standard Achievement Test (ISAT): A Correlational Study of Second and Third Grade English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ganan, Brian J.

2012-01-01

This study examined the relationship between Spanish oral reading fluency (ORF) at the end of second grade and students' performance on the third grade ISAT reading test. The major research question guiding this study was: What is the direction and strength of the relationship between performance on the 2nd grade IDEL FLO, a Spanish language ORF…

Beyond Faith and Face Validity: The Multitrait-Multimethod Matrix and the Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Oral Proficiency Tests.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stevenson, Douglas K.

Recently there has been a renewed international interest in direct oral proficiency measures such as the oral interview. There has also been a growing awareness among some language testing specialists that all proficiency tests must be subjected to construct validation. It seems that the high face validity of oral interviews tends to cloud and…

Relations Among the Home Language and Literacy Environment and Children's Language Abilities: A Study of Head Start Dual Language Learners and Their Mothers.

PubMed

Lewis, Kandia; Sandilos, Lia E; Hammer, Carol Scheffner; Sawyer, Brook E; Méndez, Lucía I

This study explored the relations between Spanish-English dual language learner (DLL) children's home language and literacy experiences and their expressive vocabulary and oral comprehension abilities in Spanish and in English. Data from Spanish-English mothers of 93 preschool-age Head Start children who resided in central Pennsylvania were analyzed. Children completed the Picture Vocabulary and Oral Comprehension subtests of the Batería III Woodcock-Muñoz and the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Results revealed that the language spoken by mothers and children and the frequency of mother-child reading at home influenced children's Spanish language abilities. In addition, the frequency with which children told a story was positively related to children's performance on English oral language measures. The findings suggest that language and literacy experiences at home have a differential impact on DLLs' language abilities in their 2 languages. Specific components of the home environment that benefit and support DLL children's language abilities are discussed.

Language Facility and Theory of Mind Development in Deaf Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jackson, A. Lyn

2001-01-01

Deaf children with signing parents, nonnative signing deaf children, children from a hearing impaired unit, oral deaf children, and hearing controls were tested on theory of Mind (ToM) tasks and a British sign language receptive language test. Language ability correlated positively and significantly with ToM ability. Age underpinned the…

The Influence of Prompt on Group Oral Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leaper, David A.; Riazi, Mehdi

2014-01-01

This paper reports an investigation into how the prompt may influence the discourse of group oral tests. The group oral test, in which three or four participants are rated on their ability to discuss a prompt, is a format for assessing the spoken ability of language learners. In this study, 141 Japanese university students were videoed in 41 group…

Relations Among the Home Language and Literacy Environment and Children's Language Abilities: A Study of Head Start Dual Language Learners and Their Mothers

PubMed Central

Lewis, Kandia; Sandilos, Lia E.; Hammer, Carol Scheffner; Sawyer, Brook E.; Méndez, Lucía I.

2015-01-01

Research Findings This study explored the relations between Spanish–English dual language learner (DLL) children's home language and literacy experiences and their expressive vocabulary and oral comprehension abilities in Spanish and in English. Data from Spanish–English mothers of 93 preschool-age Head Start children who resided in central Pennsylvania were analyzed. Children completed the Picture Vocabulary and Oral Comprehension subtests of the Batería III Woodcock–Muñoz and the Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement. Results revealed that the language spoken by mothers and children and the frequency of mother–child reading at home influenced children's Spanish language abilities. In addition, the frequency with which children told a story was positively related to children's performance on English oral language measures. Practice or Policy The findings suggest that language and literacy experiences at home have a differential impact on DLLs' language abilities in their 2 languages. Specific components of the home environment that benefit and support DLL children's language abilities are discussed. PMID:27429533

Oral Communication in the Framework of Cognitive Fluency: Developing and Testing Spoken Russian within the TORFL System

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sobolev, Olga; Nesterova, Tatiana

2014-01-01

Language testing and second language acquisition research are both concerned with proficiency in the second language; given this shared interest, the rapprochement between these two domains may prove revealing and productive not only in terms of teaching practices, but also in taking a wide view of language, ranging across cognition, society and…

Communicative Language Testing: Implications for Computer Based Language Testing in French for Specific Purposes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

García Laborda, Jesús; López Santiago, Mercedes; Otero de Juan, Nuria; Álvarez Álvarez, Alfredo

2014-01-01

Current evolutions of language testing have led to integrating computers in FSP assessments both in oral and written communicative tasks. This paper deals with two main issues: learners' expectations about the types of questions in FSP computer based assessments and the relation with their own experience. This paper describes the experience of 23…

The Relationship between Drawing and Oral Language in Deaf Students Aged Three to Five

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Silvestre, Nuria; Cambra, Cristina

2009-01-01

This study examines the relationship between drawing and oral language acquisition in deaf students aged three to five. The sample is made up of one hundred participants: fifty deaf and fifty hearing children. Goodenough's Human Figure Drawing Test and the WPPSI Scale of Intelligence geometric design subtest have been used to evaluate graphic…

Reading Comprehension in Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Oral Language and Social Functioning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ricketts, Jessie; Jones, Catherine R. G.; Happe, Francesca; Charman, Tony

2013-01-01

Reading comprehension is an area of difficulty for many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the Simple View of Reading, word recognition and oral language are both important determinants of reading comprehension ability. We provide a novel test of this model in 100 adolescents with ASD of varying intellectual ability.…

Oral and Hand Movement Speeds Are Associated with Expressive Language Ability in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peter, Beate

2012-01-01

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD…

Oral Language, Sex and Socio-Economic Status as Predictors of Reading Achievement.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ebert, Dorothy Jo Williamson

This study was designed to discover the degree of relationship between a number of predictor variables and reading achievement for 65 black second grade students in two Austin, Texas, schools. The seven predictor variables used were: oral language performance as measured by the Gloria and David Beginning English, Series 20, Test 6 (GDBE); an…

Assessment of oral storytelling abilities of Latino junior high school students with learning handicaps.

PubMed

Goldstein, B C; Harris, K C; Klein, M D

1993-02-01

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension and oral storytelling abilities. Thirty-one Latino junior high school students with learning handicaps were selected as subjects based on learning handicapped designation, home language, and language proficiency status. Reading comprehension was measured by the Reading Comprehension subtest of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test. Storytelling was measured by (a) the Oral Production subtest of the Language Assessment Scales using the standard scoring protocol and (b) a story structure analysis. A comparison of the standard scoring protocol and reading comprehension revealed no relationship, while the comparison of the story structure analysis and reading comprehension revealed a significant correlation. The implications of these results for language assessment of bilingual students are discussed.

Prelingual auditory-perceptual skills as indicators of initial oral language development in deaf children with cochlear implants.

PubMed

Pianesi, Federica; Scorpecci, Alessandro; Giannantonio, Sara; Micardi, Mariella; Resca, Alessandra; Marsella, Pasquale

2016-03-01

To assess when prelingually deaf children with a cochlear implant (CI) achieve the First Milestone of Oral Language, to study the progression of their prelingual auditory skills in the first year after CI and to investigate a possible correlation between such skills and the timing of initial oral language development. The sample included 44 prelingually deaf children (23 M and 21 F) from the same tertiary care institution, who received unilateral or bilateral cochlear implants. Achievement of the First Milestone of Oral Language (FMOL) was defined as speech comprehension of at least 50 words and speech production of a minimum of 10 words, as established by administration of a validated Italian test for the assessment of initial language competence in infants. Prelingual auditory-perceptual skills were assessed over time by means of a test battery consisting of: the Infant Toddler Meaningful Integration Scale (IT-MAIS); the Infant Listening Progress Profile (ILiP) and the Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP). On average, the 44 children received their CI at 24±9 months and experienced FMOL after 8±4 months of continuous CI use. The IT-MAIS, ILiP and CAP scores increased significantly over time, the greatest improvement occurring between baseline and six months of CI use. On multivariate regression analysis, age at diagnosis and age at CI did not appear to bear correlation with FMOL timing; instead, the only variables contributing to its variance were IT-MAIS and ILiP scores after six months of CI use, accounting for 43% and 55%, respectively. Prelingual auditory skills of implanted children assessed via a test battery six months after CI treatment, can act as indicators of the timing of initial oral language development. Accordingly, the period from CI switch-on to six months can be considered as a window of opportunity for appropriate intervention in children failing to show the expected progression of their auditory skills and who would have higher risk of delayed oral language development. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Deriving Oral Assessment Scales across Different Tests and Rater Groups.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline

1995-01-01

The purpose of this study was to derive the criteria/dimensions underlying learners' second-language oral ability scores across three tests: an oral interview, a narration, and a read-aloud. A stimulus tape of 18 speech samples was presented to 3 native speaker rater groups for evaluation. Results indicate that researchers might need to reconsider…

Oral language and narrative skills in children with specific language impairment with and without literacy delay: a three-year longitudinal study.

PubMed

Vandewalle, Ellen; Boets, Bart; Boons, Tinne; Ghesquière, Pol; Zink, Inge

2012-01-01

This longitudinal study compared the development of oral language and more specifically narrative skills (storytelling and story retelling) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay. Therefore, 18 children with SLI and 18 matched controls with normal literacy were followed from the last year of kindergarten (mean age=5 years 5 months) until the beginning of grade 3 (mean age=8 years 1 month). Oral language tests measuring vocabulary, morphology, sentence and text comprehension and narrative skills were administered yearly. Based on first and third grade reading and spelling achievement, both groups were divided into a group with and a group without literacy problems. Results showed that the children with SLI and literacy delay had persistent oral language problems across all assessed language domains. The children with SLI and normal literacy skills scored also persistently low on vocabulary, morphology and story retelling skills. Only on listening comprehension and storytelling, they evolved towards the level of the control group. In conclusion, oral language skills in children with SLI and normal literacy skills remained in general poor, despite their intact literacy development during the first years of literacy instruction. Only for listening comprehension and storytelling, they improved, probably as a result of more print exposure. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Role of Incidental Unfocused Prompts and Recasts in Improving English as a Foreign Language Learners' Accuracy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rahimi, Muhammad; Zhang, Lawrence Jun

2016-01-01

This study was designed to investigate the effects of incidental unfocused prompts and recasts on improving English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' grammatical accuracy as measured in students' oral interviews and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) grammar test. The design of the study was quasi-experimental with pre-tests,…

Literacy Skills in Children With Cochlear Implants: The Importance of Early Oral Language and Joint Storybook Reading

PubMed Central

Ambrose, Sophie E.; Eisenberg, Laurie S.

2009-01-01

The goal of this study was to longitudinally examine relationships between early factors (child and mother) that may influence children's phonological awareness and reading skills 3 years later in a group of young children with cochlear implants (N = 16). Mothers and children were videotaped during two storybook interactions, and children's oral language skills were assessed using the “Reynell Developmental Language Scales, third edition.” Three years later, phonological awareness, reading skills, and language skills were assessed using the “Phonological Awareness Test,” the “Woodcock–Johnson-III Diagnostic Reading Battery,” and the “Oral Written Language Scales.” Variables included in the data analyses were child (age, age at implant, and language skills) and mother factors (facilitative language techniques) and children's phonological awareness and reading standard scores. Results indicate that children's early expressive oral language skills and mothers’ use of a higher level facilitative language technique (open-ended question) during storybook reading, although related, each contributed uniquely to children's literacy skills. Individual analyses revealed that the children with expressive standard scores below 70 at Time 1 also performed below average (<85) on phonological awareness and total reading tasks 3 years later. Guidelines for professionals are provided to support literacy skills in young children with cochlear implants. PMID:18417463

Validation of Linguistic and Communicative Oral Language Tests for Spanish-English Bilingual Programs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Politzer, Robert L.; And Others

1983-01-01

The development, administration, and scoring of a communicative test and its validation with tests of linguistic and sociolinguistic competence in English and Spanish are reported. Correlation with measures of home language use and school achievement are also presented, and issues of test validation for bilingual programs are discussed. (MSE)

Speech and language disorders in children from public schools in Belo Horizonte

PubMed Central

Rabelo, Alessandra Terra Vasconcelos; Campos, Fernanda Rodrigues; Friche, Clarice Passos; da Silva, Bárbara Suelen Vasconcelos; Friche, Amélia Augusta de Lima; Alves, Claudia Regina Lindgren; Goulart, Lúcia Maria Horta de Figueiredo

2015-01-01

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of oral language, orofacial motor skill and auditory processing disorders in children aged 4-10 years and verify their association with age and gender. Methods: Cross-sectional study with stratified, random sample consisting of 539 students. The evaluation consisted of three protocols: orofacial motor skill protocol, adapted from the Myofunctional Evaluation Guidelines; the Child Language Test ABFW - Phonology; and a simplified auditory processing evaluation. Descriptive and associative statistical analyses were performed using Epi Info software, release 6.04. Chi-square test was applied to compare proportion of events and analysis of variance was used to compare mean values. Significance was set at p≤0.05. Results: Of the studied subjects, 50.1% had at least one of the assessed disorders; of those, 33.6% had oral language disorder, 17.1% had orofacial motor skill impairment, and 27.3% had auditory processing disorder. There were significant associations between auditory processing skills’ impairment, oral language impairment and age, suggesting a decrease in the number of disorders with increasing age. Similarly, the variable "one or more speech, language and hearing disorders" was also associated with age. Conclusions: The prevalence of speech, language and hearing disorders in children was high, indicating the need for research and public health efforts to cope with this problem. PMID:26300524

An Investigation of Working Memory Effects on Oral Grammatical Accuracy and Fluency in Producing Questions in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Clare

2013-01-01

This article addresses the question of how far working memory may affect second language (L2) learners' improvement in spoken language during a period of immersion. Research is presented testing the hypothesis that individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity are associated with individual variation in improvements in oral production of…

The rules of the game: properties of a database of expository language samples.

PubMed

Heilmann, John; Malone, Thomas O

2014-10-01

The authors created a database of expository oral language samples with the aims of describing the nature of students' expository discourse and providing benchmark data for typically developing preteen and teenage students. Using a favorite game or sport protocol, language samples were collected from 235 typically developing students in Grades 5, 6, 7, and 9. Twelve language measures were summarized from this database and analyses were completed to test for differences across ages and topics. To determine whether distinct dimensions of oral language could be captured with language measures from these expository samples, a factor analysis was completed. Modest differences were observed in language measures across ages and topics. The language measures were effectively classified into four distinct dimensions: syntactic complexity, expository content, discourse difficulties, and lexical diversity. Analysis of expository data provides a functional and curriculum-based assessment that has the potential to allow clinicians to document multiple dimensions of children's expressive language skills. Further development and testing of the database will establish the feasibility of using it to compare individual students' expository discourse skills to those of their typically developing peers.

Subcomponents of Second-Language Aptitude and Second-Language Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sparks, Richard L.; Humbach, Nancy; Patton, Jon; Ganschow, Leonore

2011-01-01

A factor analysis of a test battery that included early first-language (L1) achievement, L1 cognitive ability, second-language (L2) aptitude, and L2 affective measures to predict oral and written L2 proficiency was conducted. The analysis yielded 4 factors that were labeled Language Analysis, composed of L1 and L2 language comprehension, grammar,…

LSP Testing: The Role of Linguistic and Real-World Criteria.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brown, Annie

Issues in testing proficiency in languages for special purposes (LSP) are examined in the context of the development of an advanced oral test in Japanese for tour guides. The test, designed at an Australian university for use in the Australian tourism industry, was to be designed to evaluate both language proficiency and skills in appropriate…

The Effect of Explicit Affective Strategy Training on Iranian EFL Learners' Oral Language Proficiency and Anxiety Reduction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mostafavi, Fatemeh; Vahdany, Fereidoon

2016-01-01

The current study aimed at investigating the possible effects of explicit teaching of affective strategies on Iranian EFL learners' oral language proficiency and the extent of their anxiety in EFL classroom. First, PET test was administered to a total number of 120 female third grade high school EFL students. Then, 60 participants whose score fell…

Intraoperative language localization in multilingual patients with gliomas.

PubMed

Bello, Lorenzo; Acerbi, Francesco; Giussani, Carlo; Baratta, Pietro; Taccone, Paolo; Songa, Valeria; Fava, Marica; Stocchetti, Nino; Papagno, Costanza; Gaini, Sergio M

2006-07-01

Intraoperative localization of speech is problematic in patients who are fluent in different languages. Previous studies have generated various results depending on the series of patients studied, the type of language, and the sensitivity of the tasks applied. It is not clear whether languages are mediated by multiple and separate cortical areas or shared by common areas. Globally considered, previous studies recommended performing a multiple intraoperative mapping for all the languages in which the patient is fluent. The aim of this work was to study the feasibility of performing an intraoperative multiple language mapping in a group of multilingual patients with a glioma undergoing awake craniotomy for tumor removal and to describe the intraoperative cortical and subcortical findings in the area of craniotomy, with the final goal to maximally preserve patients' functional language. Seven late, highly proficient multilingual patients with a left frontal glioma were submitted preoperatively to a battery of tests to evaluate oral language production, comprehension, and repetition. Each language was tested serially starting from the first acquired language. Items that were correctly named during these tests were used to build personalized blocks to be used intraoperatively. Language mapping was undertaken during awake craniotomies by the use of an Ojemann cortical stimulator during counting and oral naming tasks. Subcortical stimulation by using the same current threshold was applied during tumor resection, in a back and forth fashion, and the same tests. Cortical sites essential for oral naming were found in 87.5% of patients, those for the first acquired language in one to four sites, those for the other languages in one to three sites. Sites for each language were distinct and separate. Number and location of sites were not predictable, being randomly and widely distributed in the cortex around or less frequently over the tumor area. Subcortical stimulations found tracts for the first acquired language in four patients and for the other languages in three patients. Three of these patients decreased their fluency immediately after surgery, affecting the first acquired language, which fully recovered in two patients and partially in one. The procedure was agile and well tolerated by the patients. These findings show that multiple cortical and subcortical language mapping during awake craniotomy for tumor removal is a feasible procedure. They support the concept that intraoperative mapping should be performed for all the languages in which the patient is fluent in to preserve functional integrity.

Assessing Language Proficiency Levels: Oral Proficiency Testing, Pre- and Post-Soviet Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baker, Robert L.

The importance of assessing language proficiency levels and the relationship of this priority to the teaching of Russian at the university level are discussed. Serious concerns about the value of language-specific proficiency guidelines are raised, and an argument is presented suggesting that language-specific guidelines may lead to undue emphasis…

Bilingualism/Second-Language Research and the Assessment of Oral Proficiency in Minority Bilingual Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sanchez, Liliana

2006-01-01

This article discusses some of the challenges that researchers working in the fields of bilingualism and second-language acquisition (SLA) and in the field of language testing face in developing comparable and culturally and cognitively appropriate data collection and language assessment tools for bilingual children from rural minority-language…

Une epreuve orale de francais en fin d'etudes de gestion. Construction et implications pedagogiques (An Oral French Exam at the End of a Marketing Program. Construction and Pedagogical Implications).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crawshaw, Robert H.

1984-01-01

An oral language test administered at the end of a four-year program combining business administration and French is described. The test consists of the formal presentation of a report including numbers, graphics, and text, a discussion of a theoretical issue, and interview. (MSE)

Effects of Summary Writing on Oral Proficiency Performance within a Computer-Based Test for Integrated Listening-Speaking Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lu, Zhihong; Wang, Yanfei

2014-01-01

The effective design of test items within a computer-based language test (CBLT) for developing English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' listening and speaking skills has become an increasingly challenging task for both test users and test designers compared with that of pencil-and-paper tests in the past. It needs to fit integrated oral…

Oral Assessment Kit, Levels II & III. Draft.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agrelo-Gonzalez, Maria; And Others

The assessment packet includes a series of oral tests to help develop speaking as an integral part of second language instruction at levels II and III. It contains: 8 mini-tests for use at level II; 9 mini-tests for use at level III; a rating scale and score sheet masters for evaluating performance on these tests; and a collection of suggested…

The Oral Speech Mechanism Screening Examination (OSMSE).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

St. Louis, Kenneth O.; Ruscello, Dennis M.

Although speech-language pathologists are expected to be able to administer and interpret oral examinations, there are currently no screening tests available that provide careful administration instructions and data for intra-examiner and inter-examiner reliability. The Oral Speech Mechanism Screening Examination (OSMSE) is designed primarily for…

[Speech and language disorders in children from public schools in Belo Horizonte].

PubMed

Rabelo, Alessandra Terra Vasconcelos; Campos, Fernanda Rodrigues; Friche, Clarice Passos; da Silva, Bárbara Suelen Vasconcelos; de Lima Friche, Amélia Augusta; Alves, Claudia Regina Lindgren; de Figueiredo Goulart, Lúcia Maria Horta

2015-12-01

To investigate the prevalence of oral language, orofacial motor skill and auditory processing disorders in children aged 4-10 years old and verify their association with age and gender. Cross-sectional study with stratified, random sample consisting of 539 students. The evaluation consisted of three protocols: orofacial motor skill protocol, adapted from the Myofunctional Evaluation Guidelines; the Child Language Test ABFW--Phonology, and a simplified auditory processing evaluation. Descriptive and associative statistical analyses were performed using Epi Info software, release 6.04. Chi-square test was applied to compare proportion of events and analysis of variance was used to compare mean values. Significance was set at p≤0.05. Of the studied subjects, 50.1% had at least one of the assessed disorders; of those, 33.6% had oral language disorder, 17.1%, had orofacial motor skill impairment, and 27.3% had auditory processing disorder. There were significant associations between auditory processing skills' impairment, oral language impairment and age, suggesting a decrease in the number of disorders with increasing age. Similarly, the variable "one or more speech, language and hearing disorders" was also associated with age. The prevalence of speech, language and hearing disorders in children was high, indicating the need for research and public health efforts to cope with this problem. Copyright © 2015 Sociedade de Pediatria de São Paulo. Publicado por Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses on the WISC-V, DAS-II, and KABC-II and Their Relationship to Students' Errors in Oral Language, Reading, Writing, Spelling, and Math

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Breaux, Kristina C.; Avitia, Maria; Koriakin, Taylor; Bray, Melissa A.; DeBiase, Emily; Courville, Troy; Pan, Xingyu; Witholt, Thomas; Grossman, Sandy

2017-01-01

This study investigated the relationship between specific cognitive patterns of strengths and weaknesses and the errors children make on oral language, reading, writing, spelling, and math subtests from the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Third Edition (KTEA-3). Participants with scores from the KTEA-3 and either the Wechsler Intelligence…

The Effectiveness of Three Reading Approaches and an Oral Language Stimulation Program with Disadvantaged Children in the Primary Grades: A Follow-Up Report After the Third Grade.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Lloyd M.; Bruininks, Robert H.

The Cooperative Reading Project was a 2-year study designed to test the effectiveness of three initial reading approaches and an oral language stimulation program with inner-city Southern disadvantaged children. This followup study looked for differences among the treatment groups after pupils had completed their third school year. The 354…

The Role of Oral Language and Reading in the Transfer of Skills from Spanish to English Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lopez-Emslie, Julia Rosa

A study to determine the role of oral language and reading skills in the transfer from two years of reading in Spanish to reading in English had as subjects 191 fourth grade students in a bilingual education program. Students were tested and classified as efficient and non-efficient readers. It was found that: (1) there is a relationship between…

Short-term phonological memory in preschool children.

PubMed

Rodrigues, Amalia; Befi-Lopes, Debora Maria

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to design a short-term memory test, to describe quantitative performance in typically language developing children and to verify the relationship between the non-words repetition and oral phonological measure. The participants included 136 typically language developing children aged from 3 years to 6 years and 11 months old in this study, who were evaluated. The test consisted of 40 non-words of one, two, three, and four syllables. The subjects' repetitions were transcribed and the number of right answers was calculated for each age range. The effect of age was observed in the test, as well as the effect of length, only for disyllabic non-words. The performance in the non-word repetition task showed correlation with the oral phonology measure. The test designed in this research was able to verify the short-term memory in typically language developing children and the results showed correlation between this memory and phonological performance.

Assessing Second Language Speaking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fulcher, Glenn

2015-01-01

While the viva voce (oral) examination has always been used in content-based educational assessment (Latham 1877: 132), the assessment of second language (L2) speaking in performance tests is relatively recent. The impetus for the growth in testing speaking during the 19th and 20th centuries is twofold. Firstly, in educational settings the…

Simulated Oral Proficiency Interviews: Recent Developments. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malone, Margaret

This digest discusses the simulated oral proficiency interview (SOPI), a performance-based, tape-mediated speaking test. The SOPI follows the general structure of the oral proficiency interview (OPI) used by government agencies and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) to measure speaking proficiency. Whereas the OPI is…

Practical Approaches to Outcomes Assessment: The Undergraduate Major in Foreign Languages and Literatures.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liskin-Gasparro, Judith E.

1995-01-01

Discusses specific instruments and procedures that university-level foreign languages and literatures departments can use in outcomes-assessment of their undergraduate majors, including standardized tests, oral assessments, questionnaires, and portfolios. Case studies of outcomes-assessment programs in language departments at the University of…

Is Weak Oral Language Associated with Poor Spelling in School-Age Children with Specific Language Impairment, Dyslexia, or Both?

PubMed Central

McCarthy, Jillian H.; Hogan, Tiffany P.; Catts, Hugh W.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that word reading accuracy, not oral language, is associated with spelling performance in school-age children. We compared fourth grade spelling accuracy in children with specific language impairment (SLI), dyslexia, or both (SLI/dyslexia) to their typically developing grade-matched peers. Results of the study revealed that children with SLI performed similarly to their typically developing peers on a single word spelling task. Alternatively, those with dyslexia and SLI/dyslexia evidenced poor spelling accuracy. Errors made by both those with dyslexia and SLI/dyslexia were characterized by numerous phonologic, orthographic, and semantic errors. Cumulative results support the hypothesis that word reading accuracy, not oral language, is associated with spelling performance in typically developing school-age children and their peers with SLI and dyslexia. Findings are provided as further support for the notion that SLI and dyslexia are distinct, yet co-morbid, developmental disorders. PMID:22876769

Moyamoya disease: impact on the performance of oral and written language.

PubMed

Lamônica, Dionísia Aparecida Cusin; Ribeiro, Camila da Costa; Ferraz, Plínio Marcos Duarte Pinto; Tabaquim, Maria de Lourdes Merighi

Moyamoya disease is an unusual form of occlusive, cerebrovascular disorder that affects the arteries of the central nervous system, causing acquired language alterations and learning difficulties. The study aim was to describe the oral/written language and cognitive skills in a seven-year-and-seven-month-old girl diagnosed with Moyamoya disease. The assessment consisted of interviews with her parents and application of the following instruments: Observation of Communicative Behavior, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Academic Performance Test, Profile of Phonological Awareness, Raven's Progressive Matrices Test, Special Scale, Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test, and Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Two episodes of stroke in the left and right temporal-parietal and left frontal areas occurred until the age of six years and five months. Revascularization surgery and medication treatment were conducted. The audiologic and ophthalmologic assessments indicated normality. At the time of the study, the girl was attending the second grade of elementary school. She presented changes in oral and written language (syllabic-alphabetic), non-naming of all graphemes, low arithmetic and writing means, reading skill below first grade level and psycholinguistic delay, and pre-school level phonological processing skills. The psychological evaluation indicated satisfactory intellectual level; however, it also showed cognitive performance impairment in verbal and execution tasks and limitations on graphic-perceptual-motor skills and sequential logic organization. The stroke episodes influenced the performance of learning processes, affecting the analysis, integration, and interpretation of relevant visual and auditory information.

Efficacy of an HIV/AIDS and HIV testing video for Spanish-speaking Latinos in healthcare and non-healthcare settings

PubMed Central

Merchant, Roland C.; Clark, Melissa A.; Santelices, Claudia A.; Liu, Tao; Cortés, Dharma E.

2014-01-01

We assessed the efficacy of a Spanish-language HIV/AIDS and HIV testing video as a substitute for comparable orally-delivered information in healthcare and non-health care settings for Spanish-speakers regardless of health literacy level. In a non-inferiority clinical trial, Spanish-speaking Latinos from an emergency department, a clinic, and community-based organizations were randomly assigned to receive HIV/AIDS and HIV testing information orally or from a video. Comprehension of the information was measured using a questionnaire. Of the 150 participants, 39% met criteria for lower health literacy and 75% previously had been tested for HIV. Mean scores on the questionnaire for the video (20.4; 95% CI: 19.5∼21.3) and the orally-delivered information arms (20.6; 95% CI: 19.7∼21.5) were similar (Δ = -0.15; 95% CI: -1.4∼1.1). Mean scores among lower health literacy participants also were similar (18.3 (video) vs. 19.6 (in-person); p<0.30). This Spanish-language video is a viable substitute for orally-delivered HIV/AIDS and HIV testing information. PMID:25179540

Early writing deficits in preschoolers with oral language difficulties.

PubMed

Puranik, Cynthia S; Lonigan, Christopher J

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether preschool children with language impairments (LI), a group with documented reading difficulties, also experience writing difficulties. In addition, a purpose was to examine if the writing outcomes differed when children had concomitant cognitive deficits in addition to oral language problems. A group of 293 preschool children were administered an assessment battery that included measures to examine oral language, nonverbal cognition, emergent reading, and writing. Children were divided into four groups based on their language and cognitive performance. The findings from this study show that as early as preschool, children with weaker oral language skills lag behind their peers with stronger oral language skills in terms of their writing-related skills. Children with oral language and cognitive deficits performed more poorly than children whose deficits were confined to oral language. A child's cognitive ability also has an impact on emergent writing skills, but it appears to be moderated by oral language skills. These results are consistent with research documenting links between preschool language and emergent reading in children with a history of LI. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2012.

Early Writing Deficits in Preschoolers with Oral Language Difficulties

PubMed Central

Puranik, Cynthia S.; Lonigan, Christopher J.

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether preschool children with language impairments (LI), a group with documented reading difficulties, also experience writing difficulties. In addition, a purpose was to examine if the writing outcomes differed when children had concomitant cognitive deficits in addition to oral language problems. A group of 293 preschool children were administered an assessment battery that included measures to examine oral language, nonverbal cognition, emergent reading, and writing. Children were divided into four groups based on their language and cognitive performance. The findings from this study show that as early as preschool, children with weaker oral language skills lag behind their peers with stronger oral language skills in terms of their writing-related skills. Children with oral language and cognitive deficits performed more poorly than children whose deficits were confined to oral language. A child’s cognitive ability also has an impact on emergent writing skills, but it appears to be moderated by oral language skills. These results are consistent with research documenting links between preschool language and emergent reading in children with a history of LI. PMID:22043027

Testing the Limits of Proficiency: The ACTFL OPI and FL Departments.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grosse, Christine Uber; And Others

A study investigated: (1) the average language proficiency level as determined by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) attained by 271 college seniors majoring in 6 languages (Spanish, French, Russian, German, Japanese, Italian); (2) current and projected uses of the ACTFL OPI by…

Raters' L2 Background as a Potential Source of Bias in Rating Oral Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Winke, Paula; Gass, Susan; Myford, Carol

2013-01-01

Based on evidence that listeners may favor certain foreign accents over others (Gass & Varonis, 1984; Major, Fitzmaurice, Bunta, & Balasubramanian, 2002; Tauroza & Luk, 1997) and that language-test raters may better comprehend and/or rate the speech of test takers whose native languages (L1s) are more familiar on some level (Carey,…

Language and Adjustment Scales for the Thematic Apperception Test for Children 6-11 Years.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neman, Janice; And Others

The report summarizes research on the development of an objective scoring system and the formulation of scales useful in the assessment of psychological development and normal behavior using a five-card, orally administered and tape-recorded version of the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The TAT language scales which were developed represent…

Non-Discriminatory Assessment: Formal and Informal Assessment of Limited English Proficient Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mares, Sharon

PEOPLE (Pruebas de Expresion Oral y Percepcion de la Lengua Espanol) was developed as a test to help distinguish between a language difference and a language deficit in non English proficient (NEP) and limited English proficient (LEP) elementary Hispanic students. PEOPLE was developed, pilot tested in 14 school districts in Los Angeles County with…

The Oral Narrative Comprehension and Production Abilities of Verbal Preschoolers on the Autism Spectrum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Westerveld, Marleen F.; Roberts, Jacqueline M. A.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study described the oral narrative comprehension and production skills of verbal preschool-age children on the autism spectrum and investigated correlations between oral narrative ability and norm-referenced language test performance. Method: Twenty-nine preschool-age children (aged 4;0-5;9 years;months) with autism, who obtained an…

Is Overall Oral English Ability Related to Young Latinos' English Reading Growth?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fitzgerald, Jill; Amendum, Steven J.; Relyea, Jackie Eunjung; Garcia, Sandra G.

2015-01-01

The present study investigated whether young Latino dual-language learners' 2-year English reading growth varied over time according to their initial overall oral English ability. We followed 41 Latino children for 2 years. We tested overall oral English at the beginning of the study and administered multiple curriculum-based reading assessments…

Writing fluency in patients with low-grade glioma before and after surgery.

PubMed

Antonsson, Malin; Johansson, Charlotte; Hartelius, Lena; Henriksson, Ingrid; Longoni, Francesca; Wengelin, Åsa

2018-05-01

Low-grade glioma (LGG) is a type of brain tumour often situated in or near areas involved in language, sensory or motor functions. Depending on localization and tumour characteristics, language or cognitive impairments due to tumour growth and/or surgical resection are obvious risks. One task that may be at risk is writing, both because it requires intact language and memory function and because it is a very complex and cognitively demanding task. The most commonly reported language deficit in LGG patients is oral lexical-retrieval difficulties, and poor lexical retrieval would be expected to affect writing fluency. To explore whether writing fluency is affected in LGG patients before and after surgery and whether it is related to performance on tasks of oral lexical retrieval. Twenty consecutive patients with presumed LGG wrote a narrative and performed a copy task before undergoing surgery and at 3-month follow-up using keystroke-logging software. The same tasks were performed by a reference group (N = 31). The patients were also tested using the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and word-fluency tests before and after surgery. Writing fluency was compared between the patients and the reference group, and between the patients before and after surgery. Relationships between performance on tests of oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency were investigated both before and after surgery. Different aspects of writing fluency were affected in the LGG patients both before and after surgery. However, when controlling for the effect of typing speed, the LGG group differed significantly from the reference group only in the proportion of pauses within words. After surgery, a significant decline was seen in production rate and typing speed in the narrative task, and a significant increase was seen in pauses before words. Strong positive relationships were found between oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency both before and after surgery. Although aspects of writing fluency were affected both before and after surgery, the results indicate that typing speed is an important factor behind the pre-surgery differences. However, the decline in overall productivity and the increase in pauses before words after surgery could be related to a lexical deficit. This is supported by the finding that oral lexical-retrieval scores were strongly correlated with writing fluency. However, further exploration is needed to identify the language and cognitive abilities affecting writing processes in LGG patients. © 2018 The Authors International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Correlating Aptitude with Oral Proficiency: A Quantitative Study of DLAB and OPI Scores across Four Language Categories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santizo, Isabelle Poupard

2017-01-01

This quantitative study focuses on the relationship between foreign language learners' aptitude and proficiency test scores. Four groups of 136 beginning students received six months of Initial Acquisition Training (IAT) in four different language categories, according to the level of complexity for an English speaker: French (Category I),…

Examining Samoan Language Development in Samoan Bilingual Students' Understanding of Texts in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Amituanai-Toloa, Meaola; McNaughton, Stuart; Kuin Lai, Mei

2009-01-01

This paper examines language development of Samoan students in bilingual contexts in Aotearoa, New Zealand. In the absence of valid and standardized assessments tools in Samoan, one was designed to test reading comprehension and oral language development for Samoan students using common narratives as a base. For reading comprehension, the tool…

Oral Language and Listening Comprehension: Same or Different Constructs?

PubMed

2017-05-24

The purpose of this study was to add to our understanding of the dimensionality of oral language in children and to determine whether oral language and listening comprehension are separate constructs in children enrolled in preschool (PK) through 3rd grade. In the spring of the school year, children from 4 states (N = 1,869) completed multiple measures of oral language (i.e., expressive and receptive vocabulary and grammar) and listening comprehension as part of a larger study of the language bases of reading comprehension. Initial confirmatory factor analysis found evidence that measures of oral language and listening comprehension loaded on two separate factors in PK through 3rd grade; however, these factors were highly correlated at all grades. These results suggest that oral language and listening comprehension are best characterized as a single oral language construct in PK through 3rd grade. The implications for early identification and intervention are discussed.

A Multi-Method Analysis of Evaluation Criteria Used to Assess the Speaking Proficiency of Graduate Student Instructors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plough, India C.; Briggs, Sarah L.; Van Bonn, Sarah

2010-01-01

The study reported here examined the evaluation criteria used to assess the proficiency and effectiveness of the language produced in an oral performance test of English conducted in an American university context. Empirical methods were used to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively transcriptions of the Oral English Tests (OET) of 44…

Oral language disorders and enuresis in children.

PubMed

Birenbaum, Thelma Kilinsky; Cunha, Maria Claudia

2010-01-01

Co-occurrence of oral language disorders and enuresis in children. To identify and analyze the relationship between instances of oral language disorders and enuresis in children. Clinical, quantitative and qualitative study, with a descriptive/interpretative outline, presented through two distinct situations. "Situation 1" refers to a group of 120 children between 3:0 and 10:0 years old, independently of gender and age, from a philanthropic Institution in Greater São Paulo. "Situation 2" refers specifically to the evaluation of children who have oral language disorders and enuresis. Results indicated that enuretic children present a higher percentage of oral language disorders when compared to non-enuretic children, especially phonological disorders and talking very little. These results support the studies on co-occurrence of enuresis and oral language disorders, presented in papers that attribute a bio-psychic etiology to this co-morbidity. Results indicated a relationship between enuresis and oral language disorders. Considering the interactions among language, body and psyche, it is suggested that speech therapists, when dealing with oral language disorders in children, also investigate the acquisition of their bladder sphincter control, in a bio-psychical approach.

Oral and Hand Movement Speeds are Associated with Expressive Language Ability in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

PubMed Central

Peter, Beate

2013-01-01

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities. PMID:22411590

Oral and hand movement speeds are associated with expressive language ability in children with speech sound disorder.

PubMed

Peter, Beate

2012-12-01

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities.

Talking to Score: Impression Management in L2 Oral Assessment and the Co-Construction of a Test Discourse Genre

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luk, Jasmine

2010-01-01

In recent years, the emphasis in second language (L2) oral proficiency assessment has shifted from linguistic accuracy to discourse strategies such as the ability to initiate, respond, and negotiate meaning. This has resulted in a growing interest in the discourse analysis of students' performance in different oral proficiency assessment formats.…

Effects of maternal sensitivity and cognitive and linguistic stimulation on cochlear implant users' language development over four years.

PubMed

Quittner, Alexandra L; Cruz, Ivette; Barker, David H; Tobey, Emily; Eisenberg, Laurie S; Niparko, John K

2013-02-01

To examine the effects of observed maternal sensitivity (MS), cognitive stimulation (CS), and linguistic stimulation on the 4-year growth of oral language in young, deaf children receiving a cochlear implant. Previous studies of cochlear implants have not considered the effects of parental behaviors on language outcomes. In this prospective, multisite study, we evaluated parent-child interactions during structured and unstructured play tasks and their effects on oral language development in 188 deaf children receiving a cochlear implant and 97 normal-hearing children as controls. Parent-child interactions were rated on a 7-point scale using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development's Early Childcare Study codes, which have well-established psychometric properties. Language was assessed using the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventories, the Reynell Developmental Language Scales, and the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language. We used mixed longitudinal modeling to test our hypotheses. After accounting for early hearing experience and child and family demographics, MS and CS predicted significant increases in the growth of oral language. Linguistic stimulation was related to language growth only in the context of high MS. The magnitude of effects of MS and CS on the growth of language was similar to that found for age at cochlear implantation, suggesting that addressing parenting behaviors is a critical target for early language learning after implantation. Copyright © 2013 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Spoken Oral Language and Adult Struggling Readers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bakhtiari, Dariush; Greenberg, Daphne; Patton-Terry, Nicole; Nightingale, Elena

2015-01-01

Oral language is a critical component to the development of reading acquisition. Much of the research concerning the relationship between oral language and reading ability is focused on children, while there is a paucity of research focusing on this relationship for adults who struggle with their reading. Oral language as defined in this paper…

How Much Is Enough? Involving Occupational Experts in Setting Standards on a Specific-Purpose Language Test for Health Professionals

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pill, John; McNamara, Tim

2016-01-01

This paper considers how to establish the minimum required level of professionally relevant oral communication ability in the medium of English for health practitioners with English as an additional language (EAL) to gain admission to practice in jurisdictions where English is the dominant language. A theoretical concern is the construct of…

Does Gender Play a Role in the Assessment of Oral Proficiency?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Motallebzadeh, Khalil; Nematizadeh, Shaahin

2011-01-01

Gender has been a controversial issue which affects the language learning process. McNamara (1996) has proposed that there are some variables affecting second language performance one of which is sex. In much the same way, it has been reported that gender plays a role in the area of language testing (Brown, 2003; Lumley & O'Sullivan, 2005;…

Reading in Multilingual Learners of Urdu (L1), English (L2) and Arabic (L3)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mirza, Amna; Gottardo, Alexandra; Chen, Xi

2017-01-01

The present study examined the language and literacy skills and their relations to each other in multilingual children, who have a broad range of oral and written language proficiency in each language that they "know". Reading and vocabulary skills were tested in 50 Canadian children (ages 6-10 years) who were Urdu-English speakers,…

Do Some School-Age Children Have No Language? Some Problems of Construct Validity in the Pre-LAS Espanol.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacSwan, Jeff; Rolstad, Kellie; Glass, Gene V.

2002-01-01

Analysis of a dataset of 38,887 Spanish-speaking children aged 4-6 who took the Pre-Language Assessment Scales Espanol indicates serious concerns with test validity. The "non-non" label--nonverbal in both Spanish and English--may be an artifact of poor assessment. Policies requiring routine oral native-language assessment of…

Assessing the Role of Book Reading Practices in Indian Bilingual Children's English Language and Literacy Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kalia, Vrinda

2007-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine the role of Indian bilingual parents' book reading practices on the development of the children's oral language, narrative and literacy skills in English, their second language. About 24 bilingual children from two preschools in Bangalore, India were tested in schools in English on receptive vocabulary,…

Exploring Australian speech-language pathologists' use and perceptions ofnon-speech oral motor exercises.

PubMed

Rumbach, Anna F; Rose, Tanya A; Cheah, Mynn

2018-01-29

To explore Australian speech-language pathologists' use of non-speech oral motor exercises, and rationales for using/not using non-speech oral motor exercises in clinical practice. A total of 124 speech-language pathologists practising in Australia, working with paediatric and/or adult clients with speech sound difficulties, completed an online survey. The majority of speech-language pathologists reported that they did not use non-speech oral motor exercises when working with paediatric or adult clients with speech sound difficulties. However, more than half of the speech-language pathologists working with adult clients who have dysarthria reported using non-speech oral motor exercises with this population. The most frequently reported rationale for using non-speech oral motor exercises in speech sound difficulty management was to improve awareness/placement of articulators. The majority of speech-language pathologists agreed there is no clear clinical or research evidence base to support non-speech oral motor exercise use with clients who have speech sound difficulties. This study provides an overview of Australian speech-language pathologists' reported use and perceptions of non-speech oral motor exercises' applicability and efficacy in treating paediatric and adult clients who have speech sound difficulties. The research findings provide speech-language pathologists with insight into how and why non-speech oral motor exercises are currently used, and adds to the knowledge base regarding Australian speech-language pathology practice of non-speech oral motor exercises in the treatment of speech sound difficulties. Implications for Rehabilitation Non-speech oral motor exercises refer to oral motor activities which do not involve speech, but involve the manipulation or stimulation of oral structures including the lips, tongue, jaw, and soft palate. Non-speech oral motor exercises are intended to improve the function (e.g., movement, strength) of oral structures. The majority of speech-language pathologists agreed there is no clear clinical or research evidence base to support non-speech oral motor exercise use with clients who have speech sound disorders. Non-speech oral motor exercise use was most frequently reported in the treatment of dysarthria. Non-speech oral motor exercise use when targeting speech sound disorders is not widely endorsed in the literature.

Development and validation of the Child Oral Health Impact Profile - Preschool version.

PubMed

Ruff, R R; Sischo, L; Chinn, C H; Broder, H L

2017-09-01

The Child Oral Health Impact Profile (COHIP) is a validated instrument created to measure the oral health-related quality of life of school-aged children. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a preschool version of the COHIP (COHIP-PS) for children aged 2-5. The COHIP-PS was developed and validated using a multi-stage process consisting of item selection, face validity testing, item impact testing, reliability and validity testing, and factor analysis. A cross-sectional convenience sample of caregivers having children 2-5 years old from four groups completed item clarity and impact forms. Groups were recruited from pediatric health clinics or preschools/daycare centers, speech clinics, dental clinics, or cleft/craniofacial centers. Participants had a variety of oral health-related conditions, including caries, congenital orofacial anomalies, and speech/language deficiencies such as articulation and language disorders. COHIP-PS. The COHIP-PS was found to have acceptable internal validity (a = 0.71) and high test-retest reliability (0.87), though internal validity was below the accepted threshold for the community sample. While discriminant validity results indicated significant differences across study groups, the overall magnitude of differences was modest. Results from confirmatory factor analyses support the use of a four-factor model consisting of 11 items across oral health, functional well-being, social-emotional well-being, and self-image domains. Quality of life is an integral factor in understanding and assessing children's well-being. The COHIP-PS is a validated oral health-related quality of life measure for preschool children with cleft or other oral conditions. Copyright© 2017 Dennis Barber Ltd.

[Authorization, translation, back translation and language modification of the simplified Chinese adult comorbidity-27 index].

PubMed

Gao, L; Mao, C; Yu, G Y; Peng, X

2016-10-09

Objective: To translate the adult comorbidity evaluation-27(ACE-27) index authored by professor JF Piccirillo into Chinese and for the purpose of assessing the possible impact of comorbidity on survival of oral cancer patients and improving cancer staging. Methods: The translation included the following steps, obtaining permission from professor Piccirillo, translation, back translation, language modification, adjusted by the advice from the professors of oral and maxillofacial surgery. The test population included 154 patients who were admitted to Peking University of Stomatology during March 2011. Questionnaire survey was conducted on these patients. Retest of reliability, internal consistency reliability, content validity, and structure validity were performed. Results: The simplified Chinese ACE-27 index was established. The Cronbach's α was 0.821 in the internal consistency reliability test. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 8 items was 0.859 in the structure validity test. Conclusions: The simplified Chinese ACE-27 index has good feasibility and reliability. It is useful to assess the comorbidity of oral cancer patients.

First, You Have to Hear It! ESL Oral Language Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

LeLoup, Jean W.; Ponterio, Robert

2005-01-01

There is no question that the development of oral language skills in second (as well as first) language learners is of prime importance. Language learners must focus on oral language proficiency because it is eventually the skill they will most use. But oracy in second language learners does not develop in a vacuum. It is inextricably intertwined…

Individualization of Foreign Language Learning in America, V.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bockman, John F., Ed.; Gougher, Ronald L., Ed.

This newsletter contains a series of brief reports concerning methods of individualizing language learning and describes several ongoing experiments. The first article illustrates how individualized achievement charts aid in determining students' instructional needs. Group work and oral testing are discussed as a means of individualizing a course…

Comparing written and oral measures of comprehension of cancer information by English-as-a-Second-Language Chinese immigrant women.

PubMed

McWhirter, Jennifer; Todd, Laura; Hoffman-Goetz, Laurie

2011-09-01

The Short Test of Functional Health Literacy for Adults (S-TOFHLA) and Cloze test are commonly used tools to measure comprehension of health information (i.e., health literacy); however, little is known about their use in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) populations. In this study, we compared written (Cloze test) and oral (Teach Back) measures of colon cancer information comprehension among ESL Chinese immigrant women to Canada. Performances on colon cancer-specific measures were compared to a general measure of health literacy (S-TOFHLA). On the S-TOFHLA, Cloze, and Teach Back, respectively, the following percentage of participants had adequate comprehension: 62.1%, 14.8%, and 89.7%. Correlation between performance on the Cloze and Teach Back was significant albeit weakly so (r = 0.38, p = 0.04); performances on the S-TOFHLA and Teach Back were not correlated. Measures of health literacy skill that require written English language skills may not be appropriate for measuring understanding of health information for ESL populations.

Relationships between narrative language samples and norm-referenced test scores in language assessments of school-age children.

PubMed

Danahy Ebert, Kerry; Scott, Cheryl M

2014-10-01

Both narrative language samples and norm-referenced language tests can be important components of language assessment for school-age children. The present study explored the relationship between these 2 tools within a group of children referred for language assessment. The study is a retrospective analysis of clinical records from 73 school-age children. Participants had completed an oral narrative language sample and at least one norm-referenced language test. Correlations between microstructural language sample measures and norm-referenced test scores were compared for younger (6- to 8-year-old) and older (9- to 12-year-old) children. Contingency tables were constructed to compare the 2 types of tools, at 2 different cutpoints, in terms of which children were identified as having a language disorder. Correlations between narrative language sample measures and norm-referenced tests were stronger for the younger group than the older group. Within the younger group, the level of language assessed by each measure contributed to associations among measures. Contingency analyses revealed moderate overlap in the children identified by each tool, with agreement affected by the cutpoint used. Narrative language samples may complement norm-referenced tests well, but age combined with narrative task can be expected to influence the nature of the relationship.

Theory-of-mind development in oral deaf children with cochlear implants or conventional hearing aids.

PubMed

Peterson, Candida C

2004-09-01

In the context of the established finding that theory-of-mind (ToM) growth is seriously delayed in late-signing deaf children, and some evidence of equivalent delays in those learning speech with conventional hearing aids, this study's novel contribution was to explore ToM development in deaf children with cochlear implants. Implants can substantially boost auditory acuity and rates of language growth. Despite the implant, there are often problems socialising with hearing peers and some language difficulties, lending special theoretical interest to the present comparative design. A total of 52 children aged 4 to 12 years took a battery of false belief tests of ToM. There were 26 oral deaf children, half with implants and half with hearing aids, evenly divided between oral-only versus sign-plus-oral schools. Comparison groups of age-matched high-functioning children with autism and younger hearing children were also included. No significant ToM differences emerged between deaf children with implants and those with hearing aids, nor between those in oral-only versus sign-plus-oral schools. Nor did the deaf children perform any better on the ToM tasks than their age peers with autism. Hearing preschoolers scored significantly higher than all other groups. For the deaf and the autistic children, as well as the preschoolers, rate of language development and verbal maturity significantly predicted variability in ToM, over and above chronological age. The finding that deaf children with cochlear implants are as delayed in ToM development as children with autism and their deaf peers with hearing aids or late sign language highlights the likely significance of peer interaction and early fluent communication with peers and family, whether in sign or in speech, in order to optimally facilitate the growth of social cognition and language.

Past-Tense Morphology and Phonological Deficits in Children with Dyslexia and Children with Language Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robertson, Erin K.; Joanisse, Marc F.; Desroches, Amy S.; Terry, Alexandra

2013-01-01

The authors investigated past-tense morphology problems in children with dyslexia compared to those classically observed in children with oral language impairment (LI). Children were tested on a past-tense elicitation task involving regulars ("look-looked"), irregulars ("take-took"), and nonwords ("murn-murned").…

Oral and written language in late adulthood: findings from the Nun Study.

PubMed

Mitzner, Tracy L; Kemper, Susan

2003-01-01

As a part of the Nun Study, a longitudinal investigation of aging and Alzheimer's disease, oral and written autobiographies from 118 older women were analyzed to examine the relationship between spoken and written language. The written language samples were more complex than the oral samples, both conceptually and grammatically. The relationship between the linguistic measures and participant characteristics was also examined. The results suggest that the grammatical and conceptual characteristics of oral and written language are affected by participant differences in education, cognitive status, and physical function and that written language samples have greater power than oral language samples to differentiate between high- and low-ability older adults.

Cultural adaptation of the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) into Brazilian Portuguese.

PubMed

Rossi, Natalia Freitas; Lindau, Tâmara de Andrade; Gillam, Ronald Bradley; Giacheti, Célia Maria

To accomplish the translation and cultural adaptation of the Test of Narrative Language (TNL) into Brazilian Portuguese. The TNL is a formal instrument which assesses narrative comprehension and oral narration of children between the ages of 5-0 and 11-11 (years-months). The TNL translation and adaptation process had the following steps: (1) translation into the target language; (2) summary of the translated versions; (3) back-translation; (4) checking of the conceptual, semantics and cultural equivalence process and (5) pilot study (56 children within the test age range and from both genders). The adapted version maintained the same structure as the original version: number of tasks (both, three comprehension and oral narration), narrative formats (no picture, sequenced pictures and single picture) and scoring system. There were no adjustments to the pictures. The "McDonald's Story" was replaced by the "Snack Bar History" to meet the semantic and experiential equivalence of the target population. The other stories had semantic and grammatical adjustments. Statistically significant difference was found when comparing the raw score (comprehension, narration and total) of age groups from the adapted version. Adjustments were required to meet the equivalence between the original and the translated versions. The adapted version showed it has the potential to identify differences in oral narratives of children in the age range provided by the test. Measurement equivalence for validation and test standardization are in progress and will be able to supplement the study outcomes.

Oral Reading Fluency Testing: Pitfalls for Children with Speech Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howland, Karole; Scaler Scott, Kathleen

2016-01-01

As school districts nationwide have moved toward data driven intervention, oral reading fluency measures have become a prevalent means to monitor progress by assessing the degree to which a child is becoming a fast (and therefore fluent) reader. This article reviews results of a survey of speech-language pathologists (SLPs) working with children…

Context in Text: The Development of Oral and Written Language in Two Genres.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pellegrini, A. D.; And Others

1984-01-01

Tests Halliday's model of context/text relationships and how these relationships vary for 71 children in first, second, and third grades. Children produced oral and written messages about a circus in narrative and persuasive genres. Texts were analyzed for elements of linguistic cohesion and length of clausal themes. (Author/CB)

Language Impairment Resulting from a de novo Deletion of 7q32.1q33.

PubMed

Jiménez-Romero, María S; Barcos-Martínez, Montserrat; Espejo-Portero, Isabel; Benítez-Burraco, Antonio

2016-10-01

We report on a girl who presents with hearing loss, behavioral disturbances (according to the Inventory for Client and Agency Planning) as well as motor and cognitive delay (according to Battelle Developmental Inventories) which have a significant impact on her speech and language abilities [according to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (ed 3), and the Prueba de Lenguaje Oral de Navarra-Revisada (Navarra Oral Language Test, Revised)]. Five copy number variations (CNVs) were identified in the child: arr[hg18] 7q32.1q33(127109685-132492196)×1, 8p23.1(7156900-7359099) ×1, 15q13.1(26215673-26884937)×1, Xp22.33(17245- 102434)×3, and Xp22.33(964441-965024)×3. The pathogenicity of similar CNVs is mostly reported as unknown. The largest deletion is found in a hot spot for cognitive disease and language impairment and contains several genes involved in brain development and function, many of which have been related to developmental disorders encompassing language deficits (dyslexia, speech-sound disorder, and autism). Some of these genes interact with FOXP2 . The proband's phenotype may result from a reduced expression of some of these genes.

Language Impairment Resulting from a de novo Deletion of 7q32.1q33

PubMed Central

Jiménez-Romero, María S.; Barcos-Martínez, Montserrat; Espejo-Portero, Isabel; Benítez-Burraco, Antonio

2016-01-01

We report on a girl who presents with hearing loss, behavioral disturbances (according to the Inventory for Client and Agency Planning) as well as motor and cognitive delay (according to Battelle Developmental Inventories) which have a significant impact on her speech and language abilities [according to the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (ed 3), and the Prueba de Lenguaje Oral de Navarra-Revisada (Navarra Oral Language Test, Revised)]. Five copy number variations (CNVs) were identified in the child: arr[hg18] 7q32.1q33(127109685-132492196)×1, 8p23.1(7156900-7359099) ×1, 15q13.1(26215673-26884937)×1, Xp22.33(17245- 102434)×3, and Xp22.33(964441-965024)×3. The pathogenicity of similar CNVs is mostly reported as unknown. The largest deletion is found in a hot spot for cognitive disease and language impairment and contains several genes involved in brain development and function, many of which have been related to developmental disorders encompassing language deficits (dyslexia, speech-sound disorder, and autism). Some of these genes interact with FOXP2. The proband's phenotype may result from a reduced expression of some of these genes. PMID:27867345

Developing Oral Language Skills in Middle School English Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy

2018-01-01

Oral language development can help English learners develop academic proficiency with the English language. In this investigation, at one middle school, teachers focused on improving oral language skills. Using a formative experiment process, the teachers developed an intervention to accomplish their pedagogical goal and then tracked data to see…

The relationship between oral and written language.

PubMed

de Montfort Supple, M

1998-01-01

It has been agreed for some time now that reading is primarily a language-based activity and that deficits in oral language will be reflected in deficits in reading ability. This paper explores the association between specific aspects of oral and written language as reflected in current literature and research.

Effective Oral Language Development Strategies for Elementary Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kohler, Karen L.

2016-01-01

This action research study explored first and second grade classroom teachers' knowledge of oral language development and interventions for students at-risk of an oral language delay. This was accomplished through collaboration between a speech-language pathologist and classroom teachers. The data was aligned with assessments, the Response to…

Leistungsmessung im Sprachunterricht: Positionspapier (Measuring Achievement in Language Instruction: A Position Paper).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schrand, Heinrich, Ed.

This position paper on the measurement of achievement in language instruction contains nine articles by leading authorities. Three articles, written in German, cover: (1) testing: necessities and dangers, (2) supervision and evaluation of oral achievement in certification examinations, and (3) development of a higher level of an adult education…

Adaptation and Assessment of a Public Speaking Rating Scale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iberri-Shea, Gina

2017-01-01

Prominent spoken language assessments such as the Oral Proficiency Interview and the Test of Spoken English have been primarily concerned with speaking ability as it relates to conversation. This paper looks at an additional aspect of spoken language ability, namely public speaking. This study used an adapted form of a public speaking rating scale…

Supporting Kindergartners' Science Talk in the Context of an Integrated Science and Disciplinary Literacy Curriculum

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wright, Tanya S.; Gotwals, Amelia Wenk

2017-01-01

Given the growing evidence of limited attention to science, disciplinary literacy, and oral language in elementary classrooms serving low-income children, this study focused on designing and testing an integrated science and disciplinary language and literacy curriculum aligned with NGSS and CCSS ELA standards for kindergarten. We used…

The Impact of Cochlear Implant in the Oral Language of Children with Congenital Deafness.

PubMed

Ramos, Daniela; Jorge, João Xavier; Teixeira, António; Ribeiro, Carlos; Paiva, António

2015-01-01

Children with severe to profound sensorineural deafness can acquire vocabulary and syntactic structures to communicate by oral language, after cochlear implant. Identify the linguistic skills of children with cochlear implant. Eighteen children of both gender, between 9 and 10 years, with congenital bilateral deafness, using cochlear implant, were studied. The evaluation instrument used was Observation Chart of Language-School Level. The results were compared with standard of normal-hearing children with the same hearing age. The scores registered in the linguistics structures studied, comparing implanted children and standard, was: phonology, 29.44 ± 8.4 vs. 29.68 ± 5.90, p = 0.91; semantics, 18.55 ± 8.89 vs. 19.20 ± 4.85, p = 0.76; morpho-syntax 21.89 ± 12.85 vs. 26.35 ± 10.36, p = 0.159. Regarding the tests of semantics, there was no significant difference. Concerning the tests of morpho-syntactic structure, the difference was significant in the derivation of words, 2.83 ± 2.81 vs. 4.65 ± 1.64, p = 0.014. In the phonology, a significant difference was found comparing implanted children and standard, in the discrimination of pseudo words, 6.6 ± 2.8 vs. 8.37 ± 2.32, p = 0.023. However, in syllabic segmentation, implanted children had a mean score 8.56 ± 1.6 significantly higher than standard, 5.9 ± 1.58, p < 0.001. The similarity of the scores obtained by children with cochlear implants with the standard, in the language components studied confirms that cochlear implant promotes the development of oral verbal language in children with congenital deafness. Implanted children had acquired language skills similar to normal-hearing children with the same hearing age.

The Genetic Architecture of Oral Language, Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension: A Twin Study From 7 to 16 Years

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

This study examines the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the development of oral language and reading skills, and the relationship between them, over a long period of developmental time spanning middle childhood and adolescence. It focuses particularly on the differential relationship between language and two different aspects of reading: reading fluency and reading comprehension. Structural equation models were applied to language and reading data at 7, 12, and 16 years from the large-scale TEDS twin study. A series of multivariate twin models show a clear patterning of oral language with reading comprehension, as distinct from reading fluency: significant but moderate genetic overlap between oral language and reading fluency (genetic correlation rg = .46–.58 at 7, 12, and 16) contrasts with very substantial genetic overlap between oral language and reading comprehension (rg = .81–.87, at 12 and 16). This pattern is even clearer in a latent factors model, fit to the data aggregated across ages, in which a single factor representing oral language and reading comprehension is correlated with—but distinct from—a second factor representing reading fluency. A distinction between oral language and reading fluency is also apparent in different developmental trajectories: While the heritability of oral language increases over the period from 7 to 12 to 16 years (from h2 = .27 to .47 to .55), the heritability of reading fluency is high and largely stable over the same period of time (h2 = .73 to .71 to .64). PMID:28541066

The genetic architecture of oral language, reading fluency, and reading comprehension: A twin study from 7 to 16 years.

PubMed

Tosto, Maria G; Hayiou-Thomas, Marianna E; Harlaar, Nicole; Prom-Wormley, Elizabeth; Dale, Philip S; Plomin, Robert

2017-06-01

This study examines the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the development of oral language and reading skills, and the relationship between them, over a long period of developmental time spanning middle childhood and adolescence. It focuses particularly on the differential relationship between language and two different aspects of reading: reading fluency and reading comprehension. Structural equation models were applied to language and reading data at 7, 12, and 16 years from the large-scale TEDS twin study. A series of multivariate twin models show a clear patterning of oral language with reading comprehension, as distinct from reading fluency: significant but moderate genetic overlap between oral language and reading fluency (genetic correlation r g = .46-.58 at 7, 12, and 16) contrasts with very substantial genetic overlap between oral language and reading comprehension (r g = .81-.87, at 12 and 16). This pattern is even clearer in a latent factors model, fit to the data aggregated across ages, in which a single factor representing oral language and reading comprehension is correlated with-but distinct from-a second factor representing reading fluency. A distinction between oral language and reading fluency is also apparent in different developmental trajectories: While the heritability of oral language increases over the period from 7 to 12 to 16 years (from h² = .27 to .47 to .55), the heritability of reading fluency is high and largely stable over the same period of time (h² = .73 to .71 to .64). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Test-Takers' Strategic Behaviors in Independent and Integrated Speaking Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barkaoui, Khaled; Brooks, Lindsay; Swain, Merrill; Lapkin, Sharon

2013-01-01

This study investigated the strategic behaviors that test-takers reported using when responding to integrated and independent speaking tasks in an English oral proficiency test [the Speaking Section of the Internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] (TOEFL iBT)] and the relationship between test-takers' strategic behaviors and their…

RETENTION IN READING OF DISADVANTAGED MEXICAN-AMERICAN CHILDREN DURING THE SUMMER MONTHS.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

ARNOLD, RICHARD D.

THREE GROUPS OF DISADVANTAGED MEXICAN-AMERICAN CHILDREN WERE TESTED TO DETERMINE CHANGES IN READING ACHIEVEMENT BETWEEN SECOND AND THIRD GRADE. DURING THE SCHOOL YEAR, AN ORAL-AURAL ENGLISH GROUP OF 102 CHILDREN WERE GIVEN INTENSIVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION WHILE AN ORAL-AURAL SPANISH GROUP OF 67 CHILDREN WERE GIVEN INTENSIVE SPANISH LANGUAGE…

Another Look at Correlations between the Oral Proficiency Interview and the Zertifikat Deutsch als Fremdsprache.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vazulik, Johannes; Brown, Cheri

A study supplementing earlier research by Lalande and Schweckendiek investigated comparisons and correlations obtained from testing a group of 17 university students of German using both the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the most recent revision of the examination for the…

Relaxing in Pairs.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foot, Michael C.

1999-01-01

Discusses the practice of paired testing of oral languages, noting the lack of published research evidence and of results from the monitoring of these tests to support their introduction into wider use. Questions whether paired testing is more effective than, and a valid alternative to, the more traditional candidate/examiner model. (SM)

Writing fluency in patients with low‐grade glioma before and after surgery

PubMed Central

Hartelius, Lena; Henriksson, Ingrid; Longoni, Francesca; Wengelin, Åsa

2018-01-01

Abstract Background Low‐grade glioma (LGG) is a type of brain tumour often situated in or near areas involved in language, sensory or motor functions. Depending on localization and tumour characteristics, language or cognitive impairments due to tumour growth and/or surgical resection are obvious risks. One task that may be at risk is writing, both because it requires intact language and memory function and because it is a very complex and cognitively demanding task. The most commonly reported language deficit in LGG patients is oral lexical‐retrieval difficulties, and poor lexical retrieval would be expected to affect writing fluency. Aims To explore whether writing fluency is affected in LGG patients before and after surgery and whether it is related to performance on tasks of oral lexical retrieval. Methods & Procedures Twenty consecutive patients with presumed LGG wrote a narrative and performed a copy task before undergoing surgery and at 3‐month follow‐up using keystroke‐logging software. The same tasks were performed by a reference group (N = 31). The patients were also tested using the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and word‐fluency tests before and after surgery. Writing fluency was compared between the patients and the reference group, and between the patients before and after surgery. Relationships between performance on tests of oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency were investigated both before and after surgery. Outcome & Results Different aspects of writing fluency were affected in the LGG patients both before and after surgery. However, when controlling for the effect of typing speed, the LGG group differed significantly from the reference group only in the proportion of pauses within words. After surgery, a significant decline was seen in production rate and typing speed in the narrative task, and a significant increase was seen in pauses before words. Strong positive relationships were found between oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency both before and after surgery. Conclusions & Implications Although aspects of writing fluency were affected both before and after surgery, the results indicate that typing speed is an important factor behind the pre‐surgery differences. However, the decline in overall productivity and the increase in pauses before words after surgery could be related to a lexical deficit. This is supported by the finding that oral lexical‐retrieval scores were strongly correlated with writing fluency. However, further exploration is needed to identify the language and cognitive abilities affecting writing processes in LGG patients. PMID:29411466

African American English-speaking students: an examination of the relationship between dialect shifting and reading outcomes.

PubMed

Craig, Holly K; Zhang, Lingling; Hensel, Stephanie L; Quinn, Erin J

2009-08-01

In this study, the authors evaluated the contribution made by dialect shifting to reading achievement test scores of African American English (AAE)-speaking students when controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), general oral language abilities, and writing skills. Participants were 165 typically developing African American 1st through 5th graders. Half were male and half were female, one third were from low-SES homes, and two-thirds were from middle-SES homes. Dialect shifting away from AAE toward Standard American English (SAE) was determined by comparing AAE production rates during oral and written narratives. Structural equation modeling evaluated the relative contributions of AAE rates, SES, and general oral language and writing skills on standardized reading achievement scores. AAE production rates were inversely related to reading achievement scores and decreased significantly between the oral and written narratives. Lower rates in writing predicted a substantial amount of the variance in reading scores, showing a significant direct effect and a significant indirect effect mediated by measures of oral language comprehension. The findings support a dialect shifting-reading achievement hypothesis, which proposes that AAE-speaking students who learn to use SAE in literacy tasks will outperform their peers who do not make this linguistic adaptation.

The Effect of Communication Strategy Training on the Development of EFL Learners' Strategic Competence and Oral Communicative Ability.

PubMed

Rabab'ah, Ghaleb

2016-06-01

This study examines the effect of communication strategy instruction on EFL students' oral communicative ability and their strategic competence. In a 14-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course (English Use II) based on Communicative Language Teaching approach, 80 learners were divided into two groups. The strategy training group ([Formula: see text]) received CS training based on a training program designed for the purpose of the present research, whereas the control group ([Formula: see text]) received only the normal communicative course using Click On 3, with no explicit focus on CSs. The communication strategies targeted in the training program included circumlocution (paraphrase), appeal for help, asking for repetition, clarification request, confirmation request, self-repair, and guessing. Pre- and post-test procedures were used to find out the effect of strategy training on language proficiency and CS use. The effect of the training was assessed by three types of data collection: the participants' pre- and post-IELTS speaking test scores, transcription data from the speaking IELTS test, and 'Click On' Exit Test scores. The findings revealed that participants in the strategy training group significantly outperformed the control group in their IELTS speaking test scores. The results of the post-test transcription data also confirmed that the participants in the strategy training group used more CSs, which could be attributed to the CS training program. The findings of the present research have implications for language teachers, and syllabus designers.

Testing Second Language Oral Proficiency in Direct and Semidirect Settings: A Social-Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jeong, Hyeonjeong; Hashizume, Hiroshi; Sugiura, Motoaki; Sassa, Yuko; Yokoyama, Satoru; Shiozaki, Shuken; Kawashima, Ryuta

2011-01-01

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify differences in the neural processes underlying direct and semidirect interviews. We examined brain activation patterns while 20 native speakers of Japanese participated in direct and semidirect interviews in both Japanese (first language [L1]) and English (second language…

[Early development of language in small children with autism spectrum disorder using alternative systems].

PubMed

Fortea-Sevilla, M Sol; Escandell-Bermúdez, M Olga; Castro-Sánchez, José Juan; Martos-Pérez, Juan

2015-02-25

The latest research findings show the importance of early intervention in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in all areas of development, including language. The use of augmentative and alternative communication systems (AACS) favors linguistic and communicative development. To show the effectiveness of AACS to develop oral language in non-verbal toddlers diagnosed with ASD. Thirty children (25 males and 5 females) diagnosed with ASD when they were between 18 and 30 months of age, through the instruments ADOS and ADIR. None of them displayed oral language development at the time of assessment. An intervention program in the area of language was designed based on the use of total communication by the therapist and training the child in the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS). One year later, the formal aspects of language were assessed with the PLON-R because oral language had been developed. All the children had developed oral language to some extent over a one-year period. Early intervention and the use of AACS with visual props favor the development of oral language in children with ASD in the first years of life.

An inquiry approach to science and language teaching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rodriguez, Imelda; Bethel, Lowell J.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of an inquiry approach to science and language teaching to further develop classification and oral communication skills of bilingual Mexican American third graders. A random sample consisting of 64 subjects was selected for experimental and control groups from a population of 120 bilingual Mexican American third graders. The Solomon Four-Group experimental design was employed. Pre- and posttesting was performed by use of the Goldstein-Sheerer Object Sorting Test, (GSOST) and the Test of Oral Communication Skills, (TOCS). The experimental group participated in a sequential series of science lessons which required manipulation of objects, exploration, peer interaction, and teacher-pupil interaction. The children made observations and comparisons of familiar objects and then grouped them on the basis of perceived and inferred attributes. Children worked individually and in small groups. Analysis of variance procedures was used on the posttest scores to determine if there was a significant improvement in classification and oral communication skills in the experimental group. The results on the posttest scores indicated a significant improvement at the 0.01 level for the experimental group in both classification and oral communication skills. It was concluded that participation in the science inquiry lessons facilitated the development of classification and oral communication skills of bilingual children.

Differential Effects on the ITPA [Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities] Profile of the Experimental Version of Level #1 of the Peabody Language Development Kits with Disadvantaged First-Grade Children. IMRID Papers and Reports, Volume 4, No. 6.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Lloyd M.; Mueller, Max W.

The differential effects of the experimental revision of Level 1 of the Peabody Language Development Kits (PLDK) on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) profiles of disadvantaged first-grade children were studied. Contrasted with 203 control subjects were 529 experimental subjects who received a daily 30-minute oral language…

Redefining Individual Growth and Development Indicators: Oral Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bradfield, Tracy A.; Besner, Amanda C.; Wackerle-Hollman, Alisha K.; Albano, Anthony D.; Rodriguez, Michael C.; McConnell, Scott R.

2014-01-01

Language skills developed during preschool contribute strongly to later reading and academic achievement. Effective preschool assessment and intervention should focus on core components of language development, specifically oral language skills. The Early Language and Literacy Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) are a set of…

Developing Learner Autonomy for Oral Language on the Base of Emergent Metacognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fu, Jing-yuan

2007-01-01

This paper conducted on an empirical study among 466 first-year semester diploma students of Wenzhou University, contemplates some metacognitive strategies for facilitating learners' self-autonomy for oral language learning. Oral language appropriateness and procuration within the context of globality and lifelong learning are essential to the…

Supporting Children's Oral Language Development in the Preschool Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whorrall, Jennifer; Cabell, Sonia Q.

2016-01-01

Supporting children's oral language development during the preschool years is critical for later reading success. Research shows that preschool teachers may be missing opportunities to engage children in the kinds of conversations that foster the development of rich oral language skills. Teachers hoping to support these skills can provide children…

fMRI as a Preimplant Objective Tool to Predict Postimplant Oral Language Outcomes in Children with Cochlear Implants.

PubMed

Deshpande, Aniruddha K; Tan, Lirong; Lu, Long J; Altaye, Mekibib; Holland, Scott K

2016-01-01

Despite the positive effects of cochlear implantation, postimplant variability in speech perception and oral language outcomes is still difficult to predict. The aim of this study was to identify neuroimaging biomarkers of postimplant speech perception and oral language performance in children with hearing loss who receive a cochlear implant. The authors hypothesized positive correlations between blood oxygen level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation in brain regions related to auditory language processing and attention and scores on the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool, Second Edition (CELF-P2) and the Early Speech Perception Test for Profoundly Hearing-Impaired Children (ESP), in children with congenital hearing loss. Eleven children with congenital hearing loss were recruited for the present study based on referral for clinical MRI and other inclusion criteria. All participants were <24 months at fMRI scanning and <36 months at first implantation. A silent background fMRI acquisition method was performed to acquire fMRI during auditory stimulation. A voxel-based analysis technique was utilized to generate z maps showing significant contrast in brain activation between auditory stimulation conditions (spoken narratives and narrow band noise). CELF-P2 and ESP were administered 2 years after implantation. Because most participants reached a ceiling on ESP, a voxel-wise regression analysis was performed between preimplant fMRI activation and postimplant CELF-P2 scores alone. Age at implantation and preimplant hearing thresholds were controlled in this regression analysis. Four brain regions were found to be significantly correlated with CELF-P2 scores. These clusters of positive correlation encompassed the temporo-parieto-occipital junction, areas in the prefrontal cortex and the cingulate gyrus. For the story versus silence contrast, CELF-P2 core language score demonstrated significant positive correlation with activation in the right angular gyrus (r = 0.95), left medial frontal gyrus (r = 0.94), and left cingulate gyrus (r = 0.96). For the narrow band noise versus silence contrast, the CELF-P2 core language score exhibited significant positive correlation with activation in the left angular gyrus (r = 0.89; for all clusters, corrected p < 0.05). Four brain regions related to language function and attention were identified that correlated with CELF-P2. Children with better oral language performance postimplant displayed greater activation in these regions preimplant. The results suggest that despite auditory deprivation, these regions are more receptive to gains in oral language development performance of children with hearing loss who receive early intervention via cochlear implantation. The present study suggests that oral language outcome following cochlear implant may be predicted by preimplant fMRI with auditory stimulation using natural speech.

Developing and Testing EVALOE: A Tool for Assessing Spoken Language Teaching and Learning in the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gràcia, Marta; Vega, Fàtima; Galván-Bovaira, Maria José

2015-01-01

Broadly speaking, the teaching of spoken language in Spanish schools has not been approached in a systematic way. Changes in school practices are needed in order to allow all children to become competent speakers and to understand and construct oral texts that are appropriate in different contexts and for different audiences both inside and…

Repetition as an Oral Language Assessment Technique. Final Report.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Natalicio, Diana S.; Williams, Frederick

The aim of this study is to assess the degree to which sentence imitations of Negro and Mexican-American children (grades K-2) could be used as a basis for language evaluation. Tapes of 10 Negro and 10 Mexican-American children who had responded to a set of commercially available test materials were evaluated by panels of experts. Evaluations for…

Information Structure and Practice as Facilitators of Deaf Users' Navigation in Textual Websites

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fajardo, I.; Canas, J. J.; Salmeron, L.; Abascal, J.

2009-01-01

Deaf users might find it difficult to navigate through websites with textual content which, for many of them, constitutes the written representation of a non-native oral language. With the aim of testing how the information structure could compensate for this difficulty, 27 prelingual deaf users of sign language were asked to search a set of…

Gestalt Imagery: A Critical Factor in Language Comprehension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bell, Nanci

1991-01-01

Lack of gestalt imagery (the ability to create imaged wholes) can contribute to language comprehension disorder characterized by weak reading comprehension, weak oral language comprehension, weak oral language expression, weak written language expression, difficulty following directions, and a weak sense of humor. Sequential stimulation using an…

Differential Effects on the ITPA [Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities] Profile of the Final Version of the Peabody Language Development Kits (Levels #1 and #2) with Young Disadvantaged Negro Children. IMRID Papers and Reports, Volume 5, No. 24.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hausman, Ralph M.; Apffel, James A.

The differential effects of the final revision of Levels 1 and 2 of the Peabody Language Development Kits (PLDK) on the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) profiles of young disadvantaged black children were studied. Contrasted with 90 control subjects were 90 experimental subjects who received a daily 30-minute oral language…

Expanding the developmental models of writing: A direct and indirect effects model of developmental writing (DIEW)

PubMed Central

Kim, Young-Suk Grace; Schatschneider, Christopher

2016-01-01

We investigated direct and indirect effects of component skills on writing (DIEW) using data from 193 children in Grade 1. In this model, working memory was hypothesized to be a foundational cognitive ability for language and cognitive skills as well as transcription skills, which, in turn, contribute to writing. Foundational oral language skills (vocabulary and grammatical knowledge) and higher-order cognitive skills (inference and theory of mind) were hypothesized to be component skills of text generation (i.e., discourse-level oral language). Results from structural equation modeling largely supported a complete mediation model among four variations of the DIEW model. Discourse-level oral language, spelling, and handwriting fluency completely mediated the relations of higher-order cognitive skills, foundational oral language, and working memory to writing. Moreover, language and cognitive skills had both direct and indirect relations to discourse-level oral language. Total effects, including direct and indirect effects, were substantial for discourse-level oral language (.46), working memory (.43), and spelling (.37), followed by vocabulary (.19), handwriting (.17), theory of mind (.12), inference (.10), and grammatical knowledge (.10). The model explained approximately 67% of variance in writing quality. These results indicate that multiple language and cognitive skills make direct and indirect contributions, and it is important to consider both direct and indirect pathways of influences when considering skills that are important to writing. PMID:28260812

Language in Early Childhood Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cazden, Courtney B., Ed.

Eight articles about oral language education for preschool children are presented. They are: (1) a point of view on oral language education--"Suggestions from Studies of Early Language Acquisition,""Language Programs for Young Children: Notes from England and Wales," and "The Issue of Structure," by Courtney Cazden; (2) suggestions for curriculum…

Spoken Spanish Language Development at the High School Level: A Mixed-Methods Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moeller, Aleidine J.; Theiler, Janine

2014-01-01

Communicative approaches to teaching language have emphasized the centrality of oral proficiency in the language acquisition process, but research investigating oral proficiency has been surprisingly limited, yielding an incomplete understanding of spoken language development. This study investigated the development of spoken language at the high…

Oral language supports early literacy: a pilot cluster randomized trial in disadvantaged schools.

PubMed

Snow, Pamela C; Eadie, Patricia A; Connell, Judy; Dalheim, Brenda; McCusker, Hugh J; Munro, John K

2014-10-01

This study examined the impact of teacher professional development aimed at improving the capacity of primary teachers in disadvantaged schools to strengthen children's expressive and receptive oral language skills and early literacy success in the first 2 years of school. Fourteen low-SES schools in Victoria, Australia were randomly allocated to a research (n = 8) or control arm (n = 6), resulting in an initial sample of 1254 students, (n = 602 in research arm and n = 652 in control arm). The intervention comprised 6 days of teacher and principal professional development (delivered by language and literacy experts), school-based continuing contact with the research team and completion by one staff member of each research school of a postgraduate unit on early language and literacy. Schools in the control arm received standard teaching according to state auspiced curriculum guidelines. Full data were available on 979 students at follow-up (time 2). Students in the research arm performed significantly better on Test of Language Development: Primary (Fourth Edition) sub-tests (p ≤ .002) and the Reading Progress Test (F = 10.4(1); p = .001) than students in the control arm at time 2. Narrative scores were not significantly different at time 2, although students in research schools showed greater gains. Findings provide "proof of concept" for this approach, and are discussed with respect to implications for teacher professional development and pre-service education concerning the psycholinguistic competencies that underpin the transition to literacy.

Relationships of Attention and Executive Functions to Oral Language, Reading, and Writing Skills and Systems in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence.

PubMed

Berninger, Virginia; Abbott, Robert; Cook, Clayton R; Nagy, William

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 ( N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis was correlated only with impaired handwriting. Parental ratings of inattention, but not hyperactivity, correlated with measures of written language but not oral language. Sustaining switching attention correlated with writing the alphabet from memory in manuscript or by keyboard and fast copying of a sentence with all the letters of the alphabet. Multiple regressions based on a principal component for composites of multiple levels of language (subword, word, and syntax/text) showed that measures of attention and executive function involving language processing rather than ratings of attention and executive function not specifically related to language accounted for more variance and identified more unique predictors in the composite outcomes for oral language, reading, and writing systems. Inhibition related to focused attention uniquely predicted outcomes for the oral language system. Findings are discussed in reference to implications for assessing and teaching students who are still learning to pay attention to heard and written language and self-regulate their language learning during middle childhood and adolescence.

Measuring Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: A Psychometric Study in SLA

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ebadi, Mandana Rohollahzadeh; Abedalaziz, Nabeel; Saad, Mohd Rashid Mohd

2015-01-01

Lack of valid means of measuring explicit and implicit knowledge in acquisition of second language is a concern issue in investigations of explicit and implicit learning. This paper endeavors to validate the use of four tests (i.e., Untimed Judgment Grammatical Test, UJGT; Test of Metalinguistic Knowledge, TMK; Elicited Oral Imitation Test, EOIT;…

An Annotated Bibliography of Practical Tests for Young Children. (Revised 1976).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anttonen, Judith; Garman, Charlotte G.

There are three parts to this bibliography of tests for children aged two to six. First is an alphabetical index of the 89 tests with a graphic display to indicate which tests measure which of the following functions: (1) intellectual functions or attained skills; (2) oral language communication; (3) self-concept, personality, sociability,…

Linguistic Interdependence between Spanish Language and English Language and Reading: A Longitudinal Exploration from Second through Fifth Grade

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Proctor, C. Patrick; Harring, Jeffrey R.; Silverman, Rebecca D.

2017-01-01

This study explored effects of Spanish oral language skills (vocabulary and syntax) on the development of English oral language skills (vocabulary, morphology, semantics, syntax) and reading comprehension among 156 bilingual Latino children in second through fifth grade whose first language was Spanish and whose second language was English. Using…

The Scope and Nature of Reading Comprehension Impairments in School-Aged Children with Higher-Functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

McIntyre, Nancy S; Solari, Emily J; Gonzales, Joseph E; Solomon, Marjorie; Lerro, Lindsay E; Novotny, Stephanie; Oswald, Tasha M; Mundy, Peter C

2017-09-01

This study of 8-16-year-olds was designed to test the hypothesis that reading comprehension impairments are part of the social communication phenotype for many higher-functioning students with autism spectrum disorder (HFASD). Students with HFASD (n = 81) were compared to those with high attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptomatology (ADHD; n = 39), or typical development (TD; n = 44), on a comprehensive battery of oral language, word recognition, and reading comprehension measures. Results indicated that students with HFASD performed significantly lower on the majority of the reading and language tasks as compared to TD and ADHD groups. Structural equation models suggested that greater ASD symptomatology was related to poorer reading comprehension outcomes; further analyses suggested that this relation was mediated by oral language skills.

The Development of Bilingual Narrative Retelling Among Spanish-English Dual Language Learners Over Two Years.

PubMed

Lucero, Audrey

2018-05-25

This exploratory study investigates the development of oral narrative retell proficiency among Spanish-English emergent bilingual children longitudinally from kindergarten to second grade in Spanish and English as they learned literacy in the 2 languages concurrently. Oral narrative retell assessments were conducted with children who spoke Spanish at home and were enrolled in a dual language immersion program (N = 12) in the spring of kindergarten and second grade. Retells were transcribed and coded for vocabulary and grammar at the microlevel (Miller, 2012) and story structure at the macrolevel (Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts, & Dunaway, 2010). In microstructure paired-sample t tests, children showed significant improvements in vocabulary in both languages (Spanish total number of words η2 = .43, Spanish number of different words η2 = .44, English total number of words η2 = .61, English number of different words η2 = .62) but not grammar by second grade. At the macrostructure level, children showed significantly higher performance in English only (English narrative scoring scheme η2 = .47). The finding that children significantly improved in vocabulary in both languages but in overall story structure only in English suggests that discourse skills were being facilitated in English whereas Spanish discourse development may have stagnated even within a dual language immersion program. Results contribute to what is currently known about bilingual oral narrative development among young Spanish speakers enrolled in such programs and can inform assessment and instructional decisions.

De-Fusing Dyslexia. Part II.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wasserwald, Lee

In a continuation study, 12 students with dyslexia participated in muscle testing and exercises. Six areas were evaluated via pre- and post-tests: academics (using measures of spelling, reading, and math); parental observations of changes in their children (behavioral, academic or affective); perceptual drawing; oral reading; written language; and…

L1 Use and Morphosyntactic Development in the Oral Production of EFL Learners in a CLIL Context

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lazaro, Amparo; Garcia Mayo, Maria del Pilar

2012-01-01

This paper explores the effects of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) instruction on the oral production of 15 high-school learners of English. The learners' use of the L1s (Basque and Spanish) in discourse markers and repair sequences as well as the learners' overall morphosyntactic development were analysed at two testing times (age…

A cross-linguistic study of the development of gesture and speech in Zulu and French oral narratives.

PubMed

Kunene Nicolas, Ramona; Guidetti, Michèle; Colletta, Jean-Marc

2017-01-01

The present study reports on a developmental and cross-linguistic study of oral narratives produced by speakers of Zulu (a Bantu language) and French (a Romance language). Specifically, we focus on oral narrative performance as a bimodal (i.e., linguistic and gestural) behaviour during the late language acquisition phase. We analyzed seventy-two oral narratives produced by L1 Zulu and French adults and primary school children aged between five and ten years old. The data were all collected using a narrative retelling task. The results revealed a strong effect of age on discourse performance, confirming that narrative abilities improve with age, irrespective of language. However, the results also showed cross-linguistic differences. Zulu oral narratives were longer, more detailed, and accompanied by more co-speech gestures than the French narratives. The parallel effect of age and language on gestural behaviour is discussed and highlights the importance of studying oral narratives from a multimodal perspective within a cross-linguistic framework.

Using Children's Folksongs to Transition Beginning Readers from the Familiar Structure of Oral Language to the Structure of Written Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rietz, Sandra A.

Children will meet one less obstacle to making the transition from spoken to written fluency in language if, during the transition period, they experience written language that corresponds structurally to their spoken language patterns. Familiar children's folksongs, because they contain some of the structure of children's oral language, provide…

Primary Discourse and Expressive Oral Language in a Kindergarten Student

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fiano, Darcy A.

2014-01-01

This seven-month ethnographic case study elucidated a kindergarten student's navigation through her first formal schooling experience with relation to expressive oral language. Gee's theory of Discourses and methodology of discourse analysis were used to examine expressive oral language in use. Two discursive contexts germane to…

Building Oral Language and Vocabulary through the Use of Literature

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCorquodale, Gwenyth J.; Kirkland, Lynn

2006-01-01

Children are coming to classrooms across the United States with a need to develop their oral language. With the increased promotion of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, commercialized programs are being provided for teachers to use to build oral language in their students. The authors believe that schools and teachers can best enhance…

Home Literacy Environments and Young Hispanic Children's English and Spanish Oral Language: A Communality Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gonzalez, Jorge E.; Uhing, Brad M.

2008-01-01

The authors examine dimensions of the home literacy environment relative to oral language outcomes for high-risk Hispanic children. They also illustrate the use of commonality analysis for understanding the contribution of home literacy to oral language outcomes. Forty-eight children and their families participated in the study. Commonality…

Assessing Young Children's Oral Language: Recommendations for Classroom Practice and Policy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Malec, Alesia; Peterson, Shelley Stagg; Elshereif, Heba

2017-01-01

A systematic review of research on oral language assessments for four-to-eight-year- old children was undertaken to support a six-year action research project aimed toward co-creating classroom oral language assessment tools with teachers in northern rural and Indigenous Canadian communities. Through an extensive screening process, 10 studies were…

Oral Language and Listening Comprehension: Same or Different Constructs?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2017

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to add to our understanding of the dimensionality of oral language in children and to determine whether oral language and listening comprehension are separate constructs in children enrolled in preschool (PK) through 3rd grade. Method: In the spring of the school year, children from 4 states (N = 1,869)…

Hearing, Auditory Processing, and Language Skills of Male Youth Offenders and Remandees in Youth Justice Residences in New Zealand.

PubMed

Lount, Sarah A; Purdy, Suzanne C; Hand, Linda

2017-01-01

International evidence suggests youth offenders have greater difficulties with oral language than their nonoffending peers. This study examined the hearing, auditory processing, and language skills of male youth offenders and remandees (YORs) in New Zealand. Thirty-three male YORs, aged 14-17 years, were recruited from 2 youth justice residences, plus 39 similarly aged male students from local schools for comparison. Testing comprised tympanometry, self-reported hearing, pure-tone audiometry, 4 auditory processing tests, 2 standardized language tests, and a nonverbal intelligence test. Twenty-one (64%) of the YORs were identified as language impaired (LI), compared with 4 (10%) of the controls. Performance on all language measures was significantly worse in the YOR group, as were their hearing thresholds. Nine (27%) of the YOR group versus 7 (18%) of the control group fulfilled criteria for auditory processing disorder. Only 1 YOR versus 5 controls had an auditory processing disorder without LI. Language was an area of significant difficulty for YORs. Difficulties with auditory processing were more likely to be accompanied by LI in this group, compared with the controls. Provision of speech-language therapy services and awareness of auditory and language difficulties should be addressed in youth justice systems.

Issues in the Assessment of Bilingually Educated Students: Expressing Subject Knowledge through L1 and L2

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gablasova, Dana

2014-01-01

This article discusses issues related to oral assessment of school knowledge of L2-educated students. In particular, it examines benefits and disadvantages of students being tested in their L1 (their dominant language) and in their L2 (their language of instruction). The study draws on the data from 37 high school students studying in a content…

Oral and Written Language and the Cognitive Processes of Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Olson, David R.

1977-01-01

Looks at the structures of childrens' oral language or "mother tongue" and the structures of adult literate prose and emphasizes the alternate conceptions of reality that those languages sustain. (MH)

Bloomfield-Barnhart Developmental Reading Mastery Test: Evaluator's Handbook [and] Individual Pupil Packet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnhart, Cynthia A.; And Others

The Developmental Reading Mastery Test of oral reading, comprehension, spelling, and language skills is based on curriculum materials by the Bloomfield-Barnhart reading program, Let's Read. The non-graded program teaches reading in eleven steps (skill sequences), with corresponding subtests, as follows: (1) shape discrimination, directionality;…

Investigating the Validity of an Integrated Listening-Speaking Task: A Discourse-Based Analysis of Test Takers' Oral Performances

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frost, Kellie; Elder, Catherine; Wigglesworth, Gillian

2012-01-01

Performance on integrated tasks requires candidates to engage skills and strategies beyond language proficiency alone, in ways that can be difficult to define and measure for testing purposes. While it has been widely recognized that stimulus materials impact test performance, our understanding of the way in which test takers make use of these…

Classroom Promotion of Oral Language (CPOL): protocol for a cluster randomised controlled trial of a school-based intervention to improve children’s literacy outcomes at grade 3, oral language and mental health

PubMed Central

Goldfeld, Sharon; Snow, Pamela; Eadie, Patricia; Munro, John; Gold, Lisa; Le, Ha N D; Orsini, Francesca; Shingles, Beth; Lee, Katherine; Connell, Judy; Watts, Amy

2017-01-01

Introduction Oral language and literacy competence are major influences on children’s developmental pathways and life success. Children who do not develop the necessary language and literacy skills in the early years of school then go on to face long-term difficulties. Improving teacher effectiveness may be a critical step in lifting oral language and literacy outcomes. The Classroom Promotion of Oral Language trial aims to determine whether a specifically designed teacher professional learning programme focusing on promoting oral language can lead to improved teacher knowledge and practice, and advance outcomes in oral language and literacy for early years school children, compared with usual practice. Methods and analysis This is a two-arm cluster multisite randomised controlled trial conducted within Catholic and Government primary schools across Victoria, Australia. The intervention comprises 4 days of face-to-face professional learning for teachers and ongoing implementation support via a specific worker. The primary outcome is reading ability of the students at grade 3, and the secondary outcomes are teacher knowledge and practice, student mental health, reading comprehension and language ability at grade 1; and literacy, writing and numeracy at grade 3. Economic evaluation will compare the incremental costs of the intervention to the measured primary and secondary outcomes. Ethics and dissemination This trial was approved by the Monash University Human Research Ethics Committee #CF13/2634-2013001403 and later transferred to the University of Melbourne #1545540. The investigators (including Government and Catholic partners) will communicate trial results to stakeholders, collaborators and participating schools and teachers via appropriate presentations and publications. Trial registration number ISRCTN77681972; Pre-results. PMID:29162571

What Is the Criterion of Interest in Identifying Limited-English Speaking Students: Language Dominance or Proficiency?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Estes, Gary D.; Estes, Carole

The issue of using language proficiency or language dominance to assess programs for high school students with limited English speaking backgrounds is addressed. The development and initial analyses of the Competency Based Oral Language Assessment (COLA) are discussed. Three components of oral language are rated separately: semantics; syntax and…

Home Literacy Environment and Its Influence on Singaporean Children's Chinese Oral and Written Language Abilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Li; Tan, Chee Lay

2016-01-01

In a bilingual environment such as Singaporean Chinese community, the challenge of maintaining Chinese language and sustaining Chinese culture lies in promoting the daily use of Chinese language in oral and written forms among children. Ample evidence showed the effect of the home language and literacy environment (HLE), on children's language and…

The effects of sign language on spoken language acquisition in children with hearing loss: a systematic review protocol.

PubMed

Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Stevens, Adrienne; Garritty, Chantelle; Moher, David

2013-12-06

Permanent childhood hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and frequently disrupts typical spoken language acquisition. Early identification of hearing loss through universal newborn hearing screening and the use of new hearing technologies including cochlear implants make spoken language an option for most children. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes optimal interventions for children when spoken language is the desired outcome. Intervention and educational approaches ranging from oral language only to oral language combined with various forms of sign language have evolved. Parents are therefore faced with important decisions in the first months of their child's life. This article presents the protocol for a systematic review of the effects of using sign language in combination with oral language intervention on spoken language acquisition. Studies addressing early intervention will be selected in which therapy involving oral language intervention and any form of sign language or sign support is used. Comparison groups will include children in early oral language intervention programs without sign support. The primary outcomes of interest to be examined include all measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, speech production, and speech intelligibility skills. We will include randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, and other quasi-experimental designs that include comparator groups as well as prospective and retrospective cohort studies. Case-control, cross-sectional, case series, and case studies will be excluded. Several electronic databases will be searched (for example, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO) as well as grey literature and key websites. We anticipate that a narrative synthesis of the evidence will be required. We will carry out meta-analysis for outcomes if clinical similarity, quantity and quality permit quantitative pooling of data. We will conduct subgroup analyses if possible according to severity/type of hearing disorder, age of identification, and type of hearing technology. This review will provide evidence on the effectiveness of using sign language in combination with oral language therapies for developing spoken language in children with hearing loss who are identified at a young age. The information from this review can provide guidance to parents and intervention specialists, inform policy decisions and provide directions for future research. CRD42013005426.

Oral health promotion programme for older migrant adults.

PubMed

Mariño, Rodrigo; Calache, Hanny; Wright, Clive; Schofield, Margot; Minichiello, Victor

2004-12-01

This study evaluated the impact of a community-based oral health promotion programme on the use of oral health services, oral health knowledge, attitudes, and practices of older Greek and Italian adults attending community clubs and living in Melbourne, Australia. The oral health promotion intervention consisted of three components: a series of oral health seminars, held at the clubs in the participants' native languages, the provision of oral health care products, and the production of oral health information sheets. The intervention programme was known as the Oral Health Information Seminars/Sheets (ORHIS). The content of each session was determined following suggestions and findings from the data collected. A pre-test-post-test non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design was chosen to evaluate the intervention. A total of 520 independent-living older adults, members of Greek or Italian social clubs participated in this evaluation. Participants who took part in the intervention responded with higher levels of achievement than those in the control groups. After controlling for baseline variables, experimental groups were significantly more likely than the control groups at post-test to have improved oral health attitudes, oral health knowledge, and self-assessed physical health status, as well as, self-reported oral hygiene practices and use of oral health services. The ORHIS approach was successful within the setting of social clubs, and highly acceptable to these communities. As such, it represents a helpful approach for the design of (oral) health interventions in older adults. Further research is required to test the long-tem impact including the economic evaluation of the ORHIS approach.

Language Is Everywhere! Universally Designed Strategies to Nurture Oral and Written Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dixon, Susan D.

2008-01-01

In this article, the author describes how early childhood professionals can create positive environments that foster the growth of both oral and written language and how the concept of universal design can inform these practices. These activities are designed with a focus on children 3 to 5 years old. The author first looks at oral language…

Study of Thai Language Oral Reading Problems for Students with Down Syndrome: Grade Range 1

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaewchote, Nantawan; Chongchaikit, Maturos

2011-01-01

The purpose of the study was to explore the Thai Language Oral Reading Problems of students with Down syndrome, Grade Range1 at Watnonsaparam School, Saraburi Thailand in favor of Web Quest Lessons Development Enhancing Oral Reading Skills of Down syndrome Students. The research instruments were the 2 observation forms on Thai Language Reading…

A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Development of Gesture and Speech in Zulu and French Oral Narratives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nicolas, Ramona Kunene; Guidetti, Michele; Colletta, Jean-Marc

2017-01-01

The present study reports on a developmental and cross-linguistic study of oral narratives produced by speakers of Zulu (a Bantu language) and French (a Romance language). Specifically, we focus on oral narrative performance as a bimodal (i.e., linguistic and gestural) behaviour during the late language acquisition phase. We analyzed seventy-two…

A Study of 3rd and 5th Grade Students' Oral Language during the Writing Process in Elementary Classrooms.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kasten, Wendy C.; Clarke, Barbara K.

Using ethnographic techniques to observe seven fifth grade and seven third grade students, a study examined the function of children's oral language during creative writing sessions in typical classroom situations. Findings indicated that oral language plays an important role in the writing process; specifically, that it (1) accompanies writing as…

Contribution of Oral Language Skills, Linguistic Skills, and Transcription Skills to Chinese Written Composition among Fourth-Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yeung, Pui-sze; Ho, Connie Suk-han; Chan, David Wai-ock; Chung, Kevin Kien-hoa

2013-01-01

The present study aimed to investigate the contribution of oral language skills, linguistic skills, and transcription skills to Chinese written composition among Grade 4 students in Hong Kong. Measures assessing verbal working memory, oral language skills, linguistic skills (i.e., syntactic skills and discourse skills), transcription skills (i.e.,…

Oral-Performance Language Tasks for CSL Beginners in Second Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lan, Yu-Ju; Kan, Yu-Hsuan; Sung, Yao-Ting; Chang, Kuo-En

2016-01-01

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of different types of language tasks performed in Second Life (SL) on the oral performance of beginners of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), focusing on oral accuracy. The 30 CSL beginners who participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups (n = 15 per group), required to…

Dimensions of Discourse Level Oral Language Skills and Their Relation to Reading Comprehension and Written Composition: An Exploratory Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Young-Suk Grace; Park, Cheahyung; Park, Younghee

2015-01-01

We examined the relations of discourse-level oral language skills [i.e., listening comprehension, and oral retell and production of narrative texts (oral retell and production hereafter)] to reading comprehension and written composition. Korean-speaking first grade students (N = 97) were assessed on listening comprehension, oral retell and…

Aptitude and Language Learning of FBI Special Agents.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walker, Marijke; And Others

This study investigated the relationship between aptitude, as measured by Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB) scores, and oral proficiency as measured by the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) scores of 72 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agents who completed basic foreign language training at the Defense Language Institute (DLI).…

The Rhythm of Language: Fostering Oral and Listening Skills in Singapore Pre-School Children through an Integrated Music and Language Arts Program.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gan, Linda; Chong, Sylvia

1998-01-01

Examined the effectiveness of a year-long integrated language and music program (the Expressive Language and Music Project) to enhance Singaporean kindergartners' English oral-language competency. Found that the natural communicative setting and creative use of resources and activities based on the Orff and Kodaly approaches facilitated language…

The Development of L2 Oral Language Skills in Two L1 Groups: A 7-Year Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Derwing, Tracey M.; Munro, Murray J.

2013-01-01

Researching the longitudinal development of second language (L2) learners is essential to understanding influences on their success. This 7-year study of oral skills in adult immigrant learners of English as a second language evaluated comprehensibility, fluency, and accentedness in first-language (L1) Mandarin and Slavic language speakers. The…

The Effects of Selected Language Stimulation Upon the Language Skills of Hard of Hearing School Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spangenberg, Cynthia Pont

Results of a study involving 20 hard of hearing school aged students indicated that Ss in two experimental conditions (language stimulation by Big Brothers or Big Sisters and special training in oral and written language skills with a hearing specialist) increased in the complexity of their oral language more than control Ss did. (CL)

A Teacher's Exploratory Inquiry of Language Awareness: Language Learner Perceptions from Oral Presentations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leichsenring, Andrew

2015-01-01

This paper presents a teacher-led inquiry into learner language awareness and learner perceptions of: oral presentations using first language (L1) support when using a second language (L2); and L2 learner and user identity. The quantitative-based results of this preliminary inquiry represent a source of understanding for the researcher, who later,…

Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading, Aligned to the Language Arts Florida Standards, FAIR-FS, Grades 3 through 12. Technical Manual

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foorman, Barbara R.; Petscher, Yaacov; Schatschneider, Chris

2015-01-01

The FAIR-FS consists of computer-adaptive reading comprehension and oral language screening tasks that provide measures to track growth over time, as well as a Probability of Literacy Success (PLS) linked to grade-level performance (i.e., the 40th percentile) on the reading comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT-10) in the…

Family Impact Scale (FIS): Cross-cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Properties for the Peruvian Spanish Language.

PubMed

Abanto, Jenny; Albites, Ursula; Bönecker, Marcelo; Paiva, Saul M; Castillo, Jorge L; Aguilar-Gálvez, Denisse

2015-12-01

The lack of a Family Impact Scale (FIS) in Spanish language limits its use as an indicator in Spanish-speaking countries and precludes comparisons with data from other cultural and ethnic groups. The purpose of this study was therefore to adapt the FIS cross-culturally to the Peruvian Spanish language and assess its reliability and validity. In order to translate and adapt the FIS cross-culturally, it was answered by 60 parents in two pilot tests, after which it was tested on 200 parents of children aged 11 to 14 years who were clinically examined for dental caries experience and malocclusions. Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach's alpha coefficient while repeat administration of the FIS on the same 200 parents enabled the test-retest reliability to be assessed via intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Construct and discriminant validity were based on associations of the FIS with global ratings of oral health and clinical groups, respectively. Mean (standard deviation) FIS total score was 5.20 (5.86). Internal consistency was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha 0.84. Test-retest reliability revealed excellent reproducibility (ICC = 0.96). Construct validity was good, demonstrating statistically significant associations between total FIS score and global ratings of oral health (p=0.007) and overall wellbeing (p=0.002), as well as for the subscale scores (p<0.05) with exception of the financial burden subscale. The FIS was also able to discriminate between children with and without dental caries experience and malocclusions (p<0.05). Satisfactory psychometric results for the Peruvian Spanish FIS confirm it as a reliable, valid instrument for assessing the impact on the family caused by children's oral conditions. Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Odontológica.

Differential Gains in Oral Proficiency during Study Abroad: The Role of Language Learning Aptitudes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Sheri Lynn

2012-01-01

This inquiry analyzed the relationships between individual differences and gains made in oral proficiency of adult, second language learners of Spanish during one semester studying abroad. Oral proficiency was measured using a pre/post-SA Computerized Oral Proficiency Instrument (COPI, CAL, 2009). Gain scores were correlated with two cognitive…

Task Design for L2 Oral Practice in Audioblogs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Appel, Christine; Borges, Federico

2012-01-01

The development of oral skills poses a challenge in language teaching whether this takes place face-to-face, through distance education or in blended learning contexts. Two main problems arise: first of all students don't have enough opportunity to use their target language orally, and secondly, students oral performance is mostly unrecorded and…

Using Oral Language Skills to Build on the Emerging Literacy of Adult English Learners. CAELA Network Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vinogradov, Patsy; Bigelow, Martha

2010-01-01

In addition to learning to read and write for the first time, adult English language learners with limited or emerging literacy skills must acquire oral English. Often, learners with limited print literacy in their first language have oral skills in English that exceed their English literacy skills (Geva & Zadeh, 2006). While this mismatch of oral…

Use of Oral Reflection in Facilitating Graduate EAL Students' Oral-Language Production and Strategy Use: An Empirical Action Research Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huang, Li-Shih

2012-01-01

Research in the fields of second-language acquisition and education has supported the value of written reflection, but scant research has explored how other types of reflection may come into play when learners employ strategies and produce oral language. This paper reports findings from an action research study that focused on integrating…

Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Oral Language, Decoding, Phonological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: A Meta-Analysis of the Correlational Evidence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Melby-Lervag, Monica; Lervag, Arne

2011-01-01

We present a meta-analysis of cross-linguistic transfer of oral language (vocabulary and listening comprehension), phonology (decoding and phonological awareness) and reading comprehension. Our findings show a small meta-correlation between first (L1) and second (L2) oral language and a moderate to large correlation between L1 and L2 phonological…

Recognition of oral spelling is diagnostic of the central reading processes.

PubMed

Schubert, Teresa; McCloskey, Michael

2015-01-01

The task of recognition of oral spelling (stimulus: "C-A-T", response: "cat") is often administered to individuals with acquired written language disorders, yet there is no consensus about the underlying cognitive processes. We adjudicate between two existing hypotheses: Recognition of oral spelling uses central reading processes, or recognition of oral spelling uses central spelling processes in reverse. We tested the recognition of oral spelling and spelling to dictation abilities of a single individual with acquired dyslexia and dysgraphia. She was impaired relative to matched controls in spelling to dictation but unimpaired in recognition of oral spelling. Recognition of oral spelling for exception words (e.g., colonel) and pronounceable nonwords (e.g., larth) was intact. Our results were predicted by the hypothesis that recognition of oral spelling involves the central reading processes. We conclude that recognition of oral spelling is a useful tool for probing the integrity of the central reading processes.

[Fragile X syndrome with Dandy-Walker variant: a clinical study of oral and written communicative manifestations].

PubMed

Lamônica, Dionísia Aparecida Cusin; Ferraz, Plínio Marcos Duarte Pinto; Ferreira, Amanda Tragueta; Prado, Lívia Maria do; Abramides, Dagma Venturini Marquez; Gejão, Mariana Germano

2011-01-01

The Fragile X syndrome is the most frequent cause of inherited intellectual disability. The Dandy-Walker variant is a specific constellation of neuroradiological findings. The present study reports oral and written communication findings in a 15-year-old boy with clinical and molecular diagnosis of Fragile X syndrome and neuroimaging findings consistent with Dandy-Walker variant. The speech-language pathology and audiology evaluation was carried out using the Communicative Behavior Observation, the Phonology assessment of the ABFW - Child Language Test, the Phonological Abilities Profile, the Test of School Performance, and the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Stomatognathic system and hearing assessments were also performed. It was observed: phonological, semantic, pragmatic and morphosyntactic deficits in oral language; deficits in psycholinguistic abilities (auditory reception, verbal expression, combination of sounds, auditory and visual sequential memory, auditory closure, auditory and visual association); and morphological and functional alterations in the stomatognathic system. Difficulties in decoding the graphical symbols were observed in reading. In writing, the subject presented omissions, agglutinations and multiple representations with the predominant use of vowels, besides difficulties in visuo-spatial organization. In mathematics, in spite of the numeric recognition, the participant didn't accomplish arithmetic operations. No alterations were observed in the peripheral hearing evaluation. The constellation of behavioral, cognitive, linguistic and perceptual symptoms described for Fragile X syndrome, in addition to the structural central nervous alterations observed in the Dandy-Walker variant, caused outstanding interferences in the development of communicative abilities, in reading and writing learning, and in the individual's social integration.

Individual Differences in Anatomy Predict Reading and Oral Language Impairments in Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leonard, Christiana; Eckert, Mark; Given, Barbara; Virginia, Berninger; Eden, Guinevere

2006-01-01

Developmental dyslexia (DD) and specific language impairment (SLI) are disorders of language that differ in diagnostic criteria and outcome. DD is defined by isolated reading deficits. SLI is defined by poor receptive and expressive oral language skills. Reading deficits, although prevalent, are not necessary for the diagnosis of SLI. An enduring…

The Language of Formal Education and the Role of Libraries in Oral-Traditional Societies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

John, Magnus

1984-01-01

This essay addresses the effect of introducing a foreign language into the formal education of oral-traditional societies. Highlights include the nature of such societies, language in formal education, reading and language acquisition, developing a theory of high retention and recall, and overall implications for national development and…

The Impact of Powerful Oral Language Lab on Chilean EFL Preservice Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ward, Hsuying Chiou; Andruske, Cynthia Lee

2013-01-01

This exploratory qualitative case study reports the impact of using a public-speaking structure (Powerful Oral Language Lab [POLL]) in teaching preservice Chilean English pedagogy students. It describes how this task-based method of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher training is related to language strategic competence. Twenty students…

"Words that Hold Us up": Teacher Talk and Academic Language in Five Upper Elementary Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ernst-Slavit, Gisela; Mason, Michele R.

2011-01-01

This study investigates the oral academic language used by English as a second language prepared teachers during content area instruction in five upper elementary classrooms in the United States. Using ethnographic and sociolinguistic perspectives the authors examine the oral, academic language exposure students received from their teachers during…

The Comprehension Problems for Second-Language Learners with Poor Reading Comprehension despite Adequate Decoding: A Meta-Analysis

PubMed Central

Spencer, Mercedes; Wagner, Richard K.

2016-01-01

We conducted a meta-analysis of 16 existing studies to examine the nature of the comprehension problems for children who were second-language learners with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding. Results indicated that these children had deficits in oral language (d = −0.80), but these deficits were not as severe as their reading comprehension deficit (d = −2.47). Second-language learners also had weaker oral language skills compared to native-speaking children regardless of comprehension status (d = −0.84). We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the finding that second-language learners who are poor at reading comprehension despite adequate decoding have deficits in oral language but the deficit is not sufficient to explain their deficit in reading comprehension. PMID:28461711

The Comprehension Problems for Second-Language Learners with Poor Reading Comprehension despite Adequate Decoding: A Meta-Analysis.

PubMed

Spencer, Mercedes; Wagner, Richard K

2017-05-01

We conducted a meta-analysis of 16 existing studies to examine the nature of the comprehension problems for children who were second-language learners with poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding. Results indicated that these children had deficits in oral language ( d = -0.80), but these deficits were not as severe as their reading comprehension deficit ( d = -2.47). Second-language learners also had weaker oral language skills compared to native-speaking children regardless of comprehension status ( d = -0.84). We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the finding that second-language learners who are poor at reading comprehension despite adequate decoding have deficits in oral language but the deficit is not sufficient to explain their deficit in reading comprehension.

The Role of Oral Language Interactions in English Literacy Learning: A Case Study of a First Grade Korean Child

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Kwangok

2011-01-01

This paper is a qualitative case study of a Korean first grade child. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of a first grade Korean child's oral language interactions with teachers, parents, peers, and community members and to examine how a child's oral language impacts his literacy learning in English. The data were…

Oral Language Competence and the Transition to School: Socio-Economic and Behavioural Factors That Influence Academic and Social Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow, Pamela

2014-01-01

Oral language competence (skill in everyday talking and listening) is critical in the early years of school in two key respects: it underpins the transition to literacy in the early years, and is the means by which children form and maintain interpersonal relationships in the school setting. In this paper, the role of oral language competence with…

Describing the trajectory of language development in the presence of severe-to-profound hearing loss: a closer look at children with cochlear implants versus hearing aids.

PubMed

Yoshinaga-Itano, Christine; Baca, Rosalinda L; Sedey, Allison L

2010-10-01

The objective of this investigation was to describe the language growth of children with severe or profound hearing loss with cochlear implants versus those children with the same degree of hearing loss using hearing aids. A prospective longitudinal observation and analysis. University of Colorado Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences. There were 87 children with severe-to-profound hearing loss from 48 to 87 months of age. All children received early intervention services through the Colorado Home Intervention Program. Most children received intervention services from a certified auditory-verbal therapist or an auditory-oral therapist and weekly sign language instruction from an instructor who was deaf or hard of hearing and native or fluent in American Sign Language. The Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, 3rd Edition, and the Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test, 3rd Edition, were the assessment tools for children 4 to 7 years of age. The expressive language subscale of the Minnesota Child Development was used in the infant/toddler period (birth to 36 mo). Average language estimates at 84 months of age were nearly identical to the normative sample for receptive language and 7 months delayed for expressive vocabulary. Children demonstrated a mean rate of growth from 4 years through 7 years on these 2 assessments that was equivalent to their normal-hearing peers. As a group, children with hearing aids deviated more from the age equivalent trajectory on the Test of Auditory Comprehension of Language, 3rd Edition, and the Expressive One Word Picture Vocabulary Test, 3rd Edition, than children with cochlear implants. When a subset of children were divided into performance categories, we found that children with cochlear implants were more likely to be "gap closers" and less likely to be "gap openers," whereas the reverse was true for the children with hearing aids for both measures. Children who are educated through oral-aural combined with sign language instruction can achieve age-appropriate language levels on expressive vocabulary and receptive syntax ages 4 through 7 years. However, it is easier to maintain a constant rate of development rather than to accelerate from birth through 84 months of age, which represented approximately 80% of our sample. However, acceleration of language development is possible in some children and could result from cochlear implantation.

Oral English Language Proficiency and Reading Mastery: The Role of Home Language and School Supports

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palacios, Natalia; Kibler, Amanda

2016-01-01

The analysis of 21,409 participants of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten cohort focused on home and school factors sought to understand the level of reading mastery that children experienced throughout elementary school and Grade 8 by relating home language use, timing of oral English language proficiency, and the provision of…

VR-Based Gamification of Communication Training and Oral Examination in a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reitz, Liesa; Sohny, Aline; Lochmann, Gerrit

2016-01-01

The authors present a novel way of oral language training by embedding the English as a foreign language (EFL) learning process into a generic 3D Cooperative Virtual Reality (VR) Game. Due to lack of time, resources and innovation, the language classroom is limited in its possibilities of promoting authentic communication. Therefore, the…

The Complex Relationship between Bilingual Home Language Input and Kindergarten Children's Spanish and English Oral Proficiencies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cha, Kijoo; Goldenberg, Claude

2015-01-01

This study examined how emergent bilingual children's English and Spanish proficiencies moderated the relationships between Spanish and English input at home (bilingual home language input [BHLI]) and children's oral language skills in each language. The sample comprised over 1,400 Spanish-dominant kindergartners in California and Texas. BHLI was…

Neurological Research on Language and the Implications for Teaching Bilingual Children to Read. Occasional Papers on Linguistics, No. 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Giordano, Gerard

Neurological data indicate that the universal aptitude for functional language is biologically based, species specific, and developmental. The universality of functional oral speech is indisputable. Everyone, however, does not exhibit similar expertise in processing oral and visual language. Many people can speak two languages functionally but…

Hidden Language Impairments in Children: Parallels between Poor Reading Comprehension and Specific Language Impairment?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nation, Kate; Clarke, Paula; Marshall, Catherine M.; Durand, Marianne

2004-01-01

This study investigates the oral language skills of 8-year-old children with impaired reading comprehension. Despite fluent and accurate reading and normal nonverbal ability, these children are poor at understanding what they have read. Tasks tapping 3 domains of oral language, namely phonology, semantics, and morphosyntax, were administered,…

The Efficacy of Early Language Intervention in Mainstream School Settings: A Randomized Controlled Trial

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fricke, Silke; Burgoyne, Kelly; Bowyer-Crane, Claudine; Kyriacou, Maria; Zosimidou, Alexandra; Maxwell, Liam; Lervåg, Arne; Snowling, Margaret J.; Hulme, Charles

2017-01-01

Background: Oral language skills are a critical foundation for literacy and more generally for educational success. The current study shows that oral language skills can be improved by providing suitable additional help to children with language difficulties in the early stages of formal education. Methods: We conducted a randomized controlled…

A Systematic Meta-Analytic Review of Evidence for the Effectiveness of the "Fast ForWord" Language Intervention Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strong, Gemma K.; Torgerson, Carole J.; Torgerson, David; Hulme, Charles

2011-01-01

Background: Fast ForWord is a suite of computer-based language intervention programs designed to improve children's reading and oral language skills. The programs are based on the hypothesis that oral language difficulties often arise from a rapid auditory temporal processing deficit that compromises the development of phonological…

Does reading in shallow L1 orthography slow attrition of language-specific morphological structures?

PubMed

Zaretsky, Elena; Bar-Shalom, Eva G

2010-01-01

This study looks at the relationship between L1 (Russian) attrition and L1 reading ability in Russian-English-speaking bilingual children. Ten Russian-English bilingual children and 10 adults participated in this study. Nine out of 10 children participants were born in the US and used L1 as their primary language of interaction within the family, but the intensity and the length of uninterrupted L1 exposure differed for each child. All participants were tested on perception (grammaticality judgement) and production (narrative) tasks to assess their sensitivity to and retention of the morphosyntactic structure of L1. All children showed some attrition of grammatical morphemes, specifically in the Russian systems of declension and conjugation; however, the degree of attrition correlated with reading ability in L1, i.e. children with L1 reading skills showed a lesser degree of attrition for some language-specific morphosyntactic structures. This finding shows interdependence of oral and reading skills and points to the role reading in language with shallow orthography may play in preservation of L1 grammatical structures in oral language. The implications for the clinical applications are also discussed.

Assessment of cognition and language in the early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder: usefulness of the Bayley Scales of infant and toddler development, third edition

PubMed Central

Gómez‐Morales, A.; González‐Gimeno, I.; Fornieles‐Deu, A.; Brun‐Gasca, C.

2016-01-01

Abstract Background The aim of this study was to test the usefulness of the Cognitive and Language scales Bayley‐III in the early assessment of cognitive and language functions in the context of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. This paper focuses on the application of the Bayley‐III and studies the predictive value of the test result in children with ASD with different levels of verbal ability. Method A sample of 135 children (121 boys, 14 girls) with a confirmed ASD diagnosis at age 4 years were assessed with the Bayley‐III before 42 months of age (m = 36.49, s = 4.46) and later with other rating scales of different psychological and psycholinguistic functions as part of a longitudinal study [McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) (n = 48, 90% boys), Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K‐ABC) (n = 38, 87% boys) or Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) (n = 44, 89% boys)]. Age assessment in months: MSCA (m = 48.80, s = 3.33), K‐ABC (m = 51.80, s = 7.17) and ITPA (m = 54.48, s = 3.34). Results Lower scores on the cognitive and language Bayley‐III scales before 3.5 years of age predicted lower cognitive and oral language levels at 4 years of age. A significant correlation was found between the Cognitive Bayley‐III Scale and the General Cognitive MSCA Scale, and with the Compound K‐ABC Mental Processing. An association between the nonverbal cognitive level and oral language level acquired at 4 years of age was found. Conclusions The Bayley‐III is a useful instrument in cognitive and language assessment of ASD. PMID:27120991

Assessment of cognition and language in the early diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder: usefulness of the Bayley Scales of infant and toddler development, third edition.

PubMed

Torras-Mañá, M; Gómez-Morales, A; González-Gimeno, I; Fornieles-Deu, A; Brun-Gasca, C

2016-05-01

The aim of this study was to test the usefulness of the Cognitive and Language scales Bayley-III in the early assessment of cognitive and language functions in the context of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis. This paper focuses on the application of the Bayley-III and studies the predictive value of the test result in children with ASD with different levels of verbal ability. A sample of 135 children (121 boys, 14 girls) with a confirmed ASD diagnosis at age 4 years were assessed with the Bayley-III before 42 months of age (m = 36.49, s = 4.46) and later with other rating scales of different psychological and psycholinguistic functions as part of a longitudinal study [McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) (n = 48, 90% boys), Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) (n = 38, 87% boys) or Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA) (n = 44, 89% boys)]. Age assessment in months: MSCA (m = 48.80, s = 3.33), K-ABC (m = 51.80, s = 7.17) and ITPA (m = 54.48, s = 3.34). Lower scores on the cognitive and language Bayley-III scales before 3.5 years of age predicted lower cognitive and oral language levels at 4 years of age. A significant correlation was found between the Cognitive Bayley-III Scale and the General Cognitive MSCA Scale, and with the Compound K-ABC Mental Processing. An association between the nonverbal cognitive level and oral language level acquired at 4 years of age was found. The Bayley-III is a useful instrument in cognitive and language assessment of ASD. © 2016 The Authors. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research published by MENCAP and International Association of the Scientific Study of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Discours oraux--discours ecrits: quelles relations? Actes du 4eme colloque d'orthophoine/logopedie (Neuchatel, 3-4 octobre, 1996) (Oral Discourse--Written Discourse: What Is the Relationship? Proceedings of the Colloquium on Speech Therapy (4th, Neuchatel, Switzerland, October 3-4, 1996).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Py, Bernard, Ed.

1996-01-01

Research papers on the relationship between oral and written language include: "Une distinction bien fragile: oral/ecrit" ("A Fragile Distinction: Oral/Written") (Francoise Gadet); "Oral et ecrit dans les representations des enseignants et dans les pratiques quotidiennes de la classe de francais" ("Oral and Written Language in Teachers'…

The efficacy of early language intervention in mainstream school settings: a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Fricke, Silke; Burgoyne, Kelly; Bowyer-Crane, Claudine; Kyriacou, Maria; Zosimidou, Alexandra; Maxwell, Liam; Lervåg, Arne; Snowling, Margaret J; Hulme, Charles

2017-10-01

Oral language skills are a critical foundation for literacy and more generally for educational success. The current study shows that oral language skills can be improved by providing suitable additional help to children with language difficulties in the early stages of formal education. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 394 children in England, comparing a 30-week oral language intervention programme starting in nursery (N = 132) with a 20-week version of the same programme starting in Reception (N = 133). The intervention groups were compared to an untreated waiting control group (N = 129). The programmes were delivered by trained teaching assistants (TAs) working in the children's schools/nurseries. All testers were blind to group allocation. Both the 20- and 30-week programmes produced improvements on primary outcome measures of oral language skill compared to the untreated control group. Effect sizes were small to moderate (20-week programme: d = .21; 30-week programme: d = .30) immediately following the intervention and were maintained at follow-up 6 months later. The difference in improvement between the 20-week and 30-week programmes was not statistically significant. Neither programme produced statistically significant improvements in children's early word reading or reading comprehension skills (secondary outcome measures). This study provides further evidence that oral language interventions can be delivered successfully by trained TAs to children with oral language difficulties in nursery and Reception classes. The methods evaluated have potentially important policy implications for early education. © 2017 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

[Validation of BREV: comparison with reference battery in 173 children with learning disorders].

PubMed

Billard, C; Ducot, B; Pinton, F; Coste-Zeitoun, D; Picard, S; Warszawski, J

2006-01-01

The BREV battery (Battery for rapid evaluation of cognitive functions) is a tool which can be used for the rapid neuropsychological evaluation of children aged between 4 and 9 years. After standardization (700 unaffected children) and validation by comparison with a reference battery (202 children with epilepsy), the aim of this study was further validation in 173 children with learning disorders. The study protocol included administration of the BREV, precise neuropsychological examination and evaluation of oral and written language. Statistical analysis was used to compare the findings of the BREV with those of the reference method, and the recommendations indicated by the BREV with the final diagnoses, and to define the sensitivity and the specificity of the BREV battery. All the correlations between BREV tests and reference tests were significant. Recommendations after the BREV were in agreement with the conclusions of the reference evaluation in 168/172 children for language, 145/173 for the psychometric evaluation. For only 4 chidren, the results of the BREV were false negative. Diagnoses corresponded in 168/173 children for oral language, in 102/110 for written language, 166/173 for praxis disorders and 157/173 for intellectual deficit. The most predictive subtests of the BREV and sensitivity and specificity of verbal and non-verbal scores were calculated. The BREV is a reliable examination, in learning disorders, to determine the most complementary investigations both in terms of language disorders and for non-verbal or global learning disabilities.

Embracing Plurality through Oral Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nguyen, Bich; Oliver, Rhonda; Rochecouste, Judith

2015-01-01

The transmission and dissemination of knowledge in Aboriginal societies for the most part occurs orally in an Aboriginal language or in Aboriginal English. However, whilst support is given to speaking skills in Indigenous communities, in our education system less emphasis is given to developing equivalent oral communicative competence in Standard…

Nasalance measures in Cantonese-speaking women.

PubMed

Whitehill, T L

2001-03-01

To establish and evaluate stimulus materials for nasalance measurement in Cantonese speakers, to provide normative data for Cantonese-speaking women, and to evaluate session-to-session reliability of nasalance measures. One hundred forty-one Cantonese-speaking women with normal resonance who were students in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Hong Kong. Participants read aloud four speech stimuli: oral sentences, nasal sentences, an oral paragraph (similar to the Zoo Passage), and an oral-nasal paragraph (similar to the Rainbow Passage). Data were collected and analyzed using the Kay Nasometer 6200. Data collection was repeated for a subgroup of speakers (n = 28) on a separate day. Nasalance materials were evaluated by using statistical tests of difference and correlation. Group mean (standard deviation) nasalance scores for oral sentences, nasal sentences, oral paragraph, and oral-nasal paragraph were 16.79 (5.99), 55.67 (7.38), 13.68 (7.16), and 35.46 (6.22), respectively. There was a significant difference in mean nasalance scores for oral versus nasal materials. Correlations between stimuli were as expected, ranging from 0.43 to 0.91. Session-to-session reliability was within 5 points for over 95% of speakers for the oral stimuli but for less than 76% of speakers for the nasal and oral-nasal stimuli. Standard nasalance materials have been developed for Cantonese, and normative data have been established for Cantonese women. Evaluation of materials indicated acceptable differentiation between oral and nasal materials. Two stimuli (nasal sentences and oral paragraph) are recommended for future use. Comparison with findings from other languages showed similarities in scores; possible language-specific differences are discussed. Session-to-session reliability was poorer for nasal than oral stimuli.

Influences on preschool children's oral health-related quality of life as reported by English and Spanish-speaking parents and caregivers.

PubMed

Born, Catherine D; Divaris, Kimon; Zeldin, Leslie P; Rozier, R Gary

2016-09-01

This study examined young, preschool children's oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) among a community-based cohort of English and Spanish-speaking parent-child dyads in North Carolina, and sought to quantify the association of parent/caregiver characteristics, including spoken language, with OHRQoL impacts. Data from structured interviews with 1,111 parents of children aged 6-23 months enrolled in the Zero-Out Early Childhood Caries study in 2010-2012 were used. OHRQoL was measured using the overall score (range: 0-52) of the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS). We examined associations with parents' sociodemographic characteristics, spoken language, self-reported oral and general health, oral health knowledge, children's dental attendance, and dental care needs. Analyses included descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate methods based upon zero-inflated negative binomial regression. To determine differences between English and Spanish speakers, language-stratified model estimates were contrasted using homogeneity χ 2 tests. The mean overall ECOHIS score was 3.9 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 3.6-4.2]; 4.7 among English-speakers and 1.5 among Spanish speakers. In multivariate analyses, caregivers' education showed a positive association with OHRQoL impacts among Spanish speakers [prevalence ratio (PR) = 1.12 (95% CI = 1.03-1.22), for every added year of schooling], whereas caregivers' fair/poor oral health showed a positive association among English speakers (PR = 1.20; 95% CI = 1.02-1.41). The overall severity of ECOHIS impacts was low among this population-based sample of young, preschool children, and substantially lower among Spanish versus English speakers. Further studies are warranted to identify sources of these differences in - actual or reported - OHRQoL impacts. © 2016 American Association of Public Health Dentistry.

The Role of Oral Reading Fluency in ESL Reading Comprehension among Learners of Different First Language Backgrounds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Xiangying

2016-01-01

This study discusses the construct of oral reading fluency and examines its relationship to reading comprehension among adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners of four first language (L1) backgrounds. One hundred and forty-nine adult learners of English with Arabic, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese language backgrounds participated in this…

Oral Language and Narrative Skills in Children with Specific Language Impairment with and without Literacy Delay: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vandewalle, Ellen; Boets, Bart; Boons, Tinne; Ghesquiere, Pol; Zink, Inge

2012-01-01

This longitudinal study compared the development of oral language and more specifically narrative skills (storytelling and story retelling) in children with specific language impairment (SLI) with and without literacy delay. Therefore, 18 children with SLI and 18 matched controls with normal literacy were followed from the last year of…

Increasing Language Awareness and Self-Efficacy of FL Students Using Self-Assessment and the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kissling, Elizabeth M.; O'Donnell, Mary E.

2015-01-01

This study describes how oral language was assessed in an advanced-level college foreign language (FL) conversation course. Learners used the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines to guide self-analyses of their oral production at intervals throughout the course. The intent was to provide opportunities for…

Within- and Cross-Language Relations between Oral Language Proficiency and School Outcomes in Bilingual Children with an Immigrant Background

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prevoo, Mariëlle J. L.; Malda, Maike; Mesman, Judi; van IJzendoorn, Marinus H.

2016-01-01

Sixteen meta-analyses were conducted to examine relations of typically developing bilingual immigrant-background children's oral language proficiency in their first and second language with the school outcomes of early literacy (k = 41), reading (k = 61), spelling (k = 9), mathematics (k = 9), and academic achievement (k = 9). Moderate to strong…

Development of a Test of Spoken Dutch for Prospective Immigrants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

De Jong, John H. A. L.; Lennig, Matthew; Kerkhoff, Anne; Poelmans, Petra

2009-01-01

Based on a parliamentary vote with broad support, the Ministry of Justice of the Netherlands in December 2003 commissioned the development of an examination system to test the Dutch oral language skills of foreigners who want to immigrate permanently to the Netherlands for economic or family reasons. This assessment would take place in the country…

Reexamining Elicited Imitation as a Measure of Implicit Grammatical Knowledge and Beyond…?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sarandi, Hedayat

2015-01-01

This study examines elicited imitation (EI) both as a measure of implicit grammatical knowledge and more global semantic and syntactic knowledge. It also examines whether length affects the difficulty of EI tests when they contain both grammatical and ungrammatical items. Fifty language learners took an EI test and an oral narrative task. The data…

What Do Phonological Processing Errors Tell about Students' Skills in Reading, Writing, and Oral Language?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Choi, Dowon; Hatcher, Ryan C.; Dulong-Langley, Susan; Liu, Xiaochen; Bray, Melissa A.; Courville, Troy; O'Brien, Rebecca; DeBiase, Emily

2017-01-01

The kinds of errors that children and adolescents make on phonological processing tasks were studied with a large sample between ages 4 and 19 (N = 3,842) who were tested on the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Third Edition (KTEA-3). Principal component analysis identified two phonological processing factors: Basic Phonological Awareness…

Language Arts Curriculum Instructional Guide: Grades 4-6.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wilmington Public Schools, MA.

This curriculum guide, designed for teachers of language at the elementary level, outlines major language topics and suggests related learning activities for use in the classroom. The following divisions are made: General Introduction, Introduction to Oral-Aural Communication, Oral-Aural Experiences, General Introduction to Composing, The Writing…

"L'Atelier d'expression orale" (The Oral Expression Workshop).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tabensky, Alexis; Mesana, Corinne

1990-01-01

An extracurricular program in an Australian university French language program that brings together adults of varying ages and nationalities for oral language development activities is described. The program uses improvisation, psychodrama and role playing, and suggestopedia all together to develop a theme or in alternation, for creativity and…

Oral Reading Fluency in Second Language Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jeon, Eun Hee

2012-01-01

This study investigated the role of oral reading fluency in second language reading. Two hundred and fifty-five high school students in South Korea were assessed on three oral reading fluency (ORF) variables and six other reading predictors. The relationship between ORF and other reading predictors was examined through an exploratory factor…

The Told Tale: Oral Storytelling and the Young Child.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zobairi, Nillofur; Gulley, Beverly

The importance of oral storytelling for children is examined. Inital discussion focuses on: (1) the purpose and benefits of storytelling; (2) the importance of storytelling in the early childhood setting; (3) development of language skills, including oral communication, nonverbal communication, and mastery over story material and story language;…

Classroom Activities: Oral Proficiency in Action.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hahn, Sidney; Michaelis, Joyce

It is important to introduce and facilitate oral activities in the second language classroom with enthusiasm in a climate of mutual support and cooperation. Students should understand that mistakes are inevitable but not fatal, and that each attempt will build greater ease and confidence in using the language for communication. Oral proficiency…

The Communicative Ability of Universiti Teknologi MARA Sarawak's Graduates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hassan, Sharifah Zakiah Wan; Hakim, Simon Faizal; Rahim, Mahdalela; Noyem, John Francis; Ibrahim, Sueb; Ahmad, Johnny; Jusoff, Kamaruzaman

2009-01-01

This study explores Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Sarawak graduating students' oral proficiency, focusing on grammatical accuracy. Oral proficiency in English has always been the benchmark of language proficiency, and in the context of UiTM's language teaching curriculum, efforts to enhance students' oral proficiency are implemented through…

Relationships between Preschoolers' Oral Language and Phonological Awareness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Milburn, Trelani; Weitzman, Elaine; Greenberg, Janice; Pelletier, Janette; Girolametto, Luigi

2014-01-01

This study examines the relationship between complex oral language and phonological awareness in the preschool years. Specifically, the authors investigate the relationship between concurrent measures of oral narrative structure (based on measures of both story retell and generation), and measures of blending and elision in a sample of 89 children…

The Interview as a Technique for Assessing Oral Ability: Some Guidelines for Its Use.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nambiar, Mohana

1990-01-01

Some guidelines are offered that detail the complexities involved in interviewing for language testing purposes. They cover strategies for structuring interviews (informal conversational, interview guide, standardized open-ended), questions, interviewing skills, and physical setting. (five references) (LB)

Oral Storytelling, Speaking and Listening and the Hegemony of Literacy: Non-Instrumental Language Use and Transactional Talk in the Primary Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hibbin, Rebecca

2016-01-01

The oral re-telling of traditional tales, modelled by a storyteller and taught to children in school, can be understood as "non-instrumental" practice in speaking and listening that emphasises oral language over the reading and writing of stories. While oral storytelling has significant benefits to children's education and development,…

Oral Language Competence, Young Speakers, and the Law

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow, Pamela C.; Powell, Martine B.; Sanger, Dixie D.

2012-01-01

Purpose: This paper highlights the forensic implications of language impairment in 2 key (and overlapping) groups of young people: identified victims of maltreatment (abuse and/or neglect) and young offenders. Method: Two lines of research pertaining to oral language competence and young people's interface with the law are considered: 1 regarding…

Procedures for Obtaining and Analyzing Writing Samples of School-Age Children and Adolescents

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Price, Johanna R.; Jackson, Sandra C.

2015-01-01

Purpose: Many students' writing skills are below grade-level expectations, and students with oral language difficulties are at particular risk for writing difficulties. Speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') expertise in language applies to both the oral and written modalities, yet evidence suggests that SLPs' confidence regarding writing…

Promoting Oral Language Skills in Preschool Children through Sociodramatic Play in the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rajapaksha, P. L. N. Randima

2016-01-01

Children best learn language through playful learning experiences in the preschool classroom. The present study focused on developing oral language skills in preschool children through a sociodramatic play intervention. The study employed a case study design under qualitative approach. The researcher conducted a sociodramatic play intervention…

Using Precision in STEM Language: A Qualitative Look

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Capraro, Mary M.; Bicer, Ali; Grant, Melva R.; Lincoln, Yvonna S.

2017-01-01

Teachers need to develop a variety of pedagogical strategies that can encourage precise and accurate communication--an extremely important 21st century skill. Precision with STEM oral language is essential. Emphasizing oral communication with precise language in combination with increased spatial skills with modeling can improve the chances of…

Teaching Reading with Puppets.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, Ruth

The use of traditional stories in American Indian language programs connects students' reading to their lives and familiarizes learners with the rhythms of the oral language. Puppet performances are one way of connecting reading programs to the Native oral tradition. A high school reading lesson in a first-year Hupa language class uses many…

Oral Language Skills Intervention in Pre-School--A Cautionary Tale

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haley, Allyson; Hulme, Charles; Bowyer-Crane, Claudine; Snowling, Margaret J.; Fricke, Silke

2017-01-01

Background: While practitioners are increasingly asked to be mindful of the evidence base of intervention programmes, evidence from rigorous trials for the effectiveness of interventions that promote oral language abilities in the early years is sparse. Aims: To evaluate the effectiveness of a language intervention programme for children…

28 CFR 55.13 - Language used for oral assistance and publicity.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Language used for oral assistance and publicity. 55.13 Section 55.13 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact...

28 CFR 55.13 - Language used for oral assistance and publicity.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Language used for oral assistance and publicity. 55.13 Section 55.13 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Determining the Exact...

Stories That Sing: Stimulating Oral Language in Young Children.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huffine, Karen; Ellis, DiAnn

Research indicates the importance of the relationship between music, adult/child interaction, language practice, rhythm, repetition, familiarity of content, and story time, and a child's oral language development. Folk songs that have been illustrated and put into book form--"stories that sing"--can be used by parents and teachers to…

Early Writing Deficits in Preschoolers with Oral Language Difficulties

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Puranik, Cynthia S.; Lonigan, Christopher J.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether preschool children with language impairments (LI), a group with documented reading difficulties, also experience writing difficulties. In addition, a purpose was to examine if the writing outcomes differed when children had concomitant cognitive deficits in addition to oral language problems. A…

Examining the Relationship among Reading Curriculum-Based Measures, Level of Language Proficiency, and State Accountability Test Scores with Middle School Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stokes, Nicole Osterman

2010-01-01

The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive ability of oral reading fluency (R-CBM) on a sixth grade high-stakes assessment with ELL and non-ELL students, as well as determine the average rate of growth on R-CBM and how that relates to level of English Proficiency. The participants in the current study included 350 sixth grade…

Phonological awareness and oral language proficiency in learning to read English among Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong.

PubMed

Yeung, Susanna S; Chan, Carol K K

2013-12-01

Learning to read is very challenging for Hong Kong children who learn English as a second language (ESL), as they must acquire two very different writing systems, beginning at the age of three. Few studies have examined the role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels, oral language proficiency, and L1 tone awareness in L2 English reading among Hong Kong ESL kindergarteners. This study aims to investigate L1 and L2 phonological awareness and oral language proficiency as predictors of English reading among children with Chinese as L1. One hundred and sixty-one typically developing children with a mean age of 5.16 (SD=.35) selected from seven preschools in Hong Kong. Participants were assessed for English reading, English and Chinese phonological awareness at different levels, English oral language skills, and letter naming ability. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that both oral language proficiency and phonological awareness measures significantly predicted L2 word reading, when statistically controlled for age and general intelligence. Among various phonological awareness units, L2 phonemic awareness was the best predictor of L2 word reading. Cross-language transfer was shown with L1 phonological awareness at the tone level, uniquely predicting L2 word reading. The present findings show the important role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels (rime and phoneme) and oral language proficiency in the course of L2 reading development in Chinese ESL learners. The significant contribution of L1 tone awareness to L2 reading suggests that phonological sensitivity is a general competence that ESL children need to acquire in early years. The findings have significant implications for understanding L2 reading development and curriculum development. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Early Oral Language and Later Reading Development in Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: Evidence from a Nine-Year Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kieffer, Michael J.

2012-01-01

Using nationally-representative, longitudinal data on a cohort of Spanish-speaking English language learners in the U.S., this study investigated the extent to which early oral language proficiency in Spanish and English predicts later levels and rates of growth in English reading. Latent growth models indicated that both Spanish and English…

English Word-Level Decoding and Oral Language Factors as Predictors of Third and Fifth Grade English Language Learners' Reading Comprehension Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Landon, Laura L.

2017-01-01

This study examines the application of the Simple View of Reading (SVR), a reading comprehension theory focusing on word recognition and linguistic comprehension, to English Language Learners' (ELLs') English reading development. This study examines the concurrent and predictive validity of two components of the SVR, oral language and word-level…

Effects of Adapted Dialogic Reading on Oral Language and Vocabulary Knowledge of Latino Preschoolers at Risk for English Language Delays

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Correa, Vivian I.; Lo, Ya-Yu; Godfrey-Hurrell, Kristi; Swart, Katie; Baker, Doris Luft

2015-01-01

In this single-case design study, we examined the effects of an adapted dialogic reading intervention on the oral language and vocabulary skills of four Latino preschool children who were at risk for English language delays. We used adapted dialogic reading strategies in English and two literacy games that included a rapid naming activity and…

Working memory capacity and self-repair behavior in first and second language oral production.

PubMed

Mojavezi, Ahmad; Ahmadian, Mohammad Javad

2014-06-01

This study explores the relationship between working memory capacity and self-repair behavior in first (L1) and second language (L2) oral production. 40 Iranian intermediate EFL learners participated in this study. Their working memory capacity was measured via a version of listening span test. The participants performed two oral narrative tasks, one in their L2 (English) and one in their L1 (Farsi). Then, they were asked to listen to their own narrations and comment on the repairs they made in their speech. Self-repairs were analyzed and categorized taking into account the participants' stimulated recall comments. Results of the analyses pointed to positive correlations between the participants' working memory capacity and self-repairs in the L2 but not in the L1. Also, results revealed that whereas in the case of L1, the participants effectuated different-information and appropriacy repairs more than error-repairs, in the case of L2 more error-repairs were made.

Reliability of the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS).

PubMed

Mailend, Marja-Liisa; Plante, Elena; Anderson, Michele A; Applegate, E Brooks; Nelson, Nickola W

2016-07-01

As new standardized tests become commercially available, it is critical that clinicians have access to the information about a test's psychometric properties, including aspects of reliability. The purpose of the three studies reported in this article was to investigate the reliability of a new test, the Test of Integrated Language and Literacy Skills (TILLS), with consideration of both internal and external sources of measurement error. The TILLS was administered to children aged 6;0-18;11 years. The participants varied in terms of their language and literacy skills and included children with typical language development as well as those diagnosed with language or learning disability. The sample of children also varied in terms of their racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. Study 1 (N = 1056) assessed the internal consistency of TILLS calculating the coefficient omega for each subtest. Study 2 (N = 103) and Study 3 (N = 39) used the intra-class correlation coefficients to report on test-retest and inter-rater reliability respectively. The results indicate strong internal consistency and inter-rater reliability for all subtests of TILLS. The test-retest reliability was strong for all but one subtest, for which the intra-class correlation coefficient was in the acceptable range. This article provides clinicians with essential scientific information that supports the internal and external reliability of a new test of oral and written language skills, the TILLS. Information about reliability is critical for guiding the selection of an appropriate diagnostic tool amongst a number of options. © 2016 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Le qualita espressive del linguaggio orale: Il simbolismo fonetico (The Expressive Qualities of Oral Language: Phonetic Symbolism).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cavaliere, Roberto

1988-01-01

Discusses a study of the expressive qualities of oral language. Results suggest that there is a natural rather than an arbitrary relationship between words and their meanings. Practical applications of this theory of phonetic symbolism in the area of commercial advertising are presented. (CFM)

Oral Corrective Feedback in Second Language Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lyster, Roy; Saito, Kazuya; Sato, Masatoshi

2013-01-01

This article reviews research on oral corrective feedback (CF) in second language (L2) classrooms. Various types of oral CF are first identified, and the results of research revealing CF frequency across instructional contexts are presented. Research on CF preferences is then reviewed, revealing a tendency for learners to prefer receiving CF more…

Final Technical Report on the Institute for Oral Language Programs for the Elementary School.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ince, Robert L.

This document is a complete evaluation of a National Defense Education Act (NDEA) University of Illinois Summer Institute for Advanced Study in Oral Language Programs for Elementary Schools. The institute was designed to help teachers understand and implement fully detailed programs for oral communication instruction in self-contained elementary…

Fostering Second Language Oral Communication through Constructivist Interaction in Desktop Videoconferencing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Lina

2007-01-01

This article describes a classroom project using one-to-one desktop videoconferencing to enhance the development of second language (1.2) oral skills. Eighteen university students worked collaboratively with expert speakers to complete task-based activities. The author gathered data from video-recording samples, reflections, and oral interviews to…

Analyse Factorielle d'une Batterie de Tests de Comprehension Orale et Ecrite (Factor Analysis of a Battery of Tests of Listening and Reading Comprehension). Melanges Pedagogiques, 1971.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lonchamp, F.

This is a presentation of the results of a factor analysis of a battery of tests intended to measure listening and reading comprehension in English as a second language. The analysis sought to answer the following questions: (1) whether the factor analysis method yields results when applied to tests which are not specifically designed for this…

Teaching and Testing Early Reading. Focus On

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mraz, Maryann; Kissel, Brian

2007-01-01

This issue of "Focus On" provides an overview of several key early literacy components: phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, concepts of print, oral language development, writing, family literacy, and reading aloud. Suggestions for assessing early literacy development are provided, and examples of implementation of effective early literacy…

Oral narrative skills: Explaining the language-emergent literacy link by race/ethnicity and SES.

PubMed

Gardner-Neblett, Nicole; Iruka, Iheoma U

2015-07-01

Although children's early language skills have been found to predict literacy outcomes, little is known about the role of preschool oral narrative skills in the pathway between language and emergent literacy or how these associations differ by race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status. The current study uses the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to explore how language at age 2 is associated with narrative skills at age 4 and emergent literacy outcomes at age 5 for a nationally representative sample of children. Findings demonstrate that early language is associated with narrative skills for most children. Oral narrative skills were found to mediate the pathway between early language and kindergarten emergent literacy for poor and nonpoor African American children. Implications for children's literacy development and future research are discussed. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Online and Face-to-Face Language Learning: A Comparative Analysis of Oral Proficiency in Introductory Spanish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moneypenny, Dianne Burke; Aldrich, Rosalie S.

2016-01-01

The primary resistance to online foreign language teaching often involves questions of spoken mastery of second language. In order to address this concern, this research comparatively assesses undergraduate students' oral proficiency in online and face-to-face Spanish classes, while taking into account students' previous second language…

Non-Native Speakers of the Language of Instruction: Self-Perceptions of Teaching Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Samuel, Carolyn

2017-01-01

Given the linguistically diverse instructor and student populations at Canadian universities, mutually comprehensible oral language may not be a given. Indeed, both instructors who are non-native speakers of the language of instruction (NNSLIs) and students have acknowledged oral communication challenges. Little is known, though, about how the…

Technology Teaching or Mediated Learning, Part II, 1990s: Literacy Linkages and Intervention Contexts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coufal, Kathy L.

2002-01-01

Themes during the 1990s included the bootstrapping effects between oral and literate language, importance of supporting emergent literacy, parallels between oral language impairment and academic failure, and challenges in facilitating language learning. This article addresses questions posed in Part I related to use of computer technology for…

TANGO, an International Collaborative Bilingual E-Learning Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Álvarez-Mayo, Carmen

2016-01-01

TANGO (Álvarez-Mayo, 2013) uses the cultural aspects of foreign languages to promote oral interaction, enabling students to become self-regulated learners. Through TANGO, foreign language students learn about the cultural intricacies of the Target Language (TL) and use the TL to practise and further develop their oral skills with a partner who is…

Performance Assessment and the Components of the Oral Construct across Different Tasks and Rater Groups.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline

This study investigated whether different groups of native speakers assess second language learners' language skills differently for three elicitation techniques. Subjects were six learners of college-level Arabic as a second language, tape-recorded performing three tasks: participating in a modified oral proficiency interview, narrating a picture…

Restorative Justice Conferencing, Oral Language Competence, and Young Offenders: Are These High-Risk Conversations?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow, Pamela

2013-01-01

This article is concerned with the oral language demands (both talking and listening) associated with restorative justice conferencing--an inherently highly verbal and conversational process. Many vulnerable young people (e.g., those in the youth justice system) have significant, yet unidentified language impairments, and these could compromise…

Direct and Mediated Effects of Language and Cognitive Skills on Comprehension or Oral Narrative Texts (Listening Comprehension) for Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Young-Suk Grace

2016-01-01

We investigated component language and cognitive skills of oral language comprehension of narrative texts (i.e., listening comprehension). Using the construction--integration model of text comprehension as an overarching theoretical framework, we examined direct and mediated relations of foundational cognitive skills (working memory and…

TOEFL iBT Speaking Test Scores as Indicators of Oral Communicative Language Proficiency

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bridgeman, Brent; Powers, Donald; Stone, Elizabeth; Mollaun, Pamela

2012-01-01

Scores assigned by trained raters and by an automated scoring system (SpeechRater[TM]) on the speaking section of the TOEFL iBT[TM] were validated against a communicative competence criterion. Specifically, a sample of 555 undergraduate students listened to speech samples from 184 examinees who took the Test of English as a Foreign Language…

Language and Social Factors in the Use of Cell Phone Technology by Adolescents with and without Specific Language Impairment (SLI)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Conti-Ramsden, Gina; Durkin, Kevin; Simkin, Zoe

2010-01-01

Purpose: This study aimed to compare cell phone use (both oral and text-based) by adolescents with and without specific language impairment (SLI) and examine the extent to which language and social factors affect frequency of use. Method: Both interview and diary methods were used to compare oral and text-based communication using cell phones by…

Restorative Justice conferencing and the youth offender: exploring the role of oral language competence.

PubMed

Snow, Pamela C; Sanger, Dixie D

2011-01-01

Restorative Justice is an approach to responding to youth offending that aims to be collaborative and conciliatory rather than adversarial. In this respect, it is a welcome innovation in justice, welfare, and educational settings, and is gaining favour around the world. To date, however, the Restorative Justice literature has not considered the possible implications of unidentified language impairment in the young offenders who are asked to participate in face-to-face conferences with their victim(s). The aims of this paper are (1) to bring two paradigms together: Restorative Justice on the one hand, and the literature on language and social cognition impairments in vulnerable and socially marginalized young people on the other; (2) to stimulate awareness and interest in this aspect of public policy and practice by speech-language pathologists; and (3) to suggest some research questions that need to be tackled from an oral language competence perspective. A narrative review of the relevant literature pertaining to both Restorative Justice and oral language competence in vulnerable young people was conducted, with particular emphasis on the implications of the undetected language impairments as a source of possible unintended harm to both victims and offenders in Restorative Justice conferences. This is the first paper that specifically addresses the oral language skills of vulnerable and socially marginalized young people with respect to their capacity to participate in Restorative Justice conferences. It is important that speech-language pathologists contribute their specialized knowledge and clinical skills to public policy-making and debate, and practice that pertains to marginalized young people who may have undetected oral language impairments. Speech-language pathology as a profession is well positioned to plan and execute important programmes of research on this growing approach to dealing with youth offending and reducing recidivism. © 2010 Royal College of Speech & Language Therapists.

Investigating Mobile-Assisted Oral Feedback in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xu, Qi; Peng, Hongying

2017-01-01

This article reports on an exploratory study investigating mobile-assisted oral feedback in teaching Chinese as a second language (CSL). It is aimed at exploring the characteristics of mobile-assisted feedback on oral production with the smartphone social communication app WeChat as a case in point and examining learners' perceptions of…

The Benefit of Orthographic Support for Oral Vocabulary Learning in Children with Down Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mengoni, Sylvana E.; Nash, Hannah; Hulme, Charles

2013-01-01

Children with Down syndrome typically have weaknesses in oral language, but it has been suggested that this domain may benefit from learning to read. Amongst oral language skills, vocabulary is a relative strength, although there is some evidence of difficulties in learning the phonological form of spoken words. This study investigated the effect…

Student Perceptions of Oral Participation in the Foreign Language Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tepfenhart, Karen L.

2011-01-01

This study attempts to determine which factors students find most influential in their oral participation in a foreign language class and their thoughts on what actions the teacher should take to encourage more oral participation in class. Participants were 38 students in Spanish 1 and 2 at a rural middle school and high school. Students completed…

Self-Consciousness and Assertiveness as Explanatory Variables of L2 Oral Ability: A Latent Variable Approach

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ockey, Gary

2011-01-01

Drawing on current theories in personality, second-language (L2) oral ability, and psychometrics, this study investigates the extent to which self-consciousness and assertiveness are explanatory variables of L2 oral ability. Three hundred sixty first-year Japanese university students who were studying English as a foreign language participated in…

Speaking and Listening in Content Area Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fisher, Douglas; Frey, Nancy

2014-01-01

Oral language development facilitates print literacy. In this article, we focus on the ways in which teachers can ensure students' speaking and listening skills are developed. We provide a review of some time-tests classroom routines as well as some that can be enhanced with technology.

The Oral Proficiency Interview: A Research Agenda

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chalhoub-Deville, Micheline; Fulcher, Glenn

2003-01-01

Many researchers and practitioners maintain that ACTFL's efforts to improve instructional practices and promote proficiency assessments tied to descriptors of what learners can do in real life have contributed significantly to second language teaching and testing. Similar endeavors in the area of research, however, are critically needed. Focusing…

Fluency-dependent cortical activation associated with speech production and comprehension in second language learners.

PubMed

Shimada, K; Hirotani, M; Yokokawa, H; Yoshida, H; Makita, K; Yamazaki-Murase, M; Tanabe, H C; Sadato, N

2015-08-06

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated the brain regions underlying language task performance in adult second language (L2) learners. Specifically, we identified brain regions where the level of activation was associated with L2 fluency levels. Thirty Japanese-speaking adults participated in the study. All participants were L2 learners of English and had achieved varying levels of fluency, as determined by a standardized L2 English proficiency test, the Versant English Test (Pearson Education Inc., 2011). When participants performed the oral sentence building task from the production tasks administered, the dorsal part of the left inferior frontal gyrus (dIFG) showed activation patterns that differed depending on the L2 fluency levels: The more fluent the participants were, the more dIFG activation decreased. This decreased activation of the dIFG might reflect the increased automaticity of a syntactic building process. In contrast, when participants performed an oral story comprehension task, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) showed increased activation with higher fluency levels. This suggests that the learners with higher L2 fluency were actively engaged in post-syntactic integration processing supported by the left pSTG. These data imply that L2 fluency predicts neural resource allocation during language comprehension tasks as well as in production tasks. This study sheds light on the neural underpinnings of L2 learning by identifying the brain regions recruited during different language tasks across different modalities (production vs. comprehension). Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Phonotactic constraints: Implications for models of oral reading in Russian.

PubMed

Ulicheva, Anastasia; Coltheart, Max; Saunders, Steven; Perry, Conrad

2016-04-01

The present article investigates how phonotactic rules constrain oral reading in the Russian language. The pronunciation of letters in Russian is regular and consistent, but it is subject to substantial phonotactic influence: the position of a phoneme and its phonological context within a word can alter its pronunciation. In Part 1 of the article, we analyze the orthography-to-phonology and phonology-to-phonology (i.e., phonotactic) relationships in Russian monosyllabic words. In Part 2 of the article, we report empirical data from an oral word reading task that show an effect of phonotactic dependencies on skilled reading in Russian: humans are slower when reading words where letter-phoneme correspondences are highly constrained by phonotactic rules compared with those where there are few or no such constraints present. A further question of interest in this article is how computational models of oral reading deal with the phonotactics of the Russian language. To answer this question, in Part 3, we report simulations from the Russian dual-route cascaded model (DRC) and the Russian connectionist dual-process model (CDP++) and assess the performance of the 2 models by testing them against human data. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Oral Proficiency Standards and Foreign Language Teacher Candidates: Current Findings and Future Research Directions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Glisan, Eileen W.; Swender, Elvira; Surface, Eric A.

2013-01-01

The renewed national focus on teacher quality and effectiveness has resulted in more rigorous standards that describe the knowledge and skills required of teacher candidates across all disciplines. In the area of foreign languages, three sets of professional standards address the oral proficiency of teachers in the target languages they teach…

The Impact of Task Type on Oral Performance of English Language Preparatory School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baturay, Meltem Huri; Sancar Tokmak, Hatice; Dogusoy, Berrin; Daloglu, Aysegul

2011-01-01

In this study, the effects of narrative, descriptive and prediction-personal reaction task types with visuals on the oral performance of intermediate level English language learners were compared. The study was carried out at Gazi University Preparatory School, Research and Application Center for the Instruction of Foreign Languages with the…

Oral Spelling and Writing in a Logographic Language: Insights from a Chinese Dysgraphic Individual

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Han, Zaizhu; Bi, Yanchao

2009-01-01

The oral spelling process for logographic languages such as Chinese is intrinsically different from alphabetic languages. In Chinese only a subset of orthographic components are pronounceable and their phonological identities (i.e., component names) do not always correspond to the sound of the whole characters. We show that such phonological…

Oral History as an Innovative Language Teaching Technique for Spanish Heritage Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burgo, Clara

2016-01-01

Oral history is presented in this article as an interpretative exercise for historical events in a Spanish course for heritage language learners at the university level. Through the interview of a Latino immigrant family, students re-examined the history of their own families and increased their linguistic self-esteem. They were guided to become…

Primary Progressive Aphasia in a Bilingual Speaker: A Single-Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zanini, Sergio; Angeli, Valentina; Tavano, Alessandro

2011-01-01

We report on the case of an elderly bilingual woman presenting with a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia. The participant's native language was Friulian (L1), a predominantly oral Romance language, and her second language was Italian (L2), formally learned at primary school in oral and written forms. We investigated her linguistic abilities…

Second Language Prosody and Oral Reading Comprehension in Learners of Brazilian Portuguese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCune, W. M. Duce, II

2011-01-01

Learning to read can pose a major challenge to students, and much of this challenge is due to the fact that written language is necessarily impoverished when compared to the rich, continuous speech signal. Prosodic elements of language are scarcely represented in written text, and while oral reading prosody has been addressed in the literature…

English as an Additional Language (EAL) "viva voce": The EAL Doctoral Oral Examination Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carter, Susan

2012-01-01

Is the doctoral "viva voce" a reasonable method of examination? This exploratory paper proposes that the doctoral "viva voce" (oral examination) is a slightly different hurdle for doctoral candidates for whom English is an additional language (EAL, also termed ESL) than for those whose first language is English. It investigates…

The Oral and Written Language Scales: Is It Useful for Older Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hartley, Sigan L.; Buckendorf, G. Robert; Haines, Kristin; Hall, Trevor A.; Sikora, Darryn M.

2008-01-01

Communication impairment is a defining feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Little research attention has been devoted to establishing standardized methods for defining and identifying language impairment in children with known or suspected ASD. The present study examines the feasibility and utility of the Oral and Written Language Scales…

The Genetic Architecture of Oral Language, Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension: A Twin Study from 7 to 16 Years

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tosto, Maria G.; Hayiou-Thomas, Marianna E.; Harlaar, Nicole; Prom-Wormley, Elizabeth; Dale, Philip S.; Plomin, Robert

2017-01-01

This study examines the genetic and environmental etiology underlying the development of oral language and reading skills, and the relationship between them, over a long period of developmental time spanning middle childhood and adolescence. It focuses particularly on the differential relationship between language and two different aspects of…

Early Recovery of Aphasia through Thrombolysis: The Significance of Spontaneous Speech.

PubMed

Furlanis, Giovanni; Ridolfi, Mariana; Polverino, Paola; Menichelli, Alina; Caruso, Paola; Naccarato, Marcello; Sartori, Arianna; Torelli, Lucio; Pesavento, Valentina; Manganotti, Paolo

2018-07-01

Aphasia is one of the most devastating stroke-related consequences for social interaction and daily activities. Aphasia recovery in acute stroke depends on the degree of reperfusion after thrombolysis or thrombectomy. As aphasia assessment tests are often time-consuming for patients with acute stroke, physicians have been developing rapid and simple tests. The aim of our study is to evaluate the improvement of language functions in the earliest stage in patients treated with thrombolysis and in nontreated patients using our rapid screening test. Our study is a single-center prospective observational study conducted at the Stroke Unit of the University Medical Hospital of Trieste (January-December 2016). Patients treated with thrombolysis and nontreated patients underwent 3 aphasia assessments through our rapid screening test (at baseline, 24 hours, and 72 hours). The screening test assesses spontaneous speech, oral comprehension of words, reading aloud and comprehension of written words, oral comprehension of sentences, naming, repetition of words and a sentence, and writing words. The study included 40 patients: 18 patients treated with thrombolysis and 22 nontreated patients. Both groups improved over time. Among all language parameters, spontaneous speech was statistically significant between 24 and 72 hours (P value = .012), and between baseline and 72 hours (P value = .017). Our study demonstrates that patients treated with thrombolysis experience greater improvement in language than the nontreated patients. The difference between the 2 groups is increasingly evident over time. Moreover, spontaneous speech is the parameter marked by the greatest improvement. Copyright © 2018 National Stroke Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cerebral organization of oral and signed language responses: case study evidence from amytal and cortical stimulation studies.

PubMed

Mateer, C A; Rapport, R L; Kettrick, C

1984-01-01

A normally hearing left-handed patient familiar with American Sign Language (ASL) was assessed under sodium amytal conditions and with left cortical stimulation in both oral speech and signed English. Lateralization was mixed but complementary in each language mode: the right hemisphere perfusion severely disrupted motoric aspects of both types of language expression, the left hemisphere perfusion specifically disrupted features of grammatical and semantic usage in each mode of expression. Both semantic and syntactic aspects of oral and signed responses were altered during left posterior temporal-parietal stimulation. Findings are discussed in terms of the neurological organization of ASL and linguistic organization in cases of early left hemisphere damage.

Global developmental delay in guanidionacetate methyltransferase deficiency: differences in formal testing and clinical observation.

PubMed

Verbruggen, Krijn T; Knijff, Wilma A; Soorani-Lunsing, Roelineke J; Sijens, Paul E; Verhoeven, Nanda M; Salomons, Gajja S; Goorhuis-Brouwer, Siena M; van Spronsen, Francjan J

2007-09-01

Guanidinoacetate N-methyltransferase (GAMT) deficiency is a defect in the biosynthesis of creatine (Cr). So far, reports have not focused on the description of developmental abilities in this disorder. Here, we present the result of formal testing of developmental abilities in a GAMT-deficient patient. Our patient, a 3-year-old boy with GAMT deficiency, presented clinically with a severe language production delay and nearly normal nonverbal development. Treatment with oral Cr supplementation led to partial restoration of the cerebral Cr concentration and a clinically remarkable acceleration of language production development. In contrast to clinical observation, formal testing showed a rather harmonic developmental delay before therapy and a general improvement, but no specific acceleration of language development after therapy. From our case, we conclude that in GAMT deficiency language delay is not always more prominent than delays in other developmental areas. The discrepancy between the clinical impression and formal testing underscores the importance of applying standardized tests in children with developmental delays. Screening for Cr deficiency by metabolite analysis of body fluids or proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the brain deficiency should be considered in any child with global developmental delay/mental retardation lacking clues for an alternative etiology.

Oral motor deficits in speech-impaired children with autism

PubMed Central

Belmonte, Matthew K.; Saxena-Chandhok, Tanushree; Cherian, Ruth; Muneer, Reema; George, Lisa; Karanth, Prathibha

2013-01-01

Absence of communicative speech in autism has been presumed to reflect a fundamental deficit in the use of language, but at least in a subpopulation may instead stem from motor and oral motor issues. Clinical reports of disparity between receptive vs. expressive speech/language abilities reinforce this hypothesis. Our early-intervention clinic develops skills prerequisite to learning and communication, including sitting, attending, and pointing or reference, in children below 6 years of age. In a cohort of 31 children, gross and fine motor skills and activities of daily living as well as receptive and expressive speech were assessed at intake and after 6 and 10 months of intervention. Oral motor skills were evaluated separately within the first 5 months of the child's enrolment in the intervention programme and again at 10 months of intervention. Assessment used a clinician-rated structured report, normed against samples of 360 (for motor and speech skills) and 90 (for oral motor skills) typically developing children matched for age, cultural environment and socio-economic status. In the full sample, oral and other motor skills correlated with receptive and expressive language both in terms of pre-intervention measures and in terms of learning rates during the intervention. A motor-impaired group comprising a third of the sample was discriminated by an uneven profile of skills with oral motor and expressive language deficits out of proportion to the receptive language deficit. This group learnt language more slowly, and ended intervention lagging in oral motor skills. In individuals incapable of the degree of motor sequencing and timing necessary for speech movements, receptive language may outstrip expressive speech. Our data suggest that autistic motor difficulties could range from more basic skills such as pointing to more refined skills such as articulation, and need to be assessed and addressed across this entire range in each individual. PMID:23847480

The cross-linguistic transfer of early literacy skills: the role of initial L1 and L2 skills and language of instruction.

PubMed

Cárdenas-Hagan, Elsa; Carlson, Coleen D; Pollard-Durodola, Sharolyn D

2007-07-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of initial first and second language proficiencies as well as the language of instruction that a student receives on the relationship between native language ability of students who are English language learners (ELLs) and their development of early literacy skills and the second language. This study investigated the development of early language and literacy skills among Spanish-speaking students in 2 large urban school districts, 1 middle-size urban district, and 1 border district. A total of 1,016 ELLs in kindergarten participated in the study. Students were administered a comprehensive battery of tests in English and Spanish, and classroom observations provided information regarding the Spanish or English language use of the teacher. Findings from this study suggest that Spanish-speaking students with high Spanish letter name and sound knowledge tend to show high levels of English letter name and sound knowledge. ELLs with low Spanish and English letter name and sound knowledge tend to show high levels of English letter name and sound knowledge when they are instructed in English. Letter name and sound identification skills are fairly highly positively correlated across languages in the beginning of the kindergarten year. In addition, phonological awareness skills appear to be the area with the most significant and direct transfer of knowledge, and language skills do not appear to be a factor in the development of phonological awareness. Finally, the relationship between oral language skills across languages was low, suggesting little relationship between oral language skills across languages at the beginning of the kindergarten year. Results from this study suggest that pedagogical decisions for ELLs should not only consider effective instructional literacy strategies but also acknowledge that the language of instruction for Spanish-speaking ELLs may produce varying results for different students.

Sign Language and Spoken Language for Children With Hearing Loss: A Systematic Review.

PubMed

Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Hamel, Candyce; Stevens, Adrienne; Pratt, Misty; Moher, David; Doucet, Suzanne P; Neuss, Deirdre; Bernstein, Anita; Na, Eunjung

2016-01-01

Permanent hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and interferes with typical communication development. Early detection through newborn hearing screening and hearing technology provide most children with the option of spoken language acquisition. However, no consensus exists on optimal interventions for spoken language development. To conduct a systematic review of the effectiveness of early sign and oral language intervention compared with oral language intervention only for children with permanent hearing loss. An a priori protocol was developed. Electronic databases (eg, Medline, Embase, CINAHL) from 1995 to June 2013 and gray literature sources were searched. Studies in English and French were included. Two reviewers screened potentially relevant articles. Outcomes of interest were measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, and speech production skills. All data collection and risk of bias assessments were completed and then verified by a second person. Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) was used to judge the strength of evidence. Eleven cohort studies met inclusion criteria, of which 8 included only children with severe to profound hearing loss with cochlear implants. Language development was the most frequently reported outcome. Other reported outcomes included speech and speech perception. Several measures and metrics were reported across studies, and descriptions of interventions were sometimes unclear. Very limited, and hence insufficient, high-quality evidence exists to determine whether sign language in combination with oral language is more effective than oral language therapy alone. More research is needed to supplement the evidence base. Copyright © 2016 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Oral Societies and Colonial Experiences: Sub-Saharan Africa and the "de-facto" Power of the Written Word

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abdi, Ali A.

2007-01-01

Pre-colonial traditional societies in Sub-Saharan Africa were mostly oral societies whose languages were not written. In the African context, especially, it was clear that the mostly oral traditions of these societies' languages were neither being appreciated nor promoted as media of communication, or means of education by the invading Europeans.…

Evaluating the Relationship among Parents' Oral and Written Language Skills, the Home Literacy Environment, and Their Preschool Children's Emergent Literacy Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Nicole A.

2011-01-01

Studies have examined the impact of parents' educational level on their child's emergent literacy skills and have found positive associations (Korat, 2009). However, a review of the literature indicates that previous studies have not investigated whether parents' oral and written language skills relate to their child's emergent oral and written…

A Study on the Oral Disfluencies Developmental Traits of EFL Students--A Report Based on Canonical Correlation Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Ying; Du, Wanyi

2013-01-01

This paper traces 9 non-English major EFL students and collects their oral productions in 4 successive oral exams in 2 years. The canonical correlation analysis approach of SPSS is adopted to study the disfluencies developmental traits under the influence of language acquisition development. We find that as language acquisition develops, the total…

A Case Study of the Features of Oral Narratives Produced by a Small Group of Children with Sensory Processing Disorder

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kingston, Helen Chen

2009-01-01

Research indicates that oral narrative is the discourse form that functions as a bridge between conversational oral language and language skills that contribute to the acquisition of literacy in children (Westby, 1991). Learning to tell stories, therefore, is important to children's literacy development. Mastering extended discourse tasks such as…

Innovative Training of Oral Communication: Berlin Kompass

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pihkala-Posti, Laura

2014-01-01

In a classical instructed language classroom setting, the practicing of communication situations is too often limited to producing isolated phrases and sentences without actually testing their relevance for the intended action. An example is describing and finding a route. In this paper, results of the early pilots with a collaborative virtual…

Predicting Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Discrepancies in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

McDaniel, Jena; Yoder, Paul; Woynaroski, Tiffany; Watson, Linda R

2018-05-15

Correlates of receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies may provide insights into why language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) deviates from typical language development and ultimately improve intervention outcomes. We indexed receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies of 65 initially preverbal children with ASD (20-48 months) to a comparison sample from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Wordbank (Frank, Braginsky, Yurovsky, & Marchman, 2017) to quantify typicality. We then tested whether attention toward a speaker and oral motor performance predict typicality of the discrepancy 8 months later. Attention toward a speaker correlated positively with receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Imitative and nonimitative oral motor performance were not significant predictors of vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Secondary analyses indicated that midpoint receptive vocabulary size mediated the association between initial attention toward a speaker and end point receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Findings support the hypothesis that variation in attention toward a speaker might partially explain receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy magnitude in children with ASD. Results are consistent with an input-processing deficit explanation of language impairment in this clinical population. Future studies should test whether attention toward a speaker is malleable and causally related to receptive-expressive discrepancies in children with ASD.

Language and Adjustment Scales for the Thematic Apperception Test for Youths 12-17 Years. Vital Health and Statistics, Series 2, No. 62.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neman, Ronald S.; And Others

The study represents an extension of previous research involving the development of scales for the five-card, orally administered, and tape-recorded version of the Thematic Apperception Test(TAT). Scale development is documented and national norms are presented based on a national probability sample of 1,398 youths administered the Cycle III test…

High School Students' Topic Preferences and Oral Development in an English-Only Short-Term Intensive Language Program

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsieh, Hui-Chen

2016-01-01

Developing the ability to speak English is a daunting task that has long been omitted in a test-driven pedagogy context (Chang, 2011; Li, 2012a, 2012b; Chen & Tsai, 2012; Katchen, 1989, 1995). Since speaking is not tested for school admissions, most students are not motivated to learn it (Chang, 2011; Chen & Tsai, 2012). Now, globalization…

Associations between Preschool Language and First Grade Reading Outcomes in Bilingual Children

PubMed Central

Davison, Megan Dunn; Hammer, Carol; Lawrence, Frank R.

2011-01-01

It is well established that monolingual preschoolers’ oral language development (vocabulary and oral comprehension) contributes to their later reading abilities; however, less is known about this relationship in bilingual populations where children are developing knowledge of two languages. It may be that children’s abilities in one language do not contribute to their reading abilities in their other language or that children’s experiences with either language assist them in developing a common underlying proficiency that they draw upon when learning to read. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among bilingual children’s receptive language development and reading outcomes in first grade. Eighty-one bilingual children who were attending Head Start participated in the study. Growth curve models were used to examine the relationship between children’s language abilities during two years in Head Start and reading outcomes at the end of first grade. Children’s growth in both English and Spanish receptive vocabulary and oral comprehension predicted their English and Spanish reading abilities at the end of first grade within languages. Associations were also observed between languages with growth in English receptive language predicting Spanish reading comprehension and growth in Spanish receptive language predicting English reading comprehension. PMID:21477813

[Neuropsychological profiles associated with the children's oral language disorders].

PubMed

Conde-Guzón, P A; Conde-Guzón, M J; Bartolomé-Albistegui, M T; Quirós-Expósito, P

Oral language disorders constitute a group of syndromes with a high prevalence among the childhood population. They form a heterogeneous group that ranges from simple problems in articulating a phoneme (dyslalias) to severe disorders affecting communication, such as children's dysarthrias and aphasias. In this paper our objective is to review the neuropsychological profiles of children who manifest different oral language disorders. Due to the wide range of clinical pictures and causations covered by children's oral language disorders, very few systematic reviews have been conducted to obtain an overall view of the neuropsychological profiles of these children. Although the linguistic signs and symptoms of these disorders are well understood, the associated neuropsychological signs and symptoms have not been studied. In some cases, these neuropsychological signs cause greater learning problems in children than the actual language problems themselves. Childhood language disorders are associated with different neuropsychological problems. The most commonly associated neuropsychological deficits are problems involving memory, attention, executive functions, motor dysfunctions, temporal perception, tactile recognition, body scheme, spatial orientation and difficulties in visual discrimination. Mnemonic disorders (essentially in short-term and working auditory memory) are usually a common denominator in the different clinical pictures that make up language disorders. The mnemonic impairment associated to dyslalias deserves special attention as this disorder is sometimes similar to that seen in language problems deriving from clinical pictures with important neurological alterations.

Language matters in demonstrations of understanding in early years mathematics assessment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mushin, Ilana; Gardner, Rod; Munro, Jennifer M.

2013-09-01

In classrooms tests, students are regularly required to demonstrate their understanding of mathematical concepts. When children encounter problems in demonstrating such understanding, it is often not clear whether this is because of the language of the teachers' questions and instructions or a genuine non-understanding of the concept itself. This paper uses Conversation Analysis to investigate the role that language plays in Year 1 oral maths assessment in an Australian Indigenous community school. This approach allows us to monitor the very subtle communicative gestures, verbal and non-verbal, that contribute to the trajectory of a particular test task. Here we are able to bring to light a range of ways in which language may interfere with demonstrations of understanding of mathematical concepts. These include particular mathematical words (e.g., size, shape, same), as well as problems with what is being asked in an instruction. We argue that while all children must learn new mathematical language in their early years of schooling, the challenge for the students we have recorded may be compounded by the language differences between the Indigenous variety of language they speak in the community, and the Standard Australian English of the classroom and teachers.

The Importance of SES, Home and School Language and Literacy Practices, and Oral Vocabulary in Bilingual Children's English Reading Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Elizabeth R.; Páez, Mariela M.; August, Diane L.; Barr, Christopher D.; Kenyon, Dorry; Malabonga, Valerie

2014-01-01

This study explores the role that socioeconomic status (SES), home and school language and literacy practices, and oral vocabulary play in the development of English reading skills in Latino English language learners (ELLs) and how these factors contribute differentially to English reading outcomes for children of different ages and in different…

The Effect of Focus on Form and Task Complexity on L2 Learners' Oral Task Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Salimi, Asghar

2015-01-01

Second Language learners' oral task performance has been one of interesting and research generating areas of investigations in the field of second language acquisition specially, task-based language teaching and learning. The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the effect of focus on form and task complexity on L2 learners' oral…

The Effectiveness of Drama as an Instructional Approach for the Development of Second Language Oral Fluency, Comprehensibility, and Accentedness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Galante, Angelica; Thomson, Ron I.

2017-01-01

Although the development of second language (L2) oral fluency has been widely investigated over the past several decades, there remains a paucity of research examining language instruction specifically aimed at improving this cognitive skill. In this study, the researchers investigate how instructional techniques adapted from drama can positively…

Global Trends and Research Aims for English Academic Oral Presentations: Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities for Learning Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barrett, Neil E.; Liu, Gi-Zen

2016-01-01

English has become the de facto language for communication in academia in many parts of the world, but English language learners often lack the language resources to make effective oral academic presentations. However, English for academic purposes (EAP) research is beginning to provide valuable insights into this emerging field. This literature…

Syntactic Complexity Measures and Their Relation to Oral Proficiency in Japanese as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iwashita, Noriko

2006-01-01

The study reported in this article is a part of a large-scale study investigating syntactic complexity in second language (L2) oral data in commonly taught foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, and Spanish; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, in preparation). In this article, preliminary findings of the analysis of the Japanese data are…

Relationships of Attention and Executive Functions to Oral Language, Reading, and Writing Skills and Systems in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berninger, Virginia; Abbott, Robert; Cook, Clayton R.; Nagy, William

2017-01-01

Relationships between attention/executive functions and language learning were investigated in students in Grades 4 to 9 (N = 88) with and without specific learning disabilities (SLDs) in multiword syntax in oral and written language (OWL LD), word reading and spelling (dyslexia), and subword letter writing (dysgraphia). Prior…

Long-Term Outcome of Oral Language and Phonological Awareness Intervention with Socially Disadvantaged Preschoolers: The Impact on Language and Literacy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henning, Caroline; McIntosh, Beth; Arnott, Wendy; Dodd, Barbara

2010-01-01

Early intervention aims to prevent poor literacy outcomes associated with social disadvantage. This study examined whether the short-term positive effect of a preschool classroom-based oral language and phonological awareness (PA) programme was maintained and transferred to literacy 2 years later. The vocabulary knowledge, grammatical skill,…

Increasing Engagement and Oral Language Skills of ELLs through the Arts in the Primary Grades

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brouillette, Liane; Childress-Evans, Karen; Hinga, Briana; Farkas, George

2014-01-01

In this article, we look at the impact of an arts integration program offered at five large urban elementary schools on the daily attendance and oral language skills of children in kindergarten through second grade. Many of the children attending these schools spoke a language other than English at home. Teaching artists visited each class weekly…

The Impact of Phonetic Instruction on the Oral Proficiency of English Language Learners in a Cooperative Learning Setting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Hsuan-Yu

2009-01-01

Oral proficiency is an important goal in second language learning not only for communication, but also for developing reading and writing skills. Use of cooperative learning (CL) strategies has been shown to successfully improve second language learning in many cases for its focus on individual accountability and positive interdependence (Kagan &…

On the Road to Science Literacy: Building Confidence and Competency in Technical Language through Choral Repetition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hohenshell, Liesl M.; Woller, Michael J.; Sherlock, Wallace

2013-01-01

In order to be successful, students must acquire the language of science for both oral and written communication. In this article we examine an oral language learning technique called choral repetition for its role in building literacy in the context of an animal physiology course. For 3 weeks, the instructor conducted choral repetitions of nine…

Oral language skills intervention in pre-school-a cautionary tale.

PubMed

Haley, Allyson; Hulme, Charles; Bowyer-Crane, Claudine; Snowling, Margaret J; Fricke, Silke

2017-01-01

While practitioners are increasingly asked to be mindful of the evidence base of intervention programmes, evidence from rigorous trials for the effectiveness of interventions that promote oral language abilities in the early years is sparse. To evaluate the effectiveness of a language intervention programme for children identified as having poor oral language skills in preschool classes. A randomized controlled trial was carried out in 13 UK nursery schools. In each nursery, eight children (N = 104, mean age = 3 years 11 months) with the poorest performance on standardized language measures were selected to take part. All but one child were randomly allocated to either an intervention (N = 52) or a waiting control group (N = 51). The intervention group received a 15-week oral language programme in addition to their standard nursery curriculum. The programme was delivered by trained teaching assistants and aimed to foster vocabulary knowledge, narrative and listening skills. Initial results revealed significant differences between the intervention and control group on measures of taught vocabulary. No group differences were found on any standardized language measure; however, there were gains of moderate effect size in listening comprehension. The study suggests that an intervention, of moderate duration and intensity, for small groups of preschool children successfully builds vocabulary knowledge, but does not generalize to non-taught areas of language. The findings strike a note of caution about implementing language interventions of moderate duration in preschool settings. The findings also highlight the importance of including a control group in intervention studies. © 2016 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

The home literacy environment and Latino head start children's emergent literacy skills.

PubMed

Farver, Jo Ann M; Xu, Yiyuan; Lonigan, Christopher J; Eppe, Stefanie

2013-04-01

This study examined children's early literacy skills in both English and Spanish at entry to preschool to investigate the pattern of association among these skills and their families' home language and literacy practices. The participants were 392 primarily Latino immigrant (85%) families and their children. Mothers completed questionnaires about their families and their home literacy environment (HLE), and children's emergent literacy skills were measured in English and Spanish at the outset of the preschool year. Project assistants interviewed mothers in their homes and tallied the presence of literacy-related materials. Results of structural equation modeling showed that the 3 preliteracy skills were significantly associated within and across English and Spanish, suggesting the possible transfer of these early preliteracy skills across languages. For the English language HLE, parents' literacy-related behaviors, sibling-child reading, and families' literacy resources were all associated with children's English oral language skills, and their English print knowledge was associated with their home resources. For the Spanish language HLE, only parents' literacy-related behaviors were related to children's Spanish oral language and print knowledge skills. There were no significant cross-linguistic relations between any aspect of the English HLE and children's Spanish preliteracy skills, whereas parents' literacy-related behaviors in Spanish were negatively associated with children's English oral language and phonological awareness skills. Given the importance of oral language and vocabulary in promoting children's literacy, these results indicate that parents can support this skill in both languages, but their relative impact seems to be within rather across language. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).

Banque de strategies de production orale pour un enseignement explicite de la 1re a la 7e annee: Expose et interaction. Document d'appui pour les programmes d'etudes de francais langue premiere et de francais langue seconde--immersion de 1998 (Interactive Oral Presentation Strategies for Specific Instruction in Grades 1 through 7. Guide in Support of Programs Teaching French as a First Language and French as a Second Language--Immersion 1998).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alberta Learning, Edmonton. Direction de l'education francaise.

This teacher's guide, intended for the instruction of both French as a first language and French as a second language in an immersion setting, provides a host of strategies for teaching interactive oral presentation skills in the classroom (Grades 1 through 7). Section 1 is designed to bring the teacher's awareness to the training procedure,…

Banque de strategies de production orale pour un enseignement explicite de la 6e a la 12e annee: Expose et interaction. Document d'appui pour les programmes d'etudes de francais langue premiere et de francais langue seconde--immersion de 1998 (Interactive Oral Presentation Strategies for Specific Instruction in Grades 6 through 12. Guide in Support of Programs Teaching French as a First Language and French as a Second Language--Immersion 1998).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Northwest Territories Dept. of Education, Culture and Employment, Yellowknife.

This teacher's guide, intended for the instruction of both French as a first language and French as a second language in an immersion setting, provides a host of strategies for teaching interactive oral presentation skills in the classroom (Grades 6 through 12). Section 1 is designed to bring the teacher's awareness to the training procedure,…

Componential skills of beginning writing: An exploratory study

PubMed Central

Kim, Young-Suk; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Puranik, Cynthia; Folsom, Jessica Sidler; Greulich, Luana; Wagner, Richard K.

2011-01-01

The present study examined the components of end of kindergarten writing, using data from 242 kindergartners. Specifically of interest was the importance of spelling, letter writing fluency, reading, and word- and syntax-level oral language skills in writing. The results from structural equation modeling revealed that oral language, spelling, and letter writing fluency were positively and uniquely related to writing skill after accounting for reading skills. Reading skill was not uniquely related to writing once oral language, spelling, and letter writing fluency were taken into account. These findings are discussed from a developmental perspective. PMID:22267897

Students' and Teachers' Assessments of the Need for Accuracy in the Oral Production of German as a Foreign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chavez, Monika

2007-01-01

Previous research indicates that foreign language learners are much more focused on accuracy, particularly grammatical accuracy, than their teachers are. The purpose of the current study was to gain a more detailed understanding of American learners' views of the need for accuracy in the oral production of a foreign language (German) by (a)…

Language Revitalization.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hinton, Leanne

2003-01-01

Surveys developments in language revitalization and language death. Focusing on indigenous languages, discusses the role and nature of appropriate linguistic documentation, possibilities for bilingual education, and methods of promoting oral fluency and intergenerational transmission in affected languages. (Author/VWL)

English and Spanish oral cancer information on the internet: a pilot surface quality and content evaluation of oral cancer web sites.

PubMed

Irwin, Jeannie Y; Thyvalikakath, Thankam; Spallek, Heiko; Wali, Teena; Kerr, Alexander Ross; Schleyer, Titus

2011-01-01

Oral and pharyngeal cancers are responsible for over 7600 deaths each year in the United States. Given the significance of the disease and the fact that many individuals increasingly rely on health information on the Internet, it is important that patients and others can access clear and accurate oral cancer information on the Web. The objective of this study was threefold: (a) develop an initial method to evaluate surface and content quality of selected English- and Spanish-language oral cancer Web sites; (b) conduct a pilot evaluation; and (c) discuss implications of our findings for dental public health. We developed a search strategy to find oral cancer sites frequented by the public using Medline Plus, Google, and Yahoo in English and Spanish. We adapted the Information Quality Tool (IQT) to perform a surface evaluation and developed a novel tool to evaluate site content for 24 sites each in English and Spanish. English-language sites had an average IQT score of 76.6 (out of 100) and an average content score of 52.1 (out of 100). Spanish-language sites had an average IQT score of 50.3 and an average content score of 25.6. The study produced a quality assessment of oral cancer Web sites useful for clinicians and patients. Sites provided more information on clinical presentation, and etiology, and risk factors, than other aspects of oral cancer. The surface and quality of Spanish-language sites was low, possibly putting Hispanic populations at a disadvantage regarding oral cancer information on the Web.

28 CFR 55.20 - Oral assistance and publicity.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2011-07-01 2011-07-01 false Oral assistance and publicity. 55.20 Section 55.20 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

28 CFR 55.20 - Oral assistance and publicity.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Oral assistance and publicity. 55.20 Section 55.20 Judicial Administration DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE (CONTINUED) IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT REGARDING LANGUAGE MINORITY GROUPS Minority Language Materials and...

The Foundations of Literacy Development in Children at Familial Risk of Dyslexia.

PubMed

Hulme, Charles; Nash, Hannah M; Gooch, Debbie; Lervåg, Arne; Snowling, Margaret J

2015-12-01

The development of reading skills is underpinned by oral language abilities: Phonological skills appear to have a causal influence on the development of early word-level literacy skills, and reading-comprehension ability depends, in addition to word-level literacy skills, on broader (semantic and syntactic) language skills. Here, we report a longitudinal study of children at familial risk of dyslexia, children with preschool language difficulties, and typically developing control children. Preschool measures of oral language predicted phoneme awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge just before school entry, which in turn predicted word-level literacy skills shortly after school entry. Reading comprehension at 8½ years was predicted by word-level literacy skills at 5½ years and by language skills at 3½ years. These patterns of predictive relationships were similar in both typically developing children and those at risk of literacy difficulties. Our findings underline the importance of oral language skills for the development of both word-level literacy and reading comprehension. © The Author(s) 2015.

Analysis of oral narratives of children who stutter and their fluent peers: kindergarten through second grade.

PubMed

Bajaj, Amit

2007-03-01

Measures of language sample length (in c-units) and morphological, syntactic, and narrative abilities were obtained from oral narrative transcripts of 22 children who stutter and 22 children who do not stutter; participants attended kindergarten, first, and second grades. A two-way MANOVA yielded significant main effects for grade, with significant differences on some measures evidenced between participants in kindergarten and second grades. No significant differences between groups or group-grade interaction effects on the measures were obtained. Grade-wise comparisons (through t-tests) indicated that the performance of children who stutter did not differ significantly from their typically fluent peers on all dependent measures; however, kindergarten children who stutter obtained the most discrepant (lower) scores than their grade-matched fluent peers on the Narrative Scoring Scheme measure, with group differences approaching statistical significance on this measure. The findings suggest that children who do and do not stutter evidence similar expressive language abilities, even as subgroups of children who stutter may lag behind their grade-matched fluent peers in particular language domains.

Perceptual context and individual differences in the language proficiency of preschool children.

PubMed

Banai, Karen; Yifat, Rachel

2016-02-01

Although the contribution of perceptual processes to language skills during infancy is well recognized, the role of perception in linguistic processing beyond infancy is not well understood. In the experiments reported here, we asked whether manipulating the perceptual context in which stimuli are presented across trials influences how preschool children perform visual (shape-size identification; Experiment 1) and auditory (syllable identification; Experiment 2) tasks. Another goal was to determine whether the sensitivity to perceptual context can explain part of the variance in oral language skills in typically developing preschool children. Perceptual context was manipulated by changing the relative frequency with which target visual (Experiment 1) and auditory (Experiment 2) stimuli were presented in arrays of fixed size, and identification of the target stimuli was tested. Oral language skills were assessed using vocabulary, word definition, and phonological awareness tasks. Changes in perceptual context influenced the performance of the majority of children on both identification tasks. Sensitivity to perceptual context accounted for 7% to 15% of the variance in language scores. We suggest that context effects are an outcome of a statistical learning process. Therefore, the current findings demonstrate that statistical learning can facilitate both visual and auditory identification processes in preschool children. Furthermore, consistent with previous findings in infants and in older children and adults, individual differences in statistical learning were found to be associated with individual differences in language skills of preschool children. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Linguistic adaptation and psychometric evaluation of original Oral Health Literacy-Adult Questionnaire (OHL-AQ).

PubMed

Vyas, Shaleen; Nagarajappa, Sandesh; Dasar, Pralhad L; Mishra, Prashant

2016-10-01

Linguistically adapted oral health literacy tools are helpful to assess oral health literacy among local population with clarity and understandability. The original oral health literacy adult questionnaire, Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire, was given in English (2013), consisting of 17 items under 4 domains. The present study rationalizes to culturally adapt and validate Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire into Hindi language. Thus, we objectified to translate Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire into Hindi and test its psychometric properties like reliability and validity among primary school teachers. The Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire was translated into Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version using the World Health Organization recommended translation back-translation protocol. During pre-testing, an expert panel assessed content validity of the questionnaire. Face validity was assessed on a small sample of 10 individuals. A cross-sectional study was conducted (June-July 2015) and OHL-AQ-H was administered on a convenient sample of 170 primary school teachers. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed using Cronbach's alpha and Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively, with 2 weeks interval to ascertain adherence to the questionnaire response. Predictive validity was tested by comparing OHL-AQ-H scores with clinical indicators like oral hygiene scores and dental caries scores. The concurrent and discriminant validity was assessed through self-reported oral health and through negative association with sociodemographic variables. The data was analyzed by descriptive tests using chi-square and bivariate logistic regression in SPSS software, version 20 and p<0.05 was considered as the significance level. The mean OHL-AQ-H score was 13.58±2.82. ICC and Cronbach's alpha for Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version were 0.94 and 0.70, respectively. Comparisons of varying levels of oral health literacy with self-reported oral health established significant concurrent validity (p=0.01). Significant predictive validity was observed between OHL-AQ-H scores and clinical parameters like oral hygiene status (p=0.005) and dentition status (p=0.001). The translated and culturally adapted Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version indicated good reliability and validity among primary school teachers to assess oral health literacy among Hindi speaking population. Hence, improving OHL levels and implementing education oriented policies can improve the quality of life.

PubMed

Cruz, Carina Rebello; Finger, Ingrid

2013-07-01

This study investigates the phonological acquisition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) by a group of 24 bimodal bilingual hearing children, who have unrestricted access to Brazilian Sign Language (Libras), and a group of 6 deaf children, who use cochlear implants (CI), with restricted or unrestricted access to Libras. The children's phonological system of BP was assessed through the Naming Task (Part A) of the ABFW - Children Language Test (ANDRADE et al. 2004). The results revealed that the hearing children and the deaf child who use CI, all with full access to Libras, showed expected (normal) phonological acquisition considering their age groups. We consider that the early acquisition and unrestricted access to Libras may have determined these children's performance in the oral tests.

Deconstructing Comprehensibility: Identifying the Linguistic Influences on Listeners' L2 Comprehensibility Ratings

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Isaacs, Talia; Trofimovich, Pavel

2012-01-01

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners' perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors' communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales--for example, the Test of English…

Online Lexical Competition during Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henderson, Lisa; Weighall, Anna; Brown, Helen; Gaskell, Gareth

2013-01-01

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7-8 years and tested variables that influence "online" lexical activity in adults. Children…

African American English-Speaking Students: An Examination of the Relationship between Dialect Shifting and Reading Outcomes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Craig, Holly K.; Zhang, Lingling; Hensel, Stephanie L.; Quinn, Erin J.

2009-01-01

Purpose: In this study, the authors evaluated the contribution made by dialect shifting to reading achievement test scores of African American English (AAE)-speaking students when controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), general oral language abilities, and writing skills. Method: Participants were 165 typically developing…

Groundwork: An Intermediate-Level Text of ESL for Petroleum Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kellersberger, Gail; Rippert-Davila, Susan

The negotiation, development, testing, and publishing of a specialized text for instructing Chinese geologists and petroleum engineers in English as a second language are chronicled. Aspects of the process discussed include the initial contact and oral agreement with the corporate representative who had requested the training materials, scheduling…

Establishing the Validity of the Task-Based English Speaking Test (TBEST) for International Teaching Assistants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Witt, Autumn Song

2010-01-01

This dissertation follows an oral language assessment tool from initial design and implementation to validity analysis. The specialized variables of this study are the population: international teaching assistants and the purpose: spoken assessment as a hiring prerequisite. However, the process can easily be applied to other populations and…

Readers in Adult Basic Education.

PubMed

Barnes, Adrienne E; Kim, Young-Suk; Tighe, Elizabeth L; Vorstius, Christian

The present study explored the reading skills of a sample of 48 adults enrolled in a basic education program in northern Florida, United States. Previous research has reported on reading component skills for students in adult education settings, but little is known about eye movement patterns or their relation to reading skills for this population. In this study, reading component skills including decoding, language comprehension, and reading fluency are reported, as are eye movement variables for connected-text oral reading. Eye movement comparisons between individuals with higher and lower oral reading fluency revealed within- and between-subject effects for word frequency and word length as well as group and word frequency interactions. Bivariate correlations indicated strong relations between component skills of reading, eye movement measures, and both the Test of Adult Basic Education ( Reading subtest) and the Woodcock-Johnson III Diagnostic Reading Battery Passage Comprehension assessments. Regression analyses revealed the utility of decoding, language comprehension, and lexical activation time for predicting achievement on both the Woodcock Johnson III Passage Comprehension and the Test of Adult Basic Education Reading Comprehension.

Une Progression dans la Strategie Pedagogique pour assurer la Construction de Langage Oral L'ecole Maternelle [A Progression in Teaching Strategies to Ensure Oral Language Building in Nursery School].

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Durand, C.

1997-01-01

Summarizes progressions between 2 and 6 years of age in children's power of concentration, ability to express ideas, build logical relationships, structure spoken words, and play with the semantic, phonetic, syntactical, and morphological aspects of oral language. Notes that the progression depends on the educator's interaction with the child.…

Dental Health - Multiple Languages

MedlinePlus

... Section Concerns and Discomforts of Pregnancy: Oral Health - English PDF Concerns and Discomforts of Pregnancy: Oral Health - ... Alliance Tips for Good Oral Health During Pregnancy - English PDF Tips for Good Oral Health During Pregnancy - ...

IDEA: Stimulating Oral Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Easley, Jacob J.

1995-01-01

Presents daily activities that facilitate complete sentence response, promote oral production, and aid the learning of vocabulary in foreign-language classes. Because speech is the primary form of communication in the foreign-language classroom, it is important to stimulate students to converse as soon as possible. (Author/CK)

The Comprehension Problems of Children with Poor Reading Comprehension despite Adequate Decoding: A Meta-Analysis.

PubMed

Spencer, Mercedes; Wagner, Richard K

2018-06-01

The purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine the comprehension problems of children who have a specific reading comprehension deficit (SCD), which is characterized by poor reading comprehension despite adequate decoding. The meta-analysis included 86 studies of children with SCD who were assessed in reading comprehension and oral language (vocabulary, listening comprehension, storytelling ability, and semantic and syntactic knowledge). Results indicated that children with SCD had deficits in oral language ( d = -0.78, 95% CI [-0.89, -0.68], but these deficits were not as severe as their deficit in reading comprehension ( d = -2.78, 95% CI [-3.01, -2.54]). When compared to reading comprehension age-matched normal readers, the oral language skills of the two groups were comparable ( d = 0.32, 95% CI [-0.49, 1.14]), which suggests that the oral language weaknesses of children with SCD represent a developmental delay rather than developmental deviance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

The Effect of Language Specific Factors on Early Written Composition: The Role of Spelling, Oral Language and Text Generation Skills in a Shallow Orthography

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arfé, Barbara; Dockrell, Julie E.; De Bernardi, Bianca

2016-01-01

Spelling skills have been identified as one of the major barriers to written text production in young English writers. By contrast oral language skills and text generation have been found to be less influential in the texts produced by beginning writers. To date, our understanding of the role of spelling skills in transparent orthographies is…

What Does It Mean to Learn Oral and Written English Language: A Case Study of a Rural Kenyan Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lisanza, Esther Mukewa

2011-01-01

This study was an ethnographic case study that investigated oral and written language learning in a first grade classroom in Kenya. The languages used in this classroom were Swahili and English only. Kamba the mother tongue of the majority of the children, was banned in the entire school. In this classroom there were 89 children with two teachers,…

Exploring Relationships between Oral Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension amongst English Second Language Readers in South Africa

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pretorius, Elizabeth J.; Spaull, Nic

2016-01-01

Most analyses of oral reading fluency (ORF) are based on L1 reading, and the norms that have been developed in English are based on first language reading data. This is problematic for developing countries where many children are learning in English as a second language. The aim of the present study is to model the relationship between English…

"But Before I Go to My Next Step": A Longitudinal Study of Adolescent English Language Learners' Transitional Devices in Oral Presentations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kibler, Amanda K.; Salerno, April S.; Palacios, Natalia

2014-01-01

This multiple case study examines patterns in the oral second language use of three Spanish-speaking English language learners in rehearsed presentations produced annually over 4 years (Grades 9-12) in a U.S. high school. Analysis focuses on students' changing use of transitional devices called frame markers (Hyland, 2005) as a lens for…

Reading skills in young adolescents with a history of Specific Language Impairment: The role of early semantic capacity.

PubMed

Buil-Legaz, Lucía; Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva; Rodríguez-Ferreiro, Javier

2015-01-01

This study assessed the reading skills of 19 Spanish-Catalan children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and 16 age-matched control children. Children with SLI have difficulties with oral language comprehension, which may affect later reading acquisition. We conducted a longitudinal study examining reading acquisition in these children between 8 and 12 years old and we relate this data with early oral language acquisition at 6 years old. Compared to the control group, the SLI group presented impaired decoding and comprehension skills at age 8, as evidenced by poor scores in all the assessed tasks. Nevertheless, only text comprehension abilities appeared to be impaired at age 12. Individual analyses confirmed the presence of comprehension deficits in most of the SLI children. Furthermore, early semantic verbal fluency at age 6 appeared to significantly predict the reading comprehension capacity of SLI participants at age 12. Our results emphasize the importance of semantic capacity at early stages of oral language development over the consolidation of reading acquisition at later stages. Readers will recognize the relevance of prior oral language impairment, especially semantic capacity, in children with a history of SLI as a risk factor for the development of later reading difficulties. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Pleiotropic Effects of DCDC2 and DYX1C1 Genes on Language and Mathematics Traits in Nuclear Families of Developmental Dyslexia

PubMed Central

Mascheretti, Sara; Riva, Valentina; Cattaneo, Francesca; Rigoletto, Catia; Rusconi, Marianna; Gruen, Jeffrey R.; Giorda, Roberto; Lazazzera, Claudio; Molteni, Massimo

2014-01-01

Converging evidence indicates that developmental problems in oral language and mathematics can predate or co-occur with developmental dyslexia (DD). Substantial genetic correlations have been found between language, mathematics and reading traits, independent of the method of sampling. We tested for association of variants of two DD susceptibility genes, DCDC2 and DYX1C1, in nuclear families ascertained through a proband with DD using concurrent measurements of language and mathematics in both probands and siblings by the Quantitative Transmission Disequilibrium Test. Evidence for significant associations was found between DCDC2 and ‘Numerical Facts’ (p value = 0.02, with 85 informative families, genetic effect = 0.57) and between ‘Mental Calculation’ and DYX1C1 markers −3GA (p value = 0.05, with 40 informative families, genetic effect = −0.67) and 1249GT (p value = 0.02, with 49 informative families, genetic effect = −0.65). No statistically significant associations were found between DCDC2 or DYX1C1 and language phenotypes. Both DCDC2 and DYX1C1 DD susceptibility genes appear to have a pleiotropic role on mathematics but not language phenotypes. PMID:21046216

Pleiotropic effects of DCDC2 and DYX1C1 genes on language and mathematics traits in nuclear families of developmental dyslexia.

PubMed

Marino, Cecilia; Mascheretti, Sara; Riva, Valentina; Cattaneo, Francesca; Rigoletto, Catia; Rusconi, Marianna; Gruen, Jeffrey R; Giorda, Roberto; Lazazzera, Claudio; Molteni, Massimo

2011-01-01

Converging evidence indicates that developmental problems in oral language and mathematics can predate or co-occur with developmental dyslexia (DD). Substantial genetic correlations have been found between language, mathematics and reading traits, independent of the method of sampling. We tested for association of variants of two DD susceptibility genes, DCDC2 and DYX1C1, in nuclear families ascertained through a proband with DD using concurrent measurements of language and mathematics in both probands and siblings by the Quantitative Transmission Disequilibrium Test. Evidence for significant associations was found between DCDC2 and 'Numerical Facts' (p value = 0.02, with 85 informative families, genetic effect = 0.57) and between 'Mental Calculation' and DYX1C1 markers -3GA (p value = 0.05, with 40 informative families, genetic effect = -0.67) and 1249GT (p value = 0.02, with 49 informative families, genetic effect = -0.65). No statistically significant associations were found between DCDC2 or DYX1C1 and language phenotypes. Both DCDC2 and DYX1C1 DD susceptibility genes appear to have a pleiotropic role on mathematics but not language phenotypes.

The Relationship of Maternal Prepregnancy Body Mass Index and Pregnancy Weight Gain to Neurocognitive Function at Age 10 Years among Children Born Extremely Preterm.

PubMed

Jensen, Elizabeth T; van der Burg, Jelske W; O'Shea, Thomas M; Joseph, Robert M; Allred, Elizabeth N; Heeren, Tim; Leviton, Alan; Kuban, Karl C K

2017-08-01

To assess the association between maternal prepregnancy body mass index and adequacy of pregnancy weight gain in relation to neurocognitive function in school-aged children born extremely preterm. Study participants were 535 ten-year-old children enrolled previously in the prospective multicenter Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborns cohort study who were products of singleton pregnancies. Soon after delivery, mothers provided information about prepregnancy weight. Prepregnancy body mass index and adequacy of weight gain were characterized based on this information. Children underwent a neurocognitive evaluation at 10 years of age. Maternal prepregnancy obesity was associated with increased odds of a lower score for Differential Ability Scales-II Verbal IQ, for Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment-II measures of processing speed and visual fine motor control, and for Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-III Spelling. Children born to mothers who gained an excessive amount of weight were at increased odds of a low score on the Oral and Written Language Scales Oral Expression assessment. Conversely, children whose mother did not gain an adequate amount of weight were at increased odds of a lower score on the Oral and Written Language Scales Oral Expression and Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-III Word Reading assessments. In this cohort of infants born extremely preterm, maternal obesity was associated with poorer performance on some assessments of neurocognitive function. Our findings are consistent with the observational and experimental literature and suggest that opportunities may exist to mitigate risk through education and behavioral intervention before pregnancy. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Orality, Literacy, and Star Wars.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Havelock, Eric A.

1986-01-01

Argues that the educational system should encourage "down to earth" language by including oral recitation in the curricula, particularly recitation of popular poetry with accompaniment. Using the shuttle disaster as a striking example, claims that the modern media overuses conceptual language to disguise the hard meaning of what is being…

Research in Oral Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petty, Walter T., Ed.

This collection of six articles on oral language is a product of the cooperative efforts of the National Conference on Research in English, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the International Reading Association, the Association for Childhood Education International, and the National Council of Teachers of English. It is…

The Potential of Past Tense Marking in Oral Reading as a Clinical Marker of Specific Language Impairment in School-Age Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Werfel, Krystal L.; Hendricks, Alison Eisel; Schuele, C. Melanie

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study was twofold. The first aim was to explore differences in profiles of past tense marking in oral reading of school-age children with specific language impairment (SLI). The second aim was to explore the potential of past tense marking in oral reading as a clinical marker of SLI in school-age children. Method: This…

The Prevalence of Speech and Language Disorders in French-Speaking Preschool Children From Yaoundé (Cameroon).

PubMed

Tchoungui Oyono, Lilly; Pascoe, Michelle; Singh, Shajila

2018-05-17

The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of speech and language disorders in French-speaking preschool-age children in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon. A total of 460 participants aged 3-5 years were recruited from the 7 communes of Yaoundé using a 2-stage cluster sampling method. Speech and language assessment was undertaken using a standardized speech and language test, the Evaluation du Langage Oral (Khomsi, 2001), which was purposefully renormed on the sample. A predetermined cutoff of 2 SDs below the normative mean was applied to identify articulation, expressive language, and receptive language disorders. Fluency and voice disorders were identified using clinical judgment by a speech-language pathologist. Overall prevalence was calculated as follows: speech disorders, 14.7%; language disorders, 4.3%; and speech and language disorders, 17.1%. In terms of disorders, prevalence findings were as follows: articulation disorders, 3.6%; expressive language disorders, 1.3%; receptive language disorders, 3%; fluency disorders, 8.4%; and voice disorders, 3.6%. Prevalence figures are higher than those reported for other countries and emphasize the urgent need to develop speech and language services for the Cameroonian population.

Longitudinal Prediction of 1st and 2nd Grade English Oral Reading Fluency in English Language Learners: Which Early Reading and Language Skills Are Better Predictors?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Solari, Emily J.; Aceves, Terese C.; Higareda, Ignacio; Richards-Tutor, Cara; Filippini, Alexis L.; Gerber, Michael M.; Leafstedt, Jill

2014-01-01

This study investigates the relation between Spanish and English early literacy skills in kindergarten and first grade, and English oral reading fluency at the end of first and second grade in a sample of 150 Spanish-speaking English language learners. Students were assessed in kindergarten, first, and second grades on a broad bilingual academic…

The Effectiveness of Using Linguistic Classroom Activities in Teaching English Language in Developing the Skills of Oral Linguistic Performance and Decision Making Skill among Third Grade Intermediate Students in Makah

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alshareef, Fahd Majed

2016-01-01

The study aimed to reveal the effectiveness of the use of certain classroom language activities in teaching English language in the development of oral linguistic performance and decision-making among intermediate third-grade students in Makah, and it revealed a statistically significant correlation relationship between the averages of the study…

Foreign-Language Pedagogy: Practical Applications to Theoretical Concerns. Selected Papers from the Loyola College Conference Entitled "Bridging Theory and Practice in the Foreign-Language Classroom" (Baltimore, Maryland, October 18-20, 1991).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wieczorek, Joseph A., Ed.

1993-01-01

Papers from the conference include the following: "Activites orales et motivation dans l'etude du vocabulaire d'une langue etrangere (Oral Activities and Motivation in the Study of Vocabulary in a Foreign Language)" (M. Guisset); "Bridging High School and College Classes through the Multicultural Approach: The Case of Francophone…

Who Says What's Correct and How Do You Say It? Multimodal Management of Oral Peer-Assessment in a Grammar Boardgame in a Foreign Language Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Konzett, Carmen

2015-01-01

This paper describes how a small group of students in a foreign language classroom manage the interactional task of orally assessing the correctness of verb forms while playing a board game aimed at revising verb conjugation. In their interaction, the students orient to the institutional context of this activity as a language learning exercise by…

Talking Classrooms: Shaping Children's Learning through Oral Language Instruction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Patricia G., Ed.

This book offers a variety of viewpoints relevant to teachers and researchers who are interested in the practical application of the theory and philosophy behind oral language instruction. Through an assortment of international essays, the authors demonstrate the changing nature of children's talk in the writing circle, reading conference, English…

Examining English Language Teachers' TPACK in Oral Communication Skills Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Debbagh, Mohammed; Jones, W. Monty

2018-01-01

This case study utilized the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) theoretical framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) as a lens to examine the instructional strategies of four English as a second language (ESL) teachers and their rationales for incorporating technology into their instructional practices in teaching oral communication…

Living Language: Self-Assessment, Oral Production, and Domestic Immersion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dolosic, Haley N.; Brantmeier, Cindy; Strube, Michael; Hogrebe, Mark C.

2016-01-01

With 24 adolescent students enrolled in a French language summer camp, the present study examines the relationship between self-assessment and oral production in French, interpreting results through a framework of individual learning variables. Participants were surrounded by French inside and outside the classroom. Self-assessment was measured…

Conversation Analysis--A Discourse Approach to Teaching Oral English Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wu, Yan

2013-01-01

This paper explores a pedagocial approach to teaching oral English---Conversation Analysis. First, features of spoken language is described in comparison to written language. Second, Conversation Analysis theory is elaborated in terms of adjacency pairs, turn-taking, repairs, sequences, openings and closings, and feedback. Third, under the…

Developing Autonomous Learning for Oral Proficiency Using Digital Storytelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, SoHee

2014-01-01

Since online educational technology can support a ubiquitous language learning environment, there are many ways to develop English learners' autonomy through self-access learning. This study investigates whether English as a second language (ESL) learners can improve their oral proficiency through independent study by using online self-study…

The Assessment of Spoken Language under Varying Interactional Conditions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berry, Vivien

Two studies of individuals' oral second language performance in interaction with extraverts and introverts are reported here. The first, described briefly, investigated the effects of homogeneous (extravert/extravert or introvert/introvert) vs. heterogeneous pairings on oral performance in interviews. Subjects were 36 women students in a Japanese…

A Comparison of African American Students' Self-Perceptions of School Competence with Their Performance on State-Mandated Achievement Tests and Normed Tests of Oral and Written Language and Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gordon Pershey, Monica

2011-01-01

This study measured self-perceptions of school competence among 263 4th- and 6th-grade African American students who attended an academically challenged school district. Self-perceptions of school competence are defined as self-perceptions of ability, confidence, and school satisfaction. Results indicated that 4th-grade students had lesser…

Effects of early auditory experience on the spoken language of deaf children at 3 years of age.

PubMed

Nicholas, Johanna Grant; Geers, Ann E

2006-06-01

By age 3, typically developing children have achieved extensive vocabulary and syntax skills that facilitate both cognitive and social development. Substantial delays in spoken language acquisition have been documented for children with severe to profound deafness, even those with auditory oral training and early hearing aid use. This study documents the spoken language skills achieved by orally educated 3-yr-olds whose profound hearing loss was identified and hearing aids fitted between 1 and 30 mo of age and who received a cochlear implant between 12 and 38 mo of age. The purpose of the analysis was to examine the effects of age, duration, and type of early auditory experience on spoken language competence at age 3.5 yr. The spoken language skills of 76 children who had used a cochlear implant for at least 7 mo were evaluated via standardized 30-minute language sample analysis, a parent-completed vocabulary checklist, and a teacher language-rating scale. The children were recruited from and enrolled in oral education programs or therapy practices across the United States. Inclusion criteria included presumed deaf since birth, English the primary language of the home, no other known conditions that interfere with speech/language development, enrolled in programs using oral education methods, and no known problems with the cochlear implant lasting more than 30 days. Strong correlations were obtained among all language measures. Therefore, principal components analysis was used to derive a single Language Factor score for each child. A number of possible predictors of language outcome were examined, including age at identification and intervention with a hearing aid, duration of use of a hearing aid, pre-implant pure-tone average (PTA) threshold with a hearing aid, PTA threshold with a cochlear implant, and duration of use of a cochlear implant/age at implantation (the last two variables were practically identical because all children were tested between 40 and 44 mo of age). Examination of the independent influence of these predictors through multiple regression analysis revealed that pre-implant-aided PTA threshold and duration of cochlear implant use (i.e., age at implant) accounted for 58% of the variance in Language Factor scores. A significant negative coefficient associated with pre-implant-aided threshold indicated that children with poorer hearing before implantation exhibited poorer language skills at age 3.5 yr. Likewise, a strong positive coefficient associated with duration of implant use indicated that children who had used their implant for a longer period of time (i.e., who were implanted at an earlier age) exhibited better language at age 3.5 yr. Age at identification and amplification was unrelated to language outcome, as was aided threshold with the cochlear implant. A significant quadratic trend in the relation between duration of implant use and language score revealed a steady increase in language skill (at age 3.5 yr) for each additional month of use of a cochlear implant after the first 12 mo of implant use. The advantage to language of longer implant use became more pronounced over time. Longer use of a cochlear implant in infancy and very early childhood dramatically affects the amount of spoken language exhibited by 3-yr-old, profoundly deaf children. In this sample, the amount of pre-implant intervention with a hearing aid was not related to language outcome at 3.5 yr of age. Rather, it was cochlear implantation at a younger age that served to promote spoken language competence. The previously identified language-facilitating factors of early identification of hearing impairment and early educational intervention may not be sufficient for optimizing spoken language of profoundly deaf children unless it leads to early cochlear implantation.

The Language Growth of Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rojas, Raul; Iglesias, Aquiles

2013-01-01

Although the research literature regarding language growth trajectories is burgeoning, the shape and direction of English Language Learners' (ELLs) language growth trajectories are largely not known. This study used growth curve modeling to determine the shape of ELLs' language growth trajectories across 12,248 oral narrative language samples…

Predicting the language proficiency of Chinese student pilots within American airspace: Single-task versus dual-task English-language assessment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Noble, Clifford Elliott, II

2002-09-01

The problem. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of three single-task instruments---(a) the Test of English as a Foreign Language, (b) the Aviation Test of Spoken English, and (c) the Single Manual-Tracking Test---and three dual-task instruments---(a) the Concurrent Manual-Tracking and Communication Test, (b) the Certified Flight Instructor's Test, and (c) the Simulation-Based English Test---to predict the language performance of 10 Chinese student pilots speaking English as a second language when operating single-engine and multiengine aircraft within American airspace. Method. This research implemented a correlational design to investigate the ability of the six described instruments to predict the mean score of the criterion evaluation, which was the Examiner's Test. This test assessed the oral communication skill of student pilots on the flight portion of the terminal checkride in the Piper Cadet, Piper Seminole, and Beechcraft King Air airplanes. Results. Data from the Single Manual-Tracking Test, as well as the Concurrent Manual-Tracking and Communication Test, were discarded due to performance ceiling effects. Hypothesis 1, which stated that the average correlation between the mean scores of the dual-task evaluations and that of the Examiner's Test would predict the mean score of the criterion evaluation with a greater degree of accuracy than that of single-task evaluations, was not supported. Hypothesis 2, which stated that the correlation between the mean scores of the participants on the Simulation-Based English Test and the Examiner's Test would predict the mean score of the criterion evaluation with a greater degree of accuracy than that of all single- and dual-task evaluations, was also not supported. The findings suggest that single- and dual-task assessments administered after initial flight training are equivalent predictors of language performance when piloting single-engine and multiengine aircraft.

Influence of schooling on language abilities of adults without linguistic disorders.

PubMed

Soares, Ellen Cristina Siqueira; Ortiz, Karin Zazo

2009-01-01

In order to properly assess language, sociodemographic variables that can influence the linguistic performance of individuals with or without linguistic disorders need to be taken into account. The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of schooling and age on the results from the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) language assessment test among individuals without linguistic disorders. Cross-sectional study carried out between March 2006 and August 2007 in the Speech, Language and Hearing Pathology Department of Universidade Federal de São Paulo (Unifesp), São Paulo, Brazil. Eighty volunteers were selected. Schooling was stratified into three bands: A (1-4 years), B (5-8 years) and C (nine years and over). The age range was from 17 to 80 years. All the subjects underwent the Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) language assessment protocol. Statistically significant differences were found in relation to schooling levels, in the tasks of oral comprehension, reading, graphical comprehension, naming, lexical availability, dictation, graphical naming of actions and number reading. Statistically significant age-related differences in dictation and lexical availability tasks were observed. The Montreal Toulouse (Modified MT Beta-86) test seems to be sensitive to variations in schooling and age. These variables should be taken into account when this test is used for assessing patients with brain damage.

Gender differences in cognitive development.

PubMed

Ardila, Alfredo; Rosselli, Monica; Matute, Esmeralda; Inozemtseva, Olga

2011-07-01

The potential effect of gender on intellectual abilities remains controversial. The purpose of this research was to analyze gender differences in cognitive test performance among children from continuous age groups. For this purpose, the normative data from 7 domains of the newly developed neuropsychological test battery, the Evaluación Neuropsicológica Infantil [Child Neuropsychological Assessment] (Matute, Rosselli, Ardila, & Ostrosky-Solis, 2007), were analyzed. The sample included 788 monolingual children (350 boys, 438 girls) ages 5 to 16 years from Mexico and Colombia. Gender differences were observed in oral language (language expression and language comprehension), spatial abilities (recognition of pictures seen from different angles), and visual (Object Integration Test) and tactile perceptual tasks, with boys outperforming girls in most cases, except for the tactile tasks. Gender accounted for only a very small percentage of the variance (1%-3%). Gender x Age interactions were observed for the tactile tasks only. It was concluded that gender differences during cognitive development are minimal, appear in only a small number of tests, and account for only a low percentage of the score variance. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved

[Orality and writing: argumentation in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder].

PubMed

Gallardo-Paúls, Beatriz; Moreno-Campos, Verónica

2014-02-24

This work takes a deeper look at the differences in the linguistic competence of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in terms of both orality and writing. The purpose of this study is to check whether, in oral tasks, these children present the same problems related to inhibition and self-regulation as those pointed out in research working with written data. Likewise it seeks to describe those problems (lack of appropriateness, inappropriate production) as they appear in our oral data. A written and an oral argumentation produced by 25 participants between 9 and 11 years of age were analysed. In the written task, the children wrote their argumentations, and in the oral task their argumentative interaction with a collaborator was videotaped and later the types of arguments used in each case (logical, fallacies, sanctioning or moralist) were analysed. There is an obvious difference between the results in the two tests, which suggests the need to review the verbal evaluation mechanisms and to complete the written results with oral skill tests. The problems normally associated with written tasks do not appear in oral language; participants are able to follow the discursive thread and to provide new arguments related with the topic. The data obtained highlight the added difficulty of a written task for children with ADHD, the reliability of the oral results with regard to linguistic skills, and the need to use both types of data in evaluations.

The Reliability and Validity of Tasks Measuring Perception of Rapid Sequences in Children with Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heath, Steve M.; Hogben, John H.

2004-01-01

Background: Claims that children with reading and oral language deficits have impaired perception of sequential sounds are usually based on psychophysical measures of auditory temporal processing (ATP) designed to characterise group performance. If we are to use these measures (e.g., the Tallal, 1980, Repetition Test) as the basis for intervention…

Theorization and an Empirical Investigation of the Component-Based and Developmental Text Writing Fluency Construct

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Young-Suk Grace; Gatlin, Brandy; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Wanzek, Jeanne

2018-01-01

We discuss a component-based, developmental view of text writing fluency, which we tested using data from children in Grades 2 and 3. "Text writing fluency" was defined as efficiency and automaticity in writing connected texts, which acts as a mediator between text generation (oral language), transcription skills, and writing quality. We…

Stuttering and Lexical Category in Adult Arabic Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abdalla, Fauzia; Robb, Michael P.; Al-Shatti, Tareq

2010-01-01

The purpose of this study was to test whether the content and function word dichotomy of speech disfluency found in English-speaking adults who stutter (AWS) was evident in a language other than English. A group of adult Arabic-speaking AWS were sampled across spontaneous speaking, oral reading, and single-word naming tasks. Moments of disfluency…

Family Pedigrees of Children with Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewis, Barbara A.; Freebairn, Lisa A.; Hansen, Amy; Taylor, H. Gerry; Iyengar, Sudha; Shriberg, Lawrence D.

2004-01-01

Forty-two children (29 boys and 13 girls), ages 3-10 years, were referred from the caseloads of clinical speech-language pathologists for suspected childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). According to results from tests of speech and oral motor skills, 22 children met criteria for CAS, including a severely limited consonant and vowel repertoire,…

The Impact of Vocabulary Preparation on L2 Listening Comprehension, Confidence and Strategy Use

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Anna Ching-Shyang

2007-01-01

Building on previous studies of the effects of planning on second language learners' (L2) oral narratives and writing, this research reports an investigation of the effects of vocabulary preparation prior to a listening comprehension test on L2 learners' vocabulary performance, listening comprehension, confidence levels and strategy use. The…

Native Speakers' Perceptions of Fluency and Accent in L2 Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pinget, Anne-France; Bosker, Hans Rutger; Quené, Hugo; de Jong, Nivja H.

2014-01-01

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal,…

Predictive Validity of the "Get Ready to Read!" Screener: Concurrent and Long-Term Relations with Reading-Related Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillips, Beth M.; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Wyatt, Marcy A.

2009-01-01

This study examined concurrent and longitudinal relations for the "Get Ready to Read!" (GRTR) emergent literacy screener. This measure, within a battery of oral language, letter knowledge, decoding, and phonological awareness tests, was administered to 204 preschool children (mean age = 53.6, SD = 5.78; 55% male) from diverse…

Interaction through Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lengyel, Peter, Ed.

1984-01-01

This issue dealing with language discusses language and social structure, social progress and sociolinguistics, oral and literate traditions, Portuguese Creole dialects in West Africa, a framework for describing how languages spread, socio-cultural conflict and bilingual education, linguistic variation in one-language societies, the language…

"La Evaluacion de la Actuacion Oral de los Hispanoparlantes Bilingues Mediante las Directrices de ACTFL (Evaluation of the Oral Presentation of the Bilingual Spanish Speaking Professionals by Moderators of the ACTFL).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alonso, Esther

1997-01-01

Discusses the validity of a rating scale created by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages for the purpose of measuring the oral language proficiency of bilingual professionals who are speakers of English and Spanish. Notes that this scale measures various levels of competence and features of an individual's speech. (14…

Speech, language, and cognitive dysfunction in children with focal epileptiform activity: A follow-up study.

PubMed

Rejnö-Habte Selassie, Gunilla; Hedström, Anders; Viggedal, Gerd; Jennische, Margareta; Kyllerman, Mårten

2010-07-01

We reviewed the medical history, EEG recordings, and developmental milestones of 19 children with speech and language dysfunction and focal epileptiform activity. Speech, language, and neuropsychological assessments and EEG recordings were performed at follow-up, and prognostic indicators were analyzed. Three patterns of language development were observed: late start and slow development, late start and deterioration/regression, and normal start and later regression/deterioration. No differences in test results among these groups were seen, indicating a spectrum of related conditions including Landau-Kleffner syndrome and epileptic language disorder. More than half of the participants had speech and language dysfunction at follow-up. IQ levels, working memory, and processing speed were also affected. Dysfunction of auditory perception in noise was found in more than half of the participants, and dysfunction of auditory attention in all. Dysfunction of communication, oral motor ability, and stuttering were noted in a few. Family history of seizures and abundant epileptiform activity indicated a worse prognosis. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Relations among L1 (Spanish) Literacy Skills, L2 (English) Language, L2 Text Reading Fluency, and L2 Reading Comprehension for Spanish-Speaking ELL First Grade Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Young-Suk

2012-01-01

We investigated the relations of L2 (i.e., English) oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, word reading automaticity, oral language skills, and L1 literacy skills (i.e., Spanish) to L2 reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking English language learners in the first grade (N = 150). An analysis was conducted for the entire sample as well as…

Auditory processing and speech perception in children with specific language impairment: relations with oral language and literacy skills.

PubMed

Vandewalle, Ellen; Boets, Bart; Ghesquière, Pol; Zink, Inge

2012-01-01

This longitudinal study investigated temporal auditory processing (frequency modulation and between-channel gap detection) and speech perception (speech-in-noise and categorical perception) in three groups of 6 years 3 months to 6 years 8 months-old children attending grade 1: (1) children with specific language impairment (SLI) and literacy delay (n = 8), (2) children with SLI and normal literacy (n = 10) and (3) typically developing children (n = 14). Moreover, the relations between these auditory processing and speech perception skills and oral language and literacy skills in grade 1 and grade 3 were analyzed. The SLI group with literacy delay scored significantly lower than both other groups on speech perception, but not on temporal auditory processing. Both normal reading groups did not differ in terms of speech perception or auditory processing. Speech perception was significantly related to reading and spelling in grades 1 and 3 and had a unique predictive contribution to reading growth in grade 3, even after controlling reading level, phonological ability, auditory processing and oral language skills in grade 1. These findings indicated that speech perception also had a unique direct impact upon reading development and not only through its relation with phonological awareness. Moreover, speech perception seemed to be more associated with the development of literacy skills and less with oral language ability. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Written Narrative Characteristics in Adults with Language Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suddarth, Rachael; Plante, Elena; Vance, Rebecca

2012-01-01

Purpose: Adults with language-based disabilities are known to have deficits in oral language; however, less is known about their written language skills. Two studies were designed to characterize the writing of adults with language-based disabilities. Method: In Study 1, 60 adults, 30 with language impairment and 30 with typical language,…

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PROGRAMS FOR THE SEVENTIES.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

HOOK, J.N.

IT IS NOW THE YEAR 1976, AND CHANGE IN OUR ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING HAS BEEN AFFECTED BY A MODERN AMERICAN REVOLUTION. AS ENGLISH BECOMES MORE UNIVERSAL, SO DOES THE ORAL-AURAL METHOD OF TEACHING IT. IN UNITED STATES CLASSROOMS, CHILDREN PRACTICE ORALLY THOSE PATTERNS THEY NEED, EXPERIMENT WITH WORD ORDER, AND GAIN A KNOWLEDGE OF SENTENCE…

An Exploration of Oral Language Development in Spanish-Speaking Preschool Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neu, Renee A.

2013-01-01

The purpose of this qualitative, multi-case study was to explore the oral language of Spanish-speaking preschool students and their responses to questions, comments and requests made by an English-speaking teacher. Research questions focused on students' responses to questions; comments and requests by the teacher; and whether the response was…

Oral Language Needs: Making Math Meaningful

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pace, Michelle H.; Ortiz, Enrique

2015-01-01

As a Title I kindergarten teacher, Michelle Pace, second grade teacher at Lake Mary Elementary School in Florida, has seen firsthand how oral language can create roadblocks for students in all areas of the curriculum, both academically and socially. At the time this article was written, the state of Florida had recently adopted the Common Core…

The Reliability of the OWLS Written Expression Scale with ESL Kindergarten Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Harrison, Gina L.; Ogle, Keira C.; Keilty, Megan

2011-01-01

A reliability analysis was conducted on the Written Expression Scale from the Oral and Written Language Scales, (OWLS, Carrow-Woolfolk, 1996), with 68 ESL and 56 non-ESL kindergarten students. Interrater and internal consistency estimates for the Written Expression Scale were examined separately for each language group. Despite lower oral English…

Supporting Oral Narrative Development of Kindergarten English Language Learners Using Multimedia Stories

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Sha

2016-01-01

Narrative ability comes before literacy for bilingual students and helps narrow down the gap in text-level literacy between English language learners (ELLs) and native English speakers. Kindergarten ELLs are the best age group to receive intervention to improve their oral narrative skills. Multimedia stories have potential to assist kindergarten…

Conversations about Visual Arts: Facilitating Oral Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chang, Ni; Cress, Susan

2014-01-01

Visual arts, such as drawings, are attractive to most young children. Marks left on paper by young children contain meaning. Although it is known that children's oral language could be enhanced through communication with adults, rarely is there a series of dialogues between adults and young children about their drawings. Often heard instead…

The Working Experience. Teacher's Manual.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Jeanne H.; Ringel, Harry

A teacher's manual is presented for "The Working Experience," a series of three texts for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students. The series builds on oral skills to develop reading and writing ability while still expanding oral English-language proficiency. Because one of the basic principles underlying the series is the idea that students…

Developing Oral Proficiency with VoiceThread: Learners' Strategic Uses and Views

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dugartsyrenova, Vera A.; Sardegna, Veronica G.

2017-01-01

This study explored Russian as a foreign language (RFL) learners' self-reported strategic uses of "VoiceThread" (VT)--a multimodal asynchronous computer-mediated communication tool--in order to gain insights into learner perceived effectiveness of VT for second language (L2) oral skills development and to determine the factors that…

Early Home Activities and Oral Language Skills in Middle Childhood: A Quantile Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Law, James; Rush, Robert; King, Tom; Westrupp, Elizabeth; Reilly, Sheena

2018-01-01

Oral language development is a key outcome of elementary school, and it is important to identify factors that predict it most effectively. Commonly researchers use ordinary least squares regression with conclusions restricted to average performance conditional on relevant covariates. Quantile regression offers a more sophisticated alternative.…

Social Competence and Oral Language Development for Young Children of Latino Immigrants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jensen, Bryant; Reese, Leslie; Hall-Kenyon, Kendra; Bennett, Courtney

2015-01-01

Research Findings: In this study we analyze how parent and teacher ratings of young Latino children's social competencies in rural California are associated with children's oral language development. We find (a) that there is considerable incongruence between parent and teacher ratings of child social competence, (b) that both parent and teacher…

Oral Interpretation Performance as A Self-Referencing Process.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Plax, Pamela M.

Oral interpretation utilizes the self-referencing qualities of language and literature which involves the interpreter as both actor and reader. By "self-referencing" is meant the capacity language has to express not only literal meaning but also, at the same time, the process of realization and of attitudinizing toward this meaning.…

Planning for Proficiency. Dimension: Language '86. Report of the Southern Conference on Language Teaching (1986).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fryer, T. Bruce; Medley, Frank W., Jr.

Selected papers from the 1986 Southern Conference on Language Teaching on instruction for language proficiency are presented: "The Foreign Language Teacher: Confronting an Ever-Changing Profession" (Robert Di Donato); "Restructuring a Traditional Foreign Language Program for Oral Proficiency" (Filisha Camara-Norman, James…

Transcranial magnetic stimulation: language function.

PubMed

Epstein, C M

1998-07-01

Studies of language using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) have focused both on identification of language areas and on elucidation of function. TMS may result in either inhibition or facilitation of language processes and may operate directly at a presumptive site of language cortex or indirectly through intracortical networks. TMS has been used to create reversible "temporary lesions," similar to those produced by Wada tests and direct cortical electrical stimulation, in cerebral cortical areas subserving language function. Rapid-rate TMS over the left inferior frontal region blocks speech output in most subjects. However, the results are not those predicted from classic models of language organization. Speech arrest is obtained most easily over facial motor cortex, and true aphasia is rare, whereas right hemisphere or bilateral lateralization is unexpectedly prominent. A clinical role for these techniques is not yet fully established. Interfering with language comprehension and verbal memory is currently more difficult than blocking speech output, but numerous TMS studies have demonstrated facilitation of language-related tasks, including oral word association, story recall, digit span, and picture naming. Conversely, speech output also facilitates motor responses to TMS in the dominant hemisphere. Such new and often-unexpected findings may provide important insights into the organization of language.

The contribution of phonological knowledge, memory, and language background to reading comprehension in deaf populations

PubMed Central

Hirshorn, Elizabeth A.; Dye, Matthew W. G.; Hauser, Peter; Supalla, Ted R.; Bavelier, Daphne

2015-01-01

While reading is challenging for many deaf individuals, some become proficient readers. Little is known about the component processes that support reading comprehension in these individuals. Speech-based phonological knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of reading comprehension in hearing individuals, yet its role in deaf readers is controversial. This could reflect the highly varied language backgrounds among deaf readers as well as the difficulty of disentangling the relative contribution of phonological versus orthographic knowledge of spoken language, in our case ‘English,’ in this population. Here we assessed the impact of language experience on reading comprehension in deaf readers by recruiting oral deaf individuals, who use spoken English as their primary mode of communication, and deaf native signers of American Sign Language. First, to address the contribution of spoken English phonological knowledge in deaf readers, we present novel tasks that evaluate phonological versus orthographic knowledge. Second, the impact of this knowledge, as well as memory measures that rely differentially on phonological (serial recall) and semantic (free recall) processing, on reading comprehension was evaluated. The best predictor of reading comprehension differed as a function of language experience, with free recall being a better predictor in deaf native signers than in oral deaf. In contrast, the measures of English phonological knowledge, independent of orthographic knowledge, best predicted reading comprehension in oral deaf individuals. These results suggest successful reading strategies differ across deaf readers as a function of their language experience, and highlight a possible alternative route to literacy in deaf native signers. Highlights: 1. Deaf individuals vary in their orthographic and phonological knowledge of English as a function of their language experience. 2. Reading comprehension was best predicted by different factors in oral deaf and deaf native signers. 3. Free recall memory (primacy effect) better predicted reading comprehension in deaf native signers as compared to oral deaf or hearing individuals. 4. Language experience should be taken into account when considering cognitive processes that mediate reading in deaf individuals. PMID:26379566

Patterns and Predictors of Language and Literacy Abilities 4-10 Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children.

PubMed

Zubrick, Stephen R; Taylor, Catherine L; Christensen, Daniel

2015-01-01

Oral language is the foundation of literacy. Naturally, policies and practices to promote children's literacy begin in early childhood and have a strong focus on developing children's oral language, especially for children with known risk factors for low language ability. The underlying assumption is that children's progress along the oral to literate continuum is stable and predictable, such that low language ability foretells low literacy ability. This study investigated patterns and predictors of children's oral language and literacy abilities at 4, 6, 8 and 10 years. The study sample comprised 2,316 to 2,792 children from the first nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Six developmental patterns were observed, a stable middle-high pattern, a stable low pattern, an improving pattern, a declining pattern, a fluctuating low pattern, and a fluctuating middle-high pattern. Most children (69%) fit a stable middle-high pattern. By contrast, less than 1% of children fit a stable low pattern. These results challenged the view that children's progress along the oral to literate continuum is stable and predictable. Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate risks for low literacy ability at 10 years and sensitivity-specificity analysis was used to examine the predictive utility of the multivariate model. Predictors were modelled as risk variables with the lowest level of risk as the reference category. In the multivariate model, substantial risks for low literacy ability at 10 years, in order of descending magnitude, were: low school readiness, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status and low language ability at 8 years. Moderate risks were high temperamental reactivity, low language ability at 4 years, and low language ability at 6 years. The following risk factors were not statistically significant in the multivariate model: Low maternal consistency, low family income, health care card, child not read to at home, maternal smoking, maternal education, family structure, temperamental persistence, and socio-economic area disadvantage. The results of the sensitivity-specificity analysis showed that a well-fitted multivariate model featuring risks of substantive magnitude did not do particularly well in predicting low literacy ability at 10 years.

Spoken language and everyday functioning in 5-year-old children using hearing aids or cochlear implants.

PubMed

Cupples, Linda; Ching, Teresa Yc; Button, Laura; Seeto, Mark; Zhang, Vicky; Whitfield, Jessica; Gunnourie, Miriam; Martin, Louise; Marnane, Vivienne

2017-09-12

This study investigated the factors influencing 5-year language, speech and everyday functioning of children with congenital hearing loss. Standardised tests including PLS-4, PPVT-4 and DEAP were directly administered to children. Parent reports on language (CDI) and everyday functioning (PEACH) were collected. Regression analyses were conducted to examine the influence of a range of demographic variables on outcomes. Participants were 339 children enrolled in the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study. Children's average receptive and expressive language scores were approximately 1 SD below the mean of typically developing children, and scores on speech production and everyday functioning were more than 1 SD below. Regression models accounted for 70-23% of variance in scores across different tests. Earlier CI switch-on and higher non-verbal ability were associated with better outcomes in most domains. Earlier HA fitting and use of oral communication were associated with better outcomes on directly administered language assessments. Severity of hearing loss and maternal education influenced outcomes of children with HAs. The presence of additional disabilities affected outcomes of children with CIs. The findings provide strong evidence for the benefits of early HA fitting and early CI for improving children's outcomes.

Association between maternal acculturation and health beliefs related to oral health of Latino children.

PubMed

Tiwari, Tamanna; Mulvahill, Matthew; Wilson, Anne; Rai, Nayanjot; Albino, Judith

2018-04-24

This report is presenting the association of maternal acculturation, measured by preferred language, and oral health-related psychosocial measures in an urban Latino population. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 100 mother-child dyads from the Dental Center at the Children's Hospital Colorado, the University of Colorado. A portion of Basic Research Factors Questionnaire capturing information about parental dental knowledge, attitudes, behavior and psychosocial measures was used to collect data from the participating mothers. Descriptive statistics were calculated for demographics and psychosocial measures by acculturation. A univariate linear regression model was performed for each measure by preferred language for primary analysis followed by adjusted model adjusting for parent's education. The mean age of the children was 3.99 years (SD = 1.11), and that of the mother was 29.54 years (SD = 9.62). Dental caries, measured as dmfs, was significantly higher in children of Spanish-speaking mothers compared to children of English-speaking mothers. English-speaking mothers had higher mean scores of oral health knowledge, oral health behaviors, knowledge on dental utilization, self-efficacy, and Oral Health Locus of Control as compared to Spanish-speaking mothers. Univariate analysis demonstrated significant association for preference for Spanish language with knowledge on dental utilization, maternal self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility and perceived barriers. The effect of language was attenuated, but significant, for each of these variables after adjusting for parent's education. This study reported that higher acculturation measured by a preference for the English language had a positive association with oral health outcomes in children. Spanish-speaking mothers perceived that their children were less susceptible to caries. Additionally, they perceived barriers in visiting the dentist for preventive visits.

Writing fluency and quality in kindergarten and first grade: The role of attention, reading, transcription, and oral language

PubMed Central

Kent, Shawn; Wanzek, Jeanne; Petscher, Yaacov; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Kim, Young-Suk

2013-01-01

In the present study, we examined the influence of kindergarten component skills on writing outcomes, both concurrently and longitudinally to first grade. Using data from 265 students, we investigated a model of writing development including attention regulation along with students’ reading, spelling, handwriting fluency, and oral language component skills. Results from structural equation modeling demonstrated that a model including attention was better fitting than a model with only language and literacy factors. Attention, a higher-order literacy factor related to reading and spelling proficiency, and automaticity in letter-writing were uniquely and positively related to compositional fluency in kindergarten. Attention and higher-order literacy factor were predictive of both composition quality and fluency in first grade, while oral language showed unique relations with first grade writing quality. Implications for writing development and instruction are discussed. PMID:25132722

Literacy outcomes of children with early childhood speech sound disorders: impact of endophenotypes.

PubMed

Lewis, Barbara A; Avrich, Allison A; Freebairn, Lisa A; Hansen, Amy J; Sucheston, Lara E; Kuo, Iris; Taylor, H Gerry; Iyengar, Sudha K; Stein, Catherine M

2011-12-01

To demonstrate that early childhood speech sound disorders (SSD) and later school-age reading, written expression, and spelling skills are influenced by shared endophenotypes that may be in part genetic. Children with SSD and their siblings were assessed at early childhood (ages 4-6 years) and followed at school age (7-12 years). The relationship of shared endophenotypes with early childhood SSD and school-age outcomes and the shared genetic influences on these outcomes were examined. Structural equation modeling demonstrated that oral motor skills, phonological awareness, phonological memory, vocabulary, and speeded naming have varying influences on reading decoding, spelling, spoken language, and written expression at school age. Genetic linkage studies demonstrated linkage for reading, spelling, and written expression measures to regions on chromosomes 1, 3, 6, and 15 that were previously linked to oral motor skills, articulation, phonological memory, and vocabulary at early childhood testing. Endophenotypes predict school-age literacy outcomes over and above that predicted by clinical diagnoses of SSD or language impairment. Findings suggest that these shared endophenotypes and common genetic influences affect early childhood SSD and later school-age reading, spelling, spoken language, and written expression skills.

Literacy Outcomes of Children With Early Childhood Speech Sound Disorders: Impact of Endophenotypes

PubMed Central

Lewis, Barbara A.; Avrich, Allison A.; Freebairn, Lisa A.; Hansen, Amy J.; Sucheston, Lara E.; Kuo, Iris; Taylor, H. Gerry; Iyengar, Sudha K.; Stein, Catherine M.

2012-01-01

Purpose To demonstrate that early childhood speech sound disorders (SSD) and later school-age reading, written expression, and spelling skills are influenced by shared endophenotypes that may be in part genetic. Method Children with SSD and their siblings were assessed at early childhood (ages 4–6 years) and followed at school age (7–12 years). The relationship of shared endophenotypes with early childhood SSD and school-age outcomes and the shared genetic influences on these outcomes were examined. Results Structural equation modeling demonstrated that oral motor skills, phonological awareness, phonological memory, vocabulary, and speeded naming have varying influences on reading decoding, spelling, spoken language, and written expression at school age. Genetic linkage studies demonstrated linkage for reading, spelling, and written expression measures to regions on chromosomes 1, 3, 6, and 15 that were previously linked to oral motor skills, articulation, phonological memory, and vocabulary at early childhood testing. Conclusions Endophenotypes predict school-age literacy outcomes over and above that predicted by clinical diagnoses of SSD or language impairment. Findings suggest that these shared endophenotypes and common genetic influences affect early childhood SSD and later school-age reading, spelling, spoken language, and written expression skills. PMID:21930616

Learning Spanish the Fenix Way

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wholey, Jane

1977-01-01

The Instituto Fenix, a language learning school in Cuernavaca, Mexico, features oral language learning and a creative teaching technique to help language students to learn Spanish both effectively and quickly. (RK)

SUS users' perception: a speech-language pathology approach based on health promotion.

PubMed

Cunha, Jenane Topanotti da; Massi, Giselle; Guarinello, Ana Cristina; Pereira, Francine Martins

2016-01-01

This study aimed to analyze the perceptions of users of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) about the treatment Center where they were assisted, as well as about the speech-language pathology services rendered by this Center. This is a transversal study composed of an interview with 26 open questions and 14 closed questions applied to 111 individuals who were assisted at the SUS Center in August 2013. The quantitative content analysis was conducted through the use of the GraphPadPrisma 5.1, Statistic Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) 15.0 software and the application of the D'agostino & Person, F-test and chi-squared test. Most participants reported a positive perception about the facilities and staff of the treatment center. They were also positive about the waiting time and the speech-language pathologists' explanations and conduct, especially in the audiology department. Most responses from participants were short and did not present an argumentative context. The treatment center received a high approval rating by most users. The audiology department had better grades than the clinical services related to language and oral motor pathologies.

Influence of Personality and Motivation on Oral Presentation Performance.

PubMed

Liang, Hsin-Yi; Kelsen, Brent

2018-01-19

Personality and motivation have been identified as influential variables associated with foreign language learning; however, few studies have investigated their effect on oral presentations. This study addresses the importance of both personality and motivation in students' collaborative oral presentation performance. A Big Five personality trait questionnaire measuring Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism and Openness to Experience, together with the Collaborative Inquiry-based Project Questionnaire measuring Task, Project Work, Reinforcement, Social Learning and Social Pressure motivational constructs were employed to evaluate 257 university students. In general, the results showed that Extraversion, Project Work and Social Pressure were significant correlates of oral presentation scores. The first result suggests that extraverts possess superiority in situations where oral language production is central to communication. This was particularly true for lower-level students, inferring that extraverted personalities can compensate for a lower English language ability. The second indicates that the inquiry-based nature of the assignments was an intrinsic motivator especially valued by extraverts. The third implies that extrinsic motivation was a factor influencing student performance. These findings extend previous research by highlighting the contextual relationships between these affective variables and performance in collaborative oral presentation contexts.

Advanced ESL Students' Prior EFL Education and Their Perceptions of Oral Corrective Feedback

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Eun Jeong

2016-01-01

The author in this study examines how advanced-level adult English as a Second Language (ESL) students' previous English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom experiences influence their perceptions of their teachers' oral corrective feedback (CF). It uses in-depth qualitative data to characterize the participants' prior English learning, and to…

Voice over Instant Messaging as a Tool for Enhancing the Oral Proficiency and Motivation of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Ya-Ting C.; Gamble, Jeffrey; Tang, Shiun-Yi S.

2012-01-01

The challenge of providing authentic experiences and interactions for fostering oral proficiency and motivation in foreign languages is an opportunity for innovation in educational technology and instructional design. Although several recent innovations have received the attention of scholars, empirical investigation and validation is often…

Developing Oral Language. Learning Package No. 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hong, Zhang; Smith, Carl, Comp.

Originally developed for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on developing oral language is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes a comprehensive search of the ERIC database; a lecture giving an overview on the topic; the full text of several…

"On the Hurricane Deck of a Mule": Teaching Adults To Read Using Language-Experience and Oral History Techniques.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bear, Donald R.

Designed to instruct adult literacy teachers in using Language-Experience and Oral History techniques and distributed statewide to teachers in Nevada, this manual presents reading materials, diagnostic packages, and guidelines for adult literacy program organization. The first of three chapters begins with an introduction to the manual, and…

Using Audioblogs to Assist English-Language Learning: An Investigation into Student Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hsu, Hui-Yin; Wang, Shiang-Kwei; Comac, Linda

2008-01-01

This pilot study investigates how the use of audioblogs can help to meet an instructor's need to improve instruction in English as a second language (ESL). In this study, the instructor uses audioblogs to manage oral assignments, to interact with learners, and to evaluate performance outcomes. Learners record oral assignments through cellular…

Effects of Synchronous and Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Oral Conversations on English Language Learners' Discourse Functions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

AbuSeileek, Ali Farhan; Qatawneh, Khaleel

2013-01-01

This study aimed to explore the effects of synchronous and asynchronous computer mediated communication (CMC) oral discussions on question types and strategies used by English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. The participants were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions/groups; the first group used synchronous CMC, while the second…

Authentic Tasks to Foster Oral Production among English as a Foreign Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramírez Ortiz, Sandra Milena; Artunduaga Cuéllar, Marco Tulio

2018-01-01

Attaining oral production is a challenge for most English language teachers because most of the strategies implemented in class do not engage students in speaking activities. Tasks are an optimal alternative to engage learners in communicative exchanges. This article presents the results of a qualitative action research study examining the effects…

The Relationship among Oral Language, Decoding Skills, and Reading Comprehension in Children with Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cronin, Kathleen A.

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among oral language, decoding, and reading comprehension for children with autism. Participants included 13 English-speaking children with a diagnosis of high-functioning autism (IQ > 70) who were included in a typical classroom, and who had parents who spoke English. Parts of the…

Assessing Second-Language Oral Proficiency for Research: The Spanish Elicited Imitation Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowden, Harriet Wood

2016-01-01

Proficiency is a key variable in late second language (L2) learning, but one that is undermeasured in current research. This study investigates whether L2 oral proficiency can be quickly and reliably assessed via the Spanish "elicited imitation task" (EIT; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, 1999). Thirty-seven L2 learners of Spanish…

The Special Education Core Curriculum Manual, Basic Level. Learning Skills, Oral Language, Reading, Mathematics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Margolis, Leonard

The manual is designed to serve as a guideline for teachers and child study teams who have the primary responsibility for the education of handicapped children in four areas--learning skills, oral language, reading, and mathematics. Sections for each of the above areas are subdivided into the following objectives and activities: gross motor…

The Working Experience Books 1, 2, and 3.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smith, Jeanne H.; Ringel, Harry

Books 1, 2, and 3 of "The Working Experience," a series of texts for English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students, are contained in this document. The series builds on oral skills to develop reading and writing ability while still expanding oral English-language proficiency. Since one of the basic principles underlying the series is the idea that…

Refocusing on Oral Language and Rich Representations to Develop the Early Mathematical Understandings of Indigenous Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McDonald, Susan; Warren, Elizabeth; DeVries, Eva

2011-01-01

This article examines the nature of oral language and representations used by teachers as they instruct young Indigenous Australian students at the beginning of formal schooling during play-based activities in mathematics. In particular, the use of Standard Australian English (SAE), the mathematical register used, and the interplay with…

L'Enquete linguistique et son application a la correction de l'expression orale (Linguistic Inquiry and Its Application to the Correction of Oral Expression)

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Niedzielski, Henri

1970-01-01

This article suggests applying the methods of linguistic investigation which dialectologists use in field work to the systematically programmed training of foreign language teachers in hearing and correcting the phonemic deviations in their students' pronunciation of the target language. (Author/FB)

Japanese Language School: Aid or Hindrance to the Americanization of Japanese Americans in Hawaii?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shoho, Alan R.

A study examined the experiences of 60 Japanese immigrants to Hawaii (Niseis), aged 61-80, who attended Japanese-language schools as children. Using a case study oral history approach, the study gathered oral testimonies through semi-structured interviews. Historical documents were also used as primary sources of information about the schools.…

Measuring Preschool Teachers' Perceived Competency and Knowledge of Oral Language Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prestwich, Dian Teer

2012-01-01

Research has demonstrated the impact of early oral language development on a child's later reading comprehension. Additionally, research has suggested that teachers' knowledge of effective practices in literacy plays an important role in students' ability to learn to read. The problem is that preschool teachers' knowledge of…

Design Experiments: Developing and Testing an Intervention for Elementary School-Age Students Who Use Non-Mainstream American English Dialects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas-Tate, Shurita; Connor, Carol McDonald; Johnson, Lakeisha

2013-01-01

Reading comprehension, defined as the active extraction and construction of meaning from all kinds of text, requires children to fluently decode and understand what they are reading. Basic processes underlying reading comprehension are complex and call on the oral language system and a conscious understanding of this system, i.e., metalinguistic…

The Effects of Communicative Grammar Teaching on Students' Achievement of Grammatical Knowledge and Oral Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ho, Pham Vu Phi; The Binh, Nguyen

2014-01-01

So far the students of Le Hong Phong Junior High School have been taught grammar with GTM (Grammar-Translation Method), which just prepares learners for conventional grammar-paper tests. Despite their considerable knowledge of grammar, the students fail to use the language they have learnt to communicate in real-life situations. The purpose of…

A Longitudinal Study of Complexity, Accuracy and Fluency Variation in Second Language Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferraris, Stefania

2012-01-01

This chapter presents the results of a study on interlanguage variation. The production of four L2 learners of Italian, tested four times at yearly intervals while engaged in four oral tasks, is compared to that of two native speakers, and analysed with quantitative CAF measures. Thus, time, task type, nativeness, as well as group vs. individual…

Overcoming Gender Bias in Oral Testing: The Effect of Introducing Candidates.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferguson, Bonnie

1994-01-01

Examined the effect of gender on English language teachers' evaluations of audiotapes of Japanese students' spoken English. The results showed a slight pro-male bias when the speakers were introduced as students but none when the speakers were introduced as doctors or experts in their field. Teacher gender was found to have no effect on the rating…

Correlation of Oxygenated Hemoglobin Concentration and Psychophysical Amount on Speech Recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nozawa, Akio; Ide, Hideto

The subjective understanding on oral language understanding task is quantitatively evaluated by the fluctuation of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration measured by the near-infrared spectroscopy. The English listening comprehension test wihch consists of two difficulty level was executed by 4 subjects during the measurement. A significant correlation was found between the subjective understanding and the fluctuation of oxygenated hemoglobin concentration.

Performance-intensity functions of Mandarin word recognition tests in noise: test dialect and listener language effects.

PubMed

Liu, Danzheng; Shi, Lu-Feng

2013-06-01

This study established the performance-intensity function for Beijing and Taiwan Mandarin bisyllabic word recognition tests in noise in native speakers of Wu Chinese. Effects of the test dialect and listeners' first language on psychometric variables (i.e., slope and 50%-correct threshold) were analyzed. Thirty-two normal-hearing Wu-speaking adults who used Mandarin since early childhood were compared to 16 native Mandarin-speaking adults. Both Beijing and Taiwan bisyllabic word recognition tests were presented at 8 signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) in 4-dB steps (-12 dB to +16 dB). At each SNR, a half list (25 words) was presented in speech-spectrum noise to listeners' right ear. The order of the test, SNR, and half list was randomized across listeners. Listeners responded orally and in writing. Overall, the Wu-speaking listeners performed comparably to the Mandarin-speaking listeners on both tests. Compared to the Taiwan test, the Beijing test yielded a significantly lower threshold for both the Mandarin- and Wu-speaking listeners, as well as a significantly steeper slope for the Wu-speaking listeners. Both Mandarin tests can be used to evaluate Wu-speaking listeners. Of the 2, the Taiwan Mandarin test results in more comparable functions across listener groups. Differences in the performance-intensity function between listener groups and between tests indicate a first language and dialectal effect, respectively.

Development and validation of the Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale (SELPS).

PubMed

Smyk, Ekaterina; Restrepo, M Adelaida; Gorin, Joanna S; Gray, Shelley

2013-07-01

This study examined the development and validation of a criterion-referenced Spanish-English Language Proficiency Scale (SELPS) that was designed to assess the oral language skills of sequential bilingual children ages 4-8. This article reports results for the English proficiency portion of the scale. The SELPS assesses syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, verbal fluency, and lexical diversity based on 2 story retell tasks. In Study 1, 40 children were given 2 story retell tasks to evaluate the reliability of parallel forms. In Study 2, 76 children participated in the validation of the scale against language sample measures and teacher ratings of language proficiency. Study 1 indicated no significant differences between the SELPS scores on the 2 stories. Study 2 indicated that the SELPS scores correlated significantly with their counterpart language sample measures. Correlations between the SELPS and teacher ratings were moderate. The 2 story retells elicited comparable SELPS scores, providing a valuable tool for test-retest conditions in the assessment of language proficiency. Correlations between the SELPS scores and external variables indicated that these measures assessed the same language skills. Results provided empirical evidence regarding the validity of inferences about language proficiency based on the SELPS score.

Pronominal Reference Skills of Second and Fourth Grade Children with Language Impairment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Finestack, Lizbeth H.; Fey, Marc E.; Catts, Hugh W.

2006-01-01

Pronominal referencing was evaluated in a sample of 569 children comprising four diagnostic subgroups: typical language (TL), specific language impairment (SLI), nonspecific language impairment (NLI), and typical language with low nonverbal IQ (LNIQ). Participants generated oral narratives in second grade and again in fourth grade. The narratives…

What factors are associated with good performance in children with cochlear implants? From the outcome of various language development tests, research on sensory and communicative disorders project in Japan: nagasaki experience.

PubMed

Kanda, Yukihiko; Kumagami, Hidetaka; Hara, Minoru; Sainoo, Yuzuru; Sato, Chisei; Yamamoto-Fukuda, Tomomi; Yoshida, Haruo; Ito, Akiko; Tanaka, Chiharu; Baba, Kyoko; Nakata, Ayaka; Tanaka, Hideo; Fukushima, Kunihiro; Kasai, Norio; Takahashi, Haruo

2012-04-01

We conducted multi-directional language development tests as a part of the Research on Sensory and Communicative Disorders (RSVD) in Japan. This report discusses findings as well as factors that led to better results in children with severe-profound hearing loss. We evaluated multiple language development tests in 33 Japanese children with cochlear implants (32 patients) and hearing aid (1 patient), including 1) Test for question and answer interaction development, 2) Word fluency test, 3) Japanese version of the Peabody picture vocabulary test-revised, 4) The standardized comprehension test of abstract words, 5) The screening test of reading and writing for Japanese primary school children, 6) The syntactic processing test of aphasia, 7) Criterion-referenced testing (CRT) for Japanese language and mathematics, 8) Pervasive development disorders ASJ rating scales, and 9) Raven's colored progressive matrices. Furthermore, we investigated the factors believed to account for the better performances in these tests. The first group, group A, consisted of 14 children with higher scores in all tests than the national average for children with hearing difficulty. The second group, group B, included 19 children that scored below the national average in any of the tests. Overall, the results show that 76.2% of the scores obtained by the children in these tests exceeded the national average scores of children with hearing difficulty. The children who finished above average on all tests had undergone a longer period of regular habilitation in our rehabilitation center, had their implants earlier in life, were exposed to more auditory verbal/oral communication in their education at affiliated institutions, and were more likely to have been integrated in a regular kindergarten before moving on to elementary school. In this study, we suggest that taking the above four factors into consideration will have an affect on the language development of children with severe-profound hearing loss.

Children's Expressive Language Skills and Their Impact on the Relation between First-and Second-Language Phonological Awareness Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodrich, J. Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Farver, JoAnn M.

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether the cross-language relations between the phonological awareness (PA) skills of preschool children learning more than one language are dependent upon their first-and second-language oral language skills. Four hundred sixty-six Spanish-speaking language minority children participated in this study.…

Metanotes (Written Languaging) in a Translation Task: Do L2 Proficiency and Task Outcome Matter?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ishikawa, Masako

2015-01-01

Languaging has been identified as a contributor to language learning. Yet, compared to oral languaging, such as collaborative dialogs in contextualized settings, little seems to be known about written languaging. In order to fill this gap, this study investigates languaging in the form of "metanotes," that is, metatalk in a written…

Writing through Two Languages: First Language Expertise in a Language Minority Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kibler, Amanda

2010-01-01

Language minority students' writing is often measured solely in terms of its distance from native speaker norms, yet doing so may ignore the process through which these texts are realized and the role that the first language plays in their creation. This study analyzes oral interactions among adolescent second language writers during an extended…

Effect of a Performing Arts Program on the Oral Language Skills of Young English Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Greenfader, Christa Mulker; Brouillette, Liane; Farkas, George

2015-01-01

Although English oral language proficiency in the primary grades is critical to the literacy development of English learners (ELs), we know little about how to foster these skills. This study examined a yearlong K-2 drama and creative movement intervention. A randomized experimental design (N = 5,240) was used to address two research questions:…

The Effect of Communication Strategy Training on the Development of EFL Learners' Strategic Competence and Oral Communicative Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rabab'ah, Ghaleb

2016-01-01

This study examines the effect of communication strategy instruction on EFL students' oral communicative ability and their strategic competence. In a 14-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course (English Use II) based on Communicative Language Teaching approach, 80 learners were divided into two groups. The strategy training group (n = 44)…

A Multiple Case Study: Gauging the Effects of Poverty on School Readiness amongst Preschoolers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Onesto, Melissa J.

2017-01-01

The home environment, which includes the level of organization and stability in the home, plays a crucial role in the development of executive function and oral language skills. For children who live in a low-SES environment, executive function and oral language acquisition are inferior compared to that of students living at other economic levels.…

Developing Oral Interaction Skills with a Digital Information Gap Activity Game

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rueb, Avery; Cardoso, Walcir; Grimshaw, Jennica

2016-01-01

This study introduces the digital game Prêt à négocier, an information gap digital game, and investigates language learners' perceptions of its use in a French as a Second Language (FSL) context. In the game, students negotiate orally and synchronously with a partner for items like cars, houses, and even pirate ships. Inspired by Larsen-Freeman…

Listening to the Voices of Education Professionals Involved in Implementing an Oral Language and Early Literacy Program in the Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lennox, Maria; Garvis, Susanne; Westerveld, Marleen

2017-01-01

This paper explores teachers' and teacher assistants' self-efficacy of delivering PrepSTART, a classroom based, oral language and early literacy program for five-year-old students. In the current study, speech pathologists developed, provided training and monitored program implementation. Teachers and teacher assistants (n = 17) shared their…

The Effects of Multimedia Task-Based Language Teaching on EFL Learners' Oral L2 Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

BavaHarji, Madhubala; Gheitanchian, Mehrnaz; Letchumanan, Krishnaveni

2014-01-01

This study examined the effects of tasks, with varying levels of complexity, i.e. simple, + complex and ++ complex tasks on EFL learners' oral production in a multimedia task-based language teaching environment. 57 EFL adult learners carried out a total of 12 tasks, in sets of four tasks within three different themes and different levels of…

The Effects of CLIL on Oral Comprehension and Production: A Longitudinal Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pérez Cañado, María Luisa; Lancaster, Nina Karen

2017-01-01

This article reports on the outcomes of a longitudinal case study to gauge the impact of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) on two of the least researched language skills: oral comprehension and production. It worked with 24 students in the fourth grade of Compulsory Secondary Education in a public school in Andalusia (southern Spain)…

The Effects of Age and Household Income on the Use of Literate Language Features

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lemmon, Regina D.; McDade, Hiram L.

2013-01-01

This study examined the use of literate language features (LLFs) in the oral narratives of African American and Caucasian American preschoolers residing in either low- or middle-income homes to determine whether differences existed as a result of age or household income. The oral narratives of 96 preschoolers enrolled in public school programs and…

The Role of Age of Acquisition in Late Second Language Oral Proficiency Attainment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Kazuya

2015-01-01

The current project examined whether and to what degree age of acquisition (AOA), defined as the first intensive exposure to a second language (L2) environment, can be predictive of the end state of postpubertal L2 oral proficiency attainment. Data were collected from 88 experienced Japanese learners of English and two groups of 20 baseline…

Students' Preferences and Attitude toward Oral Error Correction Techniques at Yanbu University College, Saudi Arabia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Alamri, Bushra; Fawzi, Hala Hassan

2016-01-01

Error correction has been one of the core areas in the field of English language teaching. It is "seen as a form of feedback given to learners on their language use" (Amara, 2015). Many studies investigated the use of different techniques to correct students' oral errors. However, only a few focused on students' preferences and attitude…

Content Not Form Predicts Oral Language Comprehension: The Influence of the Medium on Preschoolers' Story Understanding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neuman, Susan B.; Wong, Kevin M.; Kaefer, Tanya

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of digital and non-digital storybooks on low-income preschoolers' oral language comprehension. Employing a within-subject design on 38 four-year-olds from a Head Start program, we compared the effect of medium on preschoolers' target words and comprehension of stories. Four digital…

Analysis of Children's Errors in Comprehension and Expression

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hatcher, Ryan C.; Breaux, Kristina C.; Liu, Xiaochen; Bray, Melissa A.; Ottone-Cross, Karen L.; Courville, Troy; Luria, Sarah R.; Langley, Susan Dulong

2017-01-01

Children's oral language skills typically begin to develop sooner than their written language skills; however, the four language systems (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) then develop concurrently as integrated strands that influence one another. This research explored relationships between students' errors in language comprehension of…

Language and Communication.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ransom, Grayce A.

An analysis of the relationship of language to learning, particularly as it affects "avoidance behaviors" of remedial readers in the classroom, strongly emphasized the importance of greater stress on oral language development. New concern for cognitive and personality development in children stresses the role of language as an interaction medium…

Using Narrative Intervention to Accelerate Canonical Story Grammar and Complex Language Growth in Culturally Diverse Preschoolers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Petersen, Douglas B.; Spencer, Trina D.

2016-01-01

Oral narratives are a commonly used, meaningful means of communication that reflects academic language. New state curriculum standards include narrative-related language expectations for young school-age children, including story grammar and complex language. This article provides a review of preschool narrative-based language intervention…

Tableau's Influence on the Oral Language Skills of Students with Language-Based Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Alida; Berry, Katherine A.

2017-01-01

This study examined the influence of tableau on the expressive language skills of three students with language-based learning disabilities in inclusive urban fourth-grade English language arts (ELA) classroom settings. Data were collected on linguistic productivity, specificity, and narrative cohesion through analysis of students' responses to…

A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English as a Second or Foreign Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rivers, Wilga M.; Temperley, Mary S.

This text, designed for future teachers of English as a second or foreign language, considers language teaching methodology in the light of recent research in psychology and linguistics. Many aspects of language learning that contribute to effective language use are discussed: oral communication, pronunciation, grammar instruction, listening…

The Rudiments of Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Canfield, John V.

1995-01-01

Discusses the question of whether nonhuman species, such as apes, possess rudimentary language, focusing on the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Noam Chomsky in regard to the development of oral language in young children and apes. (51 references) (MDM)

Sleep quality and communication aspects in children.

PubMed

de Castro Corrêa, Camila; José, Maria Renata; Andrade, Eduardo Carvalho; Feniman, Mariza Ribeiro; Fukushiro, Ana Paula; Berretin-Felix, Giédre; Maximino, Luciana Paula

2017-09-01

To correlate quality of life of children in terms of sleep, with their oral language skills, auditory processing and orofacial myofunctional aspects. Nineteen children (12 males and seven females, in the mean age 9.26) undergoing otorhinolaryngological and speech evaluations participated in this study. The OSA-18 questionnaire was applied, followed by verbal and nonverbal sequential memory tests, dichotic digit test, nonverbal dichotic test and Sustained Auditory Attention Ability Test, related to auditory processing. The Phonological Awareness Profile test, Rapid Automatized Naming and Phonological Working Memory were used for assessment of the phonological processing. Language was assessed by the ABFW Child Language Test, analyzing the phonological and lexical levels. Orofacial myofunctional aspects were evaluated through the MBGR Protocol. Statistical tests used: the Mann-Whitney Test, Fisher's exact test and Spearman Correlation. Relating the performance of children in all evaluations to the results obtained in the OSA-18, there was a statistically significant correlation in the phonological working memory for backward digits (p = 0.04); as well as in the breathing item (p = 0.03), posture of the mandible (p = 0.03) and mobility of lips (p = 0.04). A correlation was seen between the sleep quality of life and the skills related to the phonological processing, specifically in the phonological working memory in backward digits, and related to orofacial myofunctional aspects. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Lexical diversity and omission errors as predictors of language ability in the narratives of sequential Spanish-English bilinguals: a cross-language comparison.

PubMed

Jacobson, Peggy F; Walden, Patrick R

2013-08-01

This study explored the utility of language sample analysis for evaluating language ability in school-age Spanish-English sequential bilingual children. Specifically, the relative potential of lexical diversity and word/morpheme omission as predictors of typical or atypical language status was evaluated. Narrative samples were obtained from 48 bilingual children in both of their languages using the suggested narrative retell protocol and coding conventions as per Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT; Miller & Iglesias, 2008) software. An additional lexical diversity measure, VocD, was also calculated. A series of logistical hierarchical regressions explored the utility of the number of different words, VocD statistic, and word and morpheme omissions in each language for predicting language status. Omission errors turned out to be the best predictors of bilingual language impairment at all ages, and this held true across languages. Although lexical diversity measures did not predict typical or atypical language status, the measures were significantly related to oral language proficiency in English and Spanish. The results underscore the significance of omission errors in bilingual language impairment while simultaneously revealing the limitations of lexical diversity measures as indicators of impairment. The relationship between lexical diversity and oral language proficiency highlights the importance of considering relative language proficiency in bilingual assessment.

Facilitating English-Language Learners' Oral Reading Fluency with Digital Pen Technology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Chih-Ming; Tan, Chia-Chen; Lo, Bey-Jane

2016-01-01

Oral reading fluency is an indicator of overall reading competence. Many studies have claimed that repeated reading can promote oral reading fluency. Currently, novel Web- or computer-based reading technologies offer interactive digital materials that promote English oral reading fluency using the repeated reading strategy; however, paper-based…

Oral Conversations Online: Redefining Oral Competence in Synchronous Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lamy, Marie-Noelle

2004-01-01

In this article the focus is on methodology for analysing learner-learner oral conversations mediated by computers. With the increasing availability of synchronous voice-based groupware and the additional facilities offered by audio-graphic tools, language learners have opportunities for collaborating on oral tasks, supported by visual and textual…

Examining the Relationship Between Word Reading Efficiency and Oral Reading Rate in Predicting Comprehension Among Different Types of Readers

PubMed Central

Eason, Sarah H.; Sabatini, John; Goldberg, Lindsay; Bruce, Kelly; Cutting, Laurie E.

2013-01-01

To further explore contextual reading rate, an important aspect of reading fluency, we examined the relationship between word reading efficiency (WRE) and contextual oral reading rate (ORR), the degree to which they overlap across different comprehension measures, whether oral language (semantics and syntax) predicts ORR beyond contributions of word-level skills, and whether the WRE–ORR relationship varies based on different reader profiles. Assessing reading and language of average readers, poor decoders, and poor comprehenders, ages 10 to 14, ORR was the strongest predictor of comprehension across various formats; WRE contributed no unique variance after taking ORR into account. Findings indicated that semantics, not syntax, contributed to ORR. Poor comprehenders performed below average on measures of ORR, despite average WRE, expanding previous findings suggesting specific weaknesses in ORR for this group. Together, findings suggest that ORR draws upon skills beyond those captured by WRE and suggests a role for oral language (semantics) in ORR. PMID:23667307

Does the Noun Phrase Accessibility Hierarchy Predict the Difficulty Order in the Acquisition of Japanese Relative Clauses?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ozeki, Hiromi; Shirai, Yasuhiro

2007-01-01

Although Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) has been shown to predict the difficulty order of relative clauses (RCs) in SLA, most studies of the NPAH have been on European languages. This paper tests the prediction for Japanese. Study 1 analyzes RCs in an oral interview corpus from 90 learners of Japanese at four…

Effect of Context on Types of Hesitation Strategies Used by Iranian EFL Learners in L2 Oral Language Tests

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

rad, Shadi Khojasteh; Abdullah, Ain Nadzimah

2012-01-01

Hesitation strategies appear in speech in the form of filled or unfilled pauses, paralinguistic markers like nervous laughter or coughing, or signals which are used to justify units in the coming utterances in which the speaker struggles to produce. The main functions of these forms of hesitation strategies have been associated with speech…

Oral morphosyntactic competence as a predictor of reading comprehension in children with specific language impairment.

PubMed

Buil-Legaz, Lucía; Aguilar-Mediavilla, Eva; Rodríguez-Ferreiro, Javier

2016-07-01

Children with a diagnosis of specific language impairment (SLI) present impaired oral comprehension. According to the simple view of reading, general amodal linguistic capacity accounts for both oral and reading comprehension. Considering this, we should expect SLI children to display a reading comprehension deficit. However, previous research regarding the association between reading disorders and SLI has yielded inconsistent results. To study the influence of prior oral comprehension competence over reading comprehension during the first years of reading acquisition of bilingual Catalan-Spanish children with SLI (ages 7-8). We assessed groups of bilingual Catalan-Spanish SLI and matched control children at ages 7 and 8 with standardized reading comprehension tasks including grammatical structures, sentence and text comprehension. Early oral competence and prior non-verbal intelligence were also measured and introduced into regression analyses with the participants' reading results in order to state the relation between the comprehension of oral and written material. Although we found no significant differences between the scores of our two participant groups in the reading tasks, data regarding their early oral competence, but not non-verbal intelligence measures, significantly influence their reading outcome. The results extend our knowledge regarding the course of literacy acquisition of children with SLI and provide evidence in support of the theories that assume common linguistic processes to be responsible for both oral and reading comprehension. © 2016 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Patterns and Predictors of Language and Literacy Abilities 4-10 Years in the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

PubMed Central

Zubrick, Stephen R.; Taylor, Catherine L.; Christensen, Daniel

2015-01-01

Aims Oral language is the foundation of literacy. Naturally, policies and practices to promote children’s literacy begin in early childhood and have a strong focus on developing children’s oral language, especially for children with known risk factors for low language ability. The underlying assumption is that children’s progress along the oral to literate continuum is stable and predictable, such that low language ability foretells low literacy ability. This study investigated patterns and predictors of children’s oral language and literacy abilities at 4, 6, 8 and 10 years. The study sample comprised 2,316 to 2,792 children from the first nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Six developmental patterns were observed, a stable middle-high pattern, a stable low pattern, an improving pattern, a declining pattern, a fluctuating low pattern, and a fluctuating middle-high pattern. Most children (69%) fit a stable middle-high pattern. By contrast, less than 1% of children fit a stable low pattern. These results challenged the view that children’s progress along the oral to literate continuum is stable and predictable. Findings Multivariate logistic regression was used to investigate risks for low literacy ability at 10 years and sensitivity-specificity analysis was used to examine the predictive utility of the multivariate model. Predictors were modelled as risk variables with the lowest level of risk as the reference category. In the multivariate model, substantial risks for low literacy ability at 10 years, in order of descending magnitude, were: low school readiness, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander status and low language ability at 8 years. Moderate risks were high temperamental reactivity, low language ability at 4 years, and low language ability at 6 years. The following risk factors were not statistically significant in the multivariate model: Low maternal consistency, low family income, health care card, child not read to at home, maternal smoking, maternal education, family structure, temperamental persistence, and socio-economic area disadvantage. The results of the sensitivity-specificity analysis showed that a well-fitted multivariate model featuring risks of substantive magnitude did not do particularly well in predicting low literacy ability at 10 years. PMID:26352436

Exploring ESL students' understanding of mathematics in the early years: factors that make a difference

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miller, Jodie; Warren, Elizabeth

2014-12-01

Students living in disadvantaged contexts and whose second language is English (ESL) are at risk of not succeeding in school mathematics. It has been internationally recognised that students' socioeconomic background and their achievements in mathematics is more pronounced for Australian students (Thomson et al. 2011). This gap is even more prominent for students who also have English as their second language (ESL). This paper explores the impact of the representations, oral language and engagement in mathematics (RoleM) learning experiences on ESL students' performance in mathematics in the early years (foundation-year 2). All students participating in the study are from disadvantaged contexts ( n = 461). The sample comprised 328 students who identified themselves as having English as a second language (ESL) and 133 mainstream students. Pre- and post-tests were conducted at the commencement and completion of each school year. All students demonstrated a significant improvement on their post-test scores, with ESL students displaying greater gains than the mainstream students. Additionally, students' results were meeting norm-referenced expectations for students of the same age. A hypothesised taxonomy was developed to further investigate which types of test items foundation ESL students displayed greatest gains. ESL students again outperformed the mainstream cohort on all levels of test categorisation, including questions that were linguistically and conceptually challenging for foundation students.

Role of Oral Proficiency on Reading Comprehension: Within-Language and Cross-Language Relationships

PubMed Central

Uchikoshi, Yuuko; Yang, Lu; Lohr, Brandi; Leung, Genevieve

2016-01-01

This longitudinal study examined the role of oral proficiency, as measured with elicited narratives using a wordless picture book, Frog Where are You? (Meyer, 1969/1994), on English reading comprehension with a total of 102 English Language Learners (ELLs), including both Spanish and Cantonese speakers. Narrative samples were collected in the winter of first grade and reading skills were assessed on the same children one year later in second grade. Children were enrolled in either bilingual programs or mainstream programs. Multiple regression results show it was not the quantity and variety of words used in the narratives that predicted English reading comprehension one year later. Instead, the ability to produce a coherent oral narrative, in either the home language or English, explained a small variance in English reading comprehension for both English learner groups. These findings highlight the importance of examining narrative skills, especially as measured by narrative structure. Implications for parents and educators are discussed. PMID:28717774

An Investigation into the Effect of Play-Based Instruction on the Development of Play Skills and Oral Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stagnitti, Karen; Bailey, Alison; Hudspeth Stevenson, Edwina; Reynolds, Emily; Kidd, Evan

2016-01-01

The current study investigated the influence of a play-based curriculum on the development of pretend play skills and oral language in children attending their first year of formal schooling. In this quasi-experimental design, two groups of children were followed longitudinally across the first 6 months of their first year at school. The children…

Effects of a Computer-Based Early Reading Program on the Early Reading and Oral Language Skills of At-Risk Preschool Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Huffstetter, Mary; King, James R.; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J.; Schneider, Jenifer J.; Powell-Smith, Kelly A.

2010-01-01

This study examined the effects of a computer-based early reading program (Headsprout Early Reading) on the oral language and early reading skills of at-risk preschool children. In a pretest-posttest control group design, 62 children were randomly assigned to receive supplemental instruction with Headsprout Early Reading (experimental group) or…

Authentic Oral Language Production and Interaction in CALL: An Evolving Conceptual Framework for the Use of Learning Analytics within the SpeakApps Project

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nic Giolla Mhichíl, Mairéad; van Engen, Jeroen; Ó Ciardúbháin, Colm; Ó Cléircín, Gearóid; Appel, Christine

2014-01-01

This paper sets out to construct and present the evolving conceptual framework of the SpeakApps projects to consider the application of learning analytics to facilitate synchronous and asynchronous oral language skills within this CALL context. Drawing from both the CALL and wider theoretical and empirical literature of learner analytics, the…

The Effects of Pre-Task Planning and On-line Planning on Fluency, Complexity, and Accuracy in L2 Monologic Oral Production.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yuan, Fangyuan; Ellis, Rod

2003-01-01

Investigated the effects of both pre-task and on-line planning on second language (L2) oral production. Results show that pre-task planning enhances grammatical complexity while on-line planning positively influences accuracy and grammatical complexity. Pre-task planners also produced more fluent and lexically varied language than the on-line…

Teachers and Group Size as Variables in Stimulating Oral Language Development with Grade One Disadvantaged Children. IMRID, Volume III, No. 1.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dunn, Lloyd M.; And Others

The purpose of this study was to evaluate both the relative effectiveness of different instructional personnel and the effect of differences in group size upon oral language acquisition for educationally disadvantaged first grade children. Involved in the treatment program were 23 classes in eight schools, all serving lower class areas of a…

Writing Their Way into Talk: Emergent Bilinguals' Emergent Literacy Practices as Pathways to Peer Interaction and Oral Language Growth

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bernstein, Katie A.

2017-01-01

This paper explores the idea that young children's emergent literacy practices can be tools for mediating peer interaction, and that, therefore, literacy, even in its earliest stages, can support oral language development, particularly for emergent bilinguals. The paper draws on data collected during a year-long ethnographic study of 11 Nepali-…

Word Reading and Word Spelling in French Adult Literacy Students: The Relationship with Oral Language Skills

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eme, Elsa; Lambert, Eric; Alamargot, Denis

2014-01-01

We analysed word reading and spelling in French adults with low levels of literacy (A-IL). As well as examining phonological and lexical processes, we explored the relationship between literacy and oral language skills. Fifty-two adult literacy students were compared with reading level-matched pupils in Years 1-3 of primary school on reading tasks…

Development of Oral Reading Fluency in Children with Speech or Language Impairments: A Growth Curve Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Puranik, Cynthia S.; Petscher, Yaacov; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Catts, Hugh W.; Lonigan, Christopher J.

2008-01-01

This longitudinal study used piece-wise growth curve analyses to examine growth patterns in oral reading fluency for 1,991 students with speech impairments (SI) or language impairments (LI) from first through third grade. The main finding of this study was that a diagnosis of SI or LI can have a detrimental and persistent effect on early reading…

The Structure of Oral Language and Reading and Their Relation to Comprehension in Kindergarten through Grade 2

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foorman, Barbara R.; Herrera, Sarah; Petscher, Yaacov; Mitchell, Alison; Truckenmiller, Adrea

2015-01-01

This study examined the structure of oral language and reading and their relation to comprehension from a latent variable modeling perspective in Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. Participants were students in Kindergarten (n = 218), Grade 1 (n = 372), and Grade 2 (n = 273), attending Title 1 schools. Students were administered phonological…

Interventions for reading difficulties: a comparison of response to intervention by ELL and EFL struggling readers.

PubMed

Lovett, Maureen W; De Palma, Maria; Frijters, Jan; Steinbach, Karen; Temple, Meredith; Benson, Nancy; Lacerenza, Léa

2008-01-01

This article explores whether struggling readers from different primary language backgrounds differ in response to phonologically based remediation. Following random assignment to one of three reading interventions or to a special education reading control program, reading and reading-related outcomes of 166 struggling readers were assessed before, during, and following 105 intervention hours. Struggling readers met criteria for reading disability, were below average in oral language and verbal skills, and varied in English as a first language (EFL) versus English-language learner (ELL) status. The research-based interventions proved superior to the special education control on both reading outcomes and rate of growth. No differences were revealed for children of EFL or ELL status in intervention outcomes or growth during intervention. Oral language abilities at entry were highly predictive of final outcomes and of reading growth during intervention, with greater language impairment being associated with greater growth.

Obstructive sleep apnea and oral language disorders.

PubMed

Corrêa, Camila de Castro; Cavalheiro, Maria Gabriela; Maximino, Luciana Paula; Weber, Silke Anna Theresa

Children and adolescents with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may have consequences, such as daytime sleepiness and learning, memory, and attention disorders, that may interfere in oral language. To verify, based on the literature, whether OSA in children was correlated to oral language disorders. A literature review was carried out in the Lilacs, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases using the descriptors "Child Language" AND "Obstructive Sleep Apnea". Articles that did not discuss the topic and included children with other comorbidities rather than OSA were excluded. In total, no articles were found at Lilacs, 37 at PubMed, 47 at Scopus, and 38 at Web of Science databases. Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, six studies were selected, all published from 2004 to 2014. Four articles demonstrated an association between primary snoring/OSA and receptive language and four articles showed an association with expressive language. It is noteworthy that the articles used different tools and considered different levels of language. The late diagnosis and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a delay in verbal skill acquisition. The professionals who work with children should be alert, as most of the phonetic sounds are acquired during ages 3-7 years, which is also the peak age for hypertrophy of the tonsils and childhood OSA. Copyright © 2016 Associação Brasileira de Otorrinolaringologia e Cirurgia Cérvico-Facial. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. All rights reserved.

A Mozart is not a Pavarotti: singers outperform instrumentalists on foreign accent imitation

PubMed Central

Christiner, Markus; Reiterer, Susanne Maria

2015-01-01

Recent findings have shown that people with higher musical aptitude were also better in oral language imitation tasks. However, whether singing capacity and instrument playing contribute differently to the imitation of speech has been ignored so far. Research has just recently started to understand that instrumentalists develop quite distinct skills when compared to vocalists. In the same vein the role of the vocal motor system in language acquisition processes has poorly been investigated as most investigations (neurobiological and behavioral) favor to examine speech perception. We set out to test whether the vocal motor system can influence an ability to learn, produce and perceive new languages by contrasting instrumentalists and vocalists. Therefore, we investigated 96 participants, 27 instrumentalists, 33 vocalists and 36 non-musicians/non-singers. They were tested for their abilities to imitate foreign speech: unknown language (Hindi), second language (English) and their musical aptitude. Results revealed that both instrumentalists and vocalists have a higher ability to imitate unintelligible speech and foreign accents than non-musicians/non-singers. Within the musician group, vocalists outperformed instrumentalists significantly. Conclusion: First, adaptive plasticity for speech imitation is not reliant on audition alone but also on vocal-motor induced processes. Second, vocal flexibility of singers goes together with higher speech imitation aptitude. Third, vocal motor training, as of singers, may speed up foreign language acquisition processes. PMID:26379537

A Mozart is not a Pavarotti: singers outperform instrumentalists on foreign accent imitation.

PubMed

Christiner, Markus; Reiterer, Susanne Maria

2015-01-01

Recent findings have shown that people with higher musical aptitude were also better in oral language imitation tasks. However, whether singing capacity and instrument playing contribute differently to the imitation of speech has been ignored so far. Research has just recently started to understand that instrumentalists develop quite distinct skills when compared to vocalists. In the same vein the role of the vocal motor system in language acquisition processes has poorly been investigated as most investigations (neurobiological and behavioral) favor to examine speech perception. We set out to test whether the vocal motor system can influence an ability to learn, produce and perceive new languages by contrasting instrumentalists and vocalists. Therefore, we investigated 96 participants, 27 instrumentalists, 33 vocalists and 36 non-musicians/non-singers. They were tested for their abilities to imitate foreign speech: unknown language (Hindi), second language (English) and their musical aptitude. Results revealed that both instrumentalists and vocalists have a higher ability to imitate unintelligible speech and foreign accents than non-musicians/non-singers. Within the musician group, vocalists outperformed instrumentalists significantly. First, adaptive plasticity for speech imitation is not reliant on audition alone but also on vocal-motor induced processes. Second, vocal flexibility of singers goes together with higher speech imitation aptitude. Third, vocal motor training, as of singers, may speed up foreign language acquisition processes.

Reading and Language Learning: Crosslinguistic Constraints on Second Language Reading Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koda, Keiko

2007-01-01

The ultimate goal of reading is to construct text meaning based on visually encoded information. Essentially, it entails converting print into language and then to the message intended by the author. It is hardly accidental, therefore, that, in all languages, reading builds on oral language competence and that learning to read uniformly requires…

Native Language Teachers in a Struggle for Language and Cultural Survival

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Suina, Joseph H.

2004-01-01

Language shift among New Mexico Pueblo Indians threatens the loss of their oral-based cultures. Language revival for many Pueblos has resulted in school programs in which students are easily accessible and teachers are accountable to tribes rather than the state. Finding "Pueblo space" for the Native language in school, where it was…

Comparison of Oral Language Usage among English Language Learners Diagnosed with a Learning Disability and Those in General Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pray, Lisa

2009-01-01

The investigator compared the linguistic characteristics of Spanish and English language samples taken from English language learners (ELLs) diagnosed with an academic learning disability (LD) and ELLs in general education to determine if the errors and characteristics of their language use differ. There was a statistically significant difference…

The Place of Writing in Preserving an Oral Language.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bennett, Ruth; Mattz, Pam; Jackson, Silish; Campbell, Harold

This paper shows how a traditional story can be used to teach an indigenous language, and how the inclusion of writing can help students learn the language effectively. Hupa people have told Coyote stories for thousands of years. Such Hupa stories are incorporated in Hupa language instruction using the Language Proficiency Method, which involves a…

The Effects of Language Environment and Oral Language Ability on Phonological Production Proficiency in Bilingual Spanish-English Speaking Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scarpino, Shelley E.

2011-01-01

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine if phonological production proficiency in bilingual Spanish-English preschoolers could be predicted by their language environment, language ability, and phonological production proficiency in their other language. Method: Participants were 199 Latino children and their families. Children ranged in age…

Language of Instruction as a Moderator for Transfer of Reading Comprehension Skills among Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carlo, María S.; Barr, Christopher D.; August, Diane; Calderón, Margarita; Artzi, Lauren

2014-01-01

This three-year longitudinal study investigated the role of language of instruction in moderating the relationships between initial levels of English oral language proficiency and Spanish reading comprehension and growth in English reading comprehension. The study followed Spanish-speaking English language learners in English-only literacy…

Fractionating nonword repetition: The contributions of short-term memory and oromotor praxis are different

PubMed Central

Alcock, Katherine J.; Carey, Daniel; Bergström, Lina; Karmiloff-Smith, Annette; Dick, Frederic

2017-01-01

The ability to reproduce novel words is a sensitive marker of language impairment across a variety of developmental disorders. Nonword repetition tasks are thought to reflect phonological short-term memory skills. Yet, when children hear and then utter a word for the first time, they must transform a novel speech signal into a series of coordinated, precisely timed oral movements. Little is known about how children’s oromotor speed, planning and co-ordination abilities might influence their ability to repeat novel nonwords, beyond the influence of higher-level cognitive and linguistic skills. In the present study, we tested 35 typically developing children between the ages of 5−8 years on measures of nonword repetition, digit span, memory for non-verbal sequences, reading fluency, oromotor praxis, and oral diadochokinesis. We found that oromotor praxis uniquely predicted nonword repetition ability in school-age children, and that the variance it accounted for was additional to that of digit span, memory for non-verbal sequences, articulatory rate (measured by oral diadochokinesis) as well as reading fluency. We conclude that the ability to compute and execute novel sensorimotor transformations affects the production of novel words. These results have important implications for understanding motor/language relations in neurodevelopmental disorders. PMID:28704379

Krio Language Manual. Revised Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Peace Corps, Freetown (Sierra Leone).

Instructional materials for Krio, the creole spoken in Sierra Leone, are designed for Peace Corps volunteer language instruction and intended for the use of both students and instructors. Fifty-six units provide practice in language skills, particularly oral, geared to the daily language needs of volunteers. Lessons are designed for audio-lingual…

Academic Language in Early Childhood Classrooms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnes, Erica M.; Grifenhagen, Jill F.; Dickinson, David K.

2016-01-01

This article defines academic language by examining the central features of vocabulary, syntax, and discourse function. Examples of each feature are provided, as well as methods of identifying them in oral language and printed text. We describe a yearlong study that found teachers used different types of academic language based on instructional…

Writing Signed Languages: What for? What Form?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grushkin, Donald A.

2017-01-01

Signed languages around the world have tended to maintain an "oral," unwritten status. Despite the advantages of possessing a written form of their language, signed language communities typically resist and reject attempts to create such written forms. The present article addresses many of the arguments against written forms of signed…

Speech-Language Pathologists' Attitudes and Involvement Regarding Language and Reading.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Casby, Michael W.

1988-01-01

The study analyzed responses of 105 public school speech-language pathologists to a survey of perceptions of their knowledge, competencies, educational needs, and involvement with children regarding the relationship between oral language and reading disorders. Most reported they were not very involved with children with reading disorders though…

Early speech development in Koolen de Vries syndrome limited by oral praxis and hypotonia.

PubMed

Morgan, Angela T; Haaften, Leenke van; van Hulst, Karen; Edley, Carol; Mei, Cristina; Tan, Tiong Yang; Amor, David; Fisher, Simon E; Koolen, David A

2018-01-01

Communication disorder is common in Koolen de Vries syndrome (KdVS), yet its specific symptomatology has not been examined, limiting prognostic counselling and application of targeted therapies. Here we examine the communication phenotype associated with KdVS. Twenty-nine participants (12 males, 4 with KANSL1 variants, 25 with 17q21.31 microdeletion), aged 1.0-27.0 years were assessed for oral-motor, speech, language, literacy, and social functioning. Early history included hypotonia and feeding difficulties. Speech and language development was delayed and atypical from onset of first words (2; 5-3; 5 years of age on average). Speech was characterised by apraxia (100%) and dysarthria (93%), with stuttering in some (17%). Speech therapy and multi-modal communication (e.g., sign-language) was critical in preschool. Receptive and expressive language abilities were typically commensurate (79%), both being severely affected relative to peers. Children were sociable with a desire to communicate, although some (36%) had pragmatic impairments in domains, where higher-level language was required. A common phenotype was identified, including an overriding 'double hit' of oral hypotonia and apraxia in infancy and preschool, associated with severely delayed speech development. Remarkably however, speech prognosis was positive; apraxia resolved, and although dysarthria persisted, children were intelligible by mid-to-late childhood. In contrast, language and literacy deficits persisted, and pragmatic deficits were apparent. Children with KdVS require early, intensive, speech motor and language therapy, with targeted literacy and social language interventions as developmentally appropriate. Greater understanding of the linguistic phenotype may help unravel the relevance of KANSL1 to child speech and language development.

Oral Communicative Competence of Primary School Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mayo, Isabel Cantón; Barrioluengo, Elena Pérez

2017-01-01

Oral communicative competence enables speakers of a language to interact effectively with each other. Oral communicative competence includes a wide semantic field since the oral expression is a way of expression for the thought and it provides feedback and develops by means of the linguistic function (Vygotsky, 1992; Piaget, 1983a, 1983b; Pinker,…

Interactions between and among Heritage Language Learners and Second Language Learners during Collaborative Writing Activities: How Learners Attend to Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walls, Laura

2013-01-01

This study investigates the dynamics in the Spanish classroom between heritage language learner (HLL) dyads, second language learner (L2L) dyads, and mixed HLL-L2L dyads. Specifically, it examines oral, written and embodied discourse that informs our understanding of how learners attend to language. Analysis for this dissertation examined…

Predictors of English Reading Comprehension: Cantonese-Speaking English Language Learners in the U.S.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Uchikoshi, Yuuko

2013-01-01

In this paper, first language (L1) and second language (L2) oral language and word reading skills were used as predictors to devise a model of reading comprehension in young Cantonese-speaking English language learners (ELLs) in the United States. L1 and L2 language and literacy measures were collected from a total of 101 Cantonese-speaking ELLs…

Language development and everyday functioning of children with hearing loss assessed at 3 years of age.

PubMed

Ching, Teresa Y C; Crowe, Kathryn; Martin, Vivienne; Day, Julia; Mahler, Nicole; Youn, Samantha; Street, Laura; Cook, Cassandra; Orsini, Julia

2010-04-01

This paper reports language ability and everyday functioning of 133 children with hearing impairment who were evaluated at 3 years of age, as part of the Longitudinal Outcomes of Children with Hearing Impairment (LOCHI) study. The language abilities of children were evaluated using the Preschool Language Scale (PLS-4), Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), Diagnostic Evaluation of Articulation and Phonology (DEAP) and Child Development Inventory (CDI). Everyday functioning of children was evaluated by interviewing parents using the Parents' Evaluation of Aural/oral performance of Children (PEACH) questionnaire. There were significant correlations among language measures, and also between the standardized language measures and the PEACH. On average, children who had language deficits exhibited difficulties in everyday functioning. The evidence lends support to a systematic use of parents' observations to evaluate communicative functioning of children in real life. On average, children's language attainment decreased as hearing loss increased, more so for children of less highly educated parents. Factors that were not significantly associated with speech and language outcomes at 3 years were age of amplification and socioeconomic status. As multiple factors affect children's outcomes, it will be possible to examine their effects on outcomes of children when all data in the LOCHI study are available.

Dressing and Being: Appraising Costume and Identity in English Second-Language Drama

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeCoursey, C. A.

2014-01-01

In many cultures, L2 students are reticent to engage in spontaneous oral L2 production. In Chinese culture, social norms tend to place value on accuracy, which tends to inhibit learners from authentic oral use of the target language. The purpose of this study was to consider the impact of costume, as used in L2 drama, on L2 selves, and attitudes…

Le Facteur d'Adaptation dans la Comprehension de l'Anglais Oral (The Adaptation Factor in the Understanding of Spoken English). Melanges Pedagogiques, 1972.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roussel, F.

Progress in the teaching of oral comprehension depends partly on the isolation of factors which block comprehension. Research in conjunction with an experimental course in English as a second language led to the definition of errors due to: (1) insufficient knowledge of the language and the cultural context of its use, and (2) a failure to…

Toward a domain theory in English as a second language.

PubMed

Strong-Krause, Diane

2009-01-01

This paper demonstrates how domain theory development is enhanced by using both theoretical data and empirical data. The study explored the domain of speaking English as a second language (ESL) comparing hypothetical data on speaking tasks provided by an experienced teacher and by a certified ACTFL oral proficiency interview rater with observed data from scores on a computer-delivered speaking exam. While the hypothetical data and observed data showed similar patterns in task difficulty in general, some tasks were identified as being much easier or harder than expected. These differences raise questions not only about test task design but also about the theoretical underpinnings of the domain. The results of the study suggest that this approach, where theory and data are examined together, will improve test design as well as benefit domain theory development.

The interface between spoken and written language: developmental disorders.

PubMed

Hulme, Charles; Snowling, Margaret J

2014-01-01

We review current knowledge about reading development and the origins of difficulties in learning to read. We distinguish between the processes involved in learning to decode print, and the processes involved in reading for meaning (reading comprehension). At a cognitive level, difficulties in learning to read appear to be predominantly caused by deficits in underlying oral language skills. The development of decoding skills appears to depend critically upon phonological language skills, and variations in phoneme awareness, letter-sound knowledge and rapid automatized naming each appear to be causally related to problems in learning to read. Reading comprehension difficulties in contrast appear to be critically dependent on a range of oral language comprehension skills (including vocabulary knowledge and grammatical, morphological and pragmatic skills).

The Gap Between Spanish-speakers' Word Reading and Word Knowledge: A Longitudinal Study

PubMed Central

Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K.

2011-01-01

This longitudinal study modeled growth rates, from age 4.5 to 11, in English and Spanish oral language and word reading skills among 173 Spanish-speaking children from low-income households. Individual growth modeling was employed using scores from standardized measures of word reading, expressive vocabulary, and verbal short-term language memory. The trajectories demonstrate that students' rates of growth and overall ability in word reading were on par with national norms. In contrast, students' oral language skills started out below national norms and their rates of growth, although surpassing the national rates, were not sufficient to reach age-appropriate levels. The results underscore the need for increased and sustained attention to promoting this population's language development. PMID:21848955

Neurofeedback training with a motor imagery-based BCI: neurocognitive improvements and EEG changes in the elderly.

PubMed

Gomez-Pilar, Javier; Corralejo, Rebeca; Nicolas-Alonso, Luis F; Álvarez, Daniel; Hornero, Roberto

2016-11-01

Neurofeedback training (NFT) has shown to be promising and useful to rehabilitate cognitive functions. Recently, brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) were used to restore brain plasticity by inducing brain activity with an NFT. In our study, we hypothesized that an NFT with a motor imagery-based BCI (MI-BCI) could enhance cognitive functions related to aging effects. To assess the effectiveness of our MI-BCI application, 63 subjects (older than 60 years) were recruited. This novel application was used by 31 subjects (NFT group). Their Luria neuropsychological test scores were compared with the remaining 32 subjects, who did not perform NFT (control group). Electroencephalogram changes measured by relative power (RP) endorsed cognitive potential findings under study: visuospatial, oral language, memory, intellectual and attention functions. Three frequency bands were selected to assess cognitive changes: 12, 18, and 21 Hz (bandwidth 3 Hz). Significant increases (p < 0.01) in the RP of these frequency bands were found. Moreover, results from cognitive tests showed significant improvements (p < 0.01) in four cognitive functions after performing five NFT sessions: visuospatial, oral language, memory, and intellectual. This established evidence in the association between NFT performed by a MI-BCI and enhanced cognitive performance. Therefore, it could be a novel approach to help elderly people.

Gender Issues and Language Articulation; a Brief Look at Pros of Gender Neutral Language Articulation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ebrahimi, Pouria

2009-01-01

As with the language articulated by learners--in both oral and written form--the supremacy of a masculine language use is witnessed. This brings to light the fact that gender has been excessively an unobserved factor in the process of language teaching. Although learners are apparently used to forming masculine-centered articulation, non-sexist…

Benefits of Multisensory Structured Language Instruction for At-Risk Foreign Language Learners: A Comparison Study of High School Spanish Students.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sparks, Richard L.; Artzer, Marjorie; Patton, Jon; Ganschow, Leonore; Miller, Karen; Hordubay, Dorothy J.; Walsh, Geri

1998-01-01

A study examined the benefits of multisensory structured language (MSL) instruction in Spanish for 39 high school students at risk for foreign-language learning difficulties and 16 controls. On measures of oral and written foreign-language proficiency, the MSL and control groups scored significantly higher than those instructed using traditional…

A Quantitative Action Research on Promoting Confidence in a Foreign Language Classroom: Implications for Second Language Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doqaruni, Vahid Rahmani

2014-01-01

Research has revealed that second language learners often seem passive and reticent in language classrooms. In the age of globalization, however, there is an urgent need for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers to enhance their reticent students' confidence to help them take part more actively in classroom oral activities. In line with…

Preparation a l'Autonomie en Expression Orale. (Preparation for Autonomy in Oral Communication). Melanges Pedagogiques, 1972.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Boulanger, C.

This article deals with the issue of gaining proficiency in oral expression in a second language. A functional approach to teaching oral proficiency is outlined, an approach which focuses on the audience as a determining factor in the speaker's linguistic output. Claims in the article are based on an experiment in the teaching of oral proficiency…

Oral literacy demand of preventive dental visits in a pediatric medical office: a pilot study.

PubMed

Kranz, Ashley M; Pahel, Bhavna T; Rozier, R Gary

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the oral literacy demands placed on parents of young children during preventive dental visits in a pediatric medical office. Transcripts of audio recordings for 15 pediatric medical visits were analyzed to assess the oral literacy demand of the visit, as measured by use of terminology, language complexity, and structural characteristics of the dialogue. Parent-completed surveys were used to determine recall of dental concepts discussed during the visit. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated to identify relationships among these measures and parental recall of the visit. Visits were interactive and used limited jargon and uncomplicated language. Oral literacy demand measures were associated with each other. Parental recall of the visit was associated with measures of high oral literacy demand. Assessing measures of oral literacy demand is a novel method for examining provider communication used during preventive dental visits in a pediatric medical office. Providers displayed low oral literacy demand when communicating with parents. Parental recall of dental concepts, however, was associated unexpectedly with higher oral literacy demand. Further research should examine a larger sample size and the effect of measures of oral literacy demand among low- and high-literacy patients.

Skype Videoconferencing for Less Commonly Taught Languages: Examining the Effects on Students' Foreign Language Anxiety

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Terantino, Joe

2014-01-01

This study compared students' foreign language anxiety levels while completing oral assessments administered face-to-face (F2F) and via Skype videoconferencing for university courses delivered under the self-instructional language program (SILP) model (Dunkel, Brill, & Kohl, 2002). Data were gathered by administering a modified Foreign…

The Language Exchange Programme: Plugging the Gap in Formal Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beaven, Tita; Gutiérrez, Mara Fuertes; Motzo, Anna

2017-01-01

In the context of distance language learning, speaking is frequently perceived as the most challenging skill; this paper reports on a 12 week summer language exchange programme providing students with new ways of practising their oral abilities. Students who completed an undergraduate beginners' language module took part in regular online,…

The Effects of Mode and Task Complexity on Second Language Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vasylets, Olena; Gilabert, Roger; Manchón, Rosa M.

2017-01-01

Taking a psycholinguistic orientation within task-based language teaching scholarship, this study investigated the effects of mode (oral vs. written) and task complexity on second language (L2) performance. The participants were 78 Catalan/Spanish learners of English as a foreign language. Half of the participants performed the simple and complex…

Literate Language Intervention with High-Need Prekindergarten Children: A Randomized Trial

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillips, Beth M.; Tabulda, Galiya; Ingrole, Smriti A.; Webb Burris, Pam; Sedgwick, T. Kayla; Chen, Shiyi

2016-01-01

Purpose: The present article reports on the implementation and results of a randomized intervention trial targeting the literate language skills of prekindergarten children without identified language disorders but with low oral language skills. Method: Children (N = 82; 45 boys and 37 girls) were screened-in and randomized to a business-as-usual…