Oral Communication Ability Research Articles

A concept-environment for computer-based augmentative and alternative communication founded on a systematic review

IntroductionLocked-In Syndrome is admittedly the worst case of motor and speech impairment, it seriously damages the ability of oral and gestural communication of patients. In recent years, alternative and augmentative communication technology has provided resources to restore these patients' ability to communicate.MethodsIn order to relate and classify the main methods with that purpose, this work conducted a systematic review on several journal databases.ResultsWe found 203 related papers and 55 of them were selected to compose the study. After that, we classified them into three major groups and we identified the main difficulties when using each approach.ConclusionIn order to overcome these difficulties, we propose a new system concept to develop an adaptive, robust and low cost communication environment. The proposed system is composed of five modules: data entry, communication, aid to the caregiver and external interaction.

A Systematic Review on Methods and Techniques for Optimizing Assistive Virtual Keyboards

Locked-In Syndrome is admittedly the worst case of motor and speech impairment, seriously damaging the ability of oral and gestural communication of patients. In recent years, alternative and augmentative communication technology has provided resources to restore these patients' ability to communicate. Among the various methods and existing communication software, we can highlight the virtual keyboard. However, the data entry for these keyboards is considerably slower than entering information through physical keyboards. In order to identify the main approaches employed to optimize the data entry on virtual keyboards, we performed a systematic review by searching for papers in databases. As a result, we found 250 articles and selected 31 papers among them to compose this research. Analyzing these articles, we identified five methods for optimizing data entry performance and 15 ways of implementing them. In addition, this review contains a critical analysis regarding the optimization methods and assistive virtual keyboards.

Self-efficacy Perception of Oral Communication Ability among English as a Second Language (ESL) Technical Students

The declining level of the English language proficiency among Malaysian graduates has caused great concern among employers in Malaysia. Many studies have been conducted on self-efficacy in second and foreign language settings; however, there is a paucity of research on self-efficacy in relation to speaking ability in second language learning, especially among technical college students in Malaysia. This study has been conducted to investigate differences, if any, in self-efficacy in speaking English among 60 technical college ESL students based on gender during two different semesters. Research was conducted using a questionnaire adapted from previous research. The students’ perceived self-efficacy of speaking ability was measured using three constructs, namely ability, activity perception and aspiration. In general, the findings have shown that female students and Semester 5 students tended to possess high levels of self-efficacy. Implications of the findings in relation to theory and practice of self-efficacy and speaking proficiency are further discussed in the paper.

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

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.

Students’ Perceptions toward Using Classroom Debate to Develop Critical Thinking and Oral Communication Ability

The purpose of this study was to make inquiries about students’ perceptions on employing classroom debate toimprove critical thinking and oral communication ability. Sixteen undergraduate students were randomlyassigned to a group, and took part in debates for nine sessions throughout one whole semester. Part of the datawas collected through a survey questionnaire including twenty one statements using 5-point Likert scale.Students were also provided with a number of open-ended questions to write down their perceptions about theclassroom debate. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a number of volunteeredparticipants. Overall, the students believed that the classroom debate was a constructive learning activity. Therespondents believed that the debates helped improve their critical thinking skills and oral communication ability.In addition, as the students claimed, other benefits of the debates included mastering the course content, boostingconfidence, overcoming the stage fright, and improving team work skills.

Relationships of Health Literacy, Health Behavior, and Health Status Regarding Infectious Respiratory Diseases: Application of a Skill-Based Measure

This study aimed to explain the relationships among health literacy, health behavior, and health status, using a newly developed skills-based measure of health literacy regarding respiratory infectious diseases. This instrument was designed to measure individuals’ reading, understanding, and calculating ability, as well as their oral communication and Internet-based information-seeking abilities. A pilot survey was conducted with 489 residents in Beijing, China, to test the reliability and validity of the new measure. Next, a larger study with 3,222 residents in three cities with multistage stratified cluster sampling was implemented to validate a latent variable model (goodness of fit index = 0.918, root mean square residual = 0.076). In this model higher educational attainment (β = 0.356) and more health knowledge (β = 0.306) were positively and directly associated with greater health literacy skill, while age was negatively associated with it (β = − 0.341). Age (β = 0.201) and health knowledge (β = 0.246) had positive and direct relationship with health behavior, which was, in turn, positively associated with health status (β = 0.209). The results illustrate the complex relationships among these constructs and should be considered when developing respiratory intervention strategies to promote health behavior and health status.

Oral English Teaching Context Construction Based on New Media Environment

Along with the increasing requirement of society to the students English ability, college students' English learning should focus on students' practical English comprehensive ability, especially for the purpose of the ability of oral communication. This paper discussed the important role of the construction of university spoken English context to oral capability, and it proposed the strategies of the university English context construction based on new media environment.

Long‐term improvements in oral communication skills and quality of peer relations in children with cochlear implants: parental testimony

Few research studies have examined longitudinal improvements in oral communication skills and quality of peer relationships of children with implants. Moreover, although the emerging literature suggests that improvement in social functioning follows improvement in oral communication, it is still unknown what factors enhance or impede the relations between these constructs. Based on parent interviews, the current study examined the long-term improvements in speech and oral language skills and relationships with hearing peers in 19 implanted children. Results demonstrate that on average, children continue to improve in oral communication skills and quality of peer relationships even years after implantation, especially those with initial poorer skills. While oral communication ability and quality of peer relationships are strongly associated at each time point, gains in these two variables are associated only for some of the children. Other factors, including self-confidence and peer acceptance, seem to moderate this relationship. Qualitative data are presented to illustrate these relations among variables and to assist in theory building. The results highlight the need for more specific examination of various developmental periods in combination with the progress of oral communication and peer relationships among children with implants.

Measuring Health Literacy Regarding Infectious Respiratory Diseases: A New Skills-Based Instrument

BackgroundThere is no special instrument to measure skills-based health literacy where it concerns infectious respiratory diseases. This study aimed to explore and evaluate a new skills-based instrument on health literacy regarding respiratory infectious diseases.MethodsThis instrument was designed to measure not only an individual’s reading and numeracy ability, but also their oral communication ability and their ability to use the internet to seek information. Sixteen stimuli materials were selected to enable measurement of the skills, which were sourced from the WHO, China CDC, and Chinese Center of Health Education. The information involved the distribution of epidemics, immunization programs, early symptoms, means of disease prevention, individual’s preventative behavior, use of medications and thermometers, treatment plans and the location of hospitals. Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was employed to collect participants. Psychometric properties were used to evaluate the reliability and validity of the instrument.ResultsThe overall degree of difficulty and discrimination of the instrument were 0.693 and 0.482 respectively. The instrument demonstrated good internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.864. As for validity, six factors were extracted from 30 items, which together explained 47.3% of the instrument’s variance. And based on confirmatory factor analysis, the items were grouped into five subscales representing prose, document, quantitative, oral and internet based information seeking skills (χ2 = 9.200, P>0.05, GFI = 0.998, TLI = 0.988, AGFI = 0.992, RMSEA = 0.028).ConclusionThe new instrument has good reliability and validity, and it could be used to assess the health literacy regarding respiratory infectious disease status of different groups.

The Influential Features on Linguistic Laypersons' Evaluative Judgments of Second Language Oral Communication Ability

The Influential Features on Linguistic Laypersons' Evaluative Judgments of Second Language Oral Communication Ability

다문화가정 유아의 어린이집 경험이 의사소통능력에 미치는 영향: 어머니 한국어능력의 조절효과

This study aimed to investigate how mothers` Korean fluency and children`s experiences in child-care centers influenced the communication ability of children from multi-cultural families. The subjects were 600 children from multi-cultural families who enrolled in child-care centers in Gyeonggi province, their mothers, and 350 teachers caring for these children. The data were collected by administrating a questionnaire and analyzed with descriptive statistics and hierarchical regressions. The results of this study were as follows. The mothers` Korean fluency, number of years children had attended child-care centers, and language guidance provided by child-care centers for children from multi-cultural families all had positive effects on children`s general and oral communication ability. On the other hand, the number of years that the children had attended child-care centers had no significant effect on the children`s written communication ability, but the mothers` Korean fluency and language guidance provided by child-care centers for children from multi-cultural families had positive effects on children`s written communication ability. Finally, the mothers` Korean fluency moderated the effects of children`s child-care experiences on their communication ability. Specifically, the more fluent the mothers` Korean, the stronger the effects of children`s child-care experiences on their communication ability.

Integrated language education – a means of enhancing engineers’ social competences

The changes facing industries are necessitating a concomitant change in university curriculum. Before instigating a reform, however, education providers need to acquire an understanding of the most pertinent development needs essential for filling industrial competence gaps. The Language Centre at the Helsinki University of Technology in Finland set out to respond to the emerging competence demands by examining industrial requirements through previous research and stakeholder analyses. Surveys conducted among employers and students corroborated a need to shift focus towards oral communication abilities. More specifically, university education needs to address interaction skills essential in meetings and managerial tasks. As a result, a so-called integrated language course was designed and piloted to train students into multi-disciplinary, culturally and ethically aware communicators who possess leveraged self-leadership and managerial abilities. ‘Organisational Communications’ integrates substance matters such as finance, strategy, leadership and ethics into a language course, while harnessing the English language as a tool. Course methodology is based on project- and problem-based learning and situational learning, rooting the students in real working life by imitating authentic corporate cases and industrial contexts. The course aims to provide the students with preparedness, ability and mindset to deal with working life challenges and ways of working while applying their specialist discourse, that is, the appropriate industrial jargon and linguistic practices. The learning outcomes and student feedback from this course indicate that the pedagogy in use in this experiment, drawing from exercises emulating authentic, industrial problems, offers an effective method of preparing students for working life requirements.

The development of the oral communicative ability at pupils during the physics lessons through the project method

To organize efficiently the educational system which follows the oral communication in the study of Science and of Physics especially, an important factor being the usage of the methods which generates the interrelation in the communicative process and reflects the specific of an active educational system. As an educational system, the project method involves an educational activity which engages the pupil in a personal motivating effort, helping him to get the knowledge independently; it is a process of acquisition and knowledge transfer; it assures the participation of all the pupils in the activity depending on the capacities and the possibilities of every pupil; it allows an effective solving of the problems of the educational individualizing process; it develops the collaboration, the cooperation and the mutual help; it has as a reference point the idea of “learning by doing”, more exactly learning by acting. Working in the project, the pupil builds different competences and, practicing them, he develops the oral communicative competence both in the process of doing the project and in the final stage – of communicating the realizations.

A Study of English Communication Strategies of Thai University Students

Thai students appear to have problems communicating in English as a second language, especially students of low ability. This may be caused not only by the lack of basic grammar and vocabulary but also by deficiency in the use of appropriate communication strategies. Low-ability students experience difficulties in selecting the most appropriate strategies for many communicative contexts. This study aims to obtain empirical data on the types of communication strategies that low-ability students select which may affect their oral communication abilities. Three hundred Thai university students participated in the initial part of this study, 100 of whom were randomly selected to complete the Strategies Used in Speaking Task Inventory, which was developed to elicit responses related to their use of communication strategies. In addition, content analysis was employed to confirm the quantitative analysis. It was found that low-ability students tended to employ risk-avoidance techniques, especially time-gaining strategies, and needed assistance in developing risk-taking techniques such as social-affective, fluency-oriented, help-seeking, and circumlocution strategies.

Developing Students’ Oral Communicative Competence through Interactive Learning

For a long time, under the pressure of enter-university-examination, the middle school students only take English as one of the major subjects for entering the university, thus overlook the real goal for learning a foreign language. As a result, their communicative competence, especially the oral communicative ability are inferior, which is obviously deviated away from the ultimate goal of learning a foreign language.In this paper, I have analyzed the present situation in the middle school English learning, and reviewed some theories, especially the Social Interactionist Theory, and their effectiveness to English teaching and learning, The emphasis of the paper is on the application of the interactionist theory and how it affects and improves the students’ oral ability in English learning, thus trying to find a new way to improve the students’ oral communicative competence.

The Effects of Awareness-Raising Training on Oral Communication Strategy Use

This study examines current patterns of oral communication strategy (OCS) use, to what degree these strategies can be explicitly taught, and the extent to which strategy use can lead to improvements in oral communication ability. In a 12-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course based on a communicative approach, 62 female learners were divided into 2 groups. The strategy training group (n= 28) received metacognitive training, focusing on OCS use, whereas the control group (n= 34) received only the normal communicative course, with no explicit focus on OCSs. The effects of the training were assessed by 3 types of data collection: the participants' pre- and postcourse oral communication test scores, transcription data from the tests, and retrospective protocol data for their task performance. The findings revealed that participants in the strategy training group significantly improved their oral proficiency test scores, whereas improvements in the control group were not significant. The results of the transcription and retrospective protocol data analyses confirmed that the participants' success was partly due to an increased general awareness of OCSs and to the use of specific OCSs, such as maintenance of fluency and negotiation of meaning to solve interactional difficulties.

Performance of implanted children with developmental delays and/or behavioral disorders: retrospective analysis

Deaf children with additional disabilities are receiving cochlear implants with increasing frequency. Although it has not been the routine policy of the House Ear Institute/House Ear Clinic team to implant children with developmental delays and/or behavioral disorders, a small number of our implanted children have shown evidence of such disabilities, either before or after implantation. Retrospective analysis of the post-implant performance and educational status of 10 of these children shows that most have made only minimal gains in functional oral communication ability, despite appropriate educational and therapy services. Although we believe that some children with developmental delays or disorders may benefit from implantation, these gains may not be tapped using our current metrics of post-implant performance. Furthermore, we have found that the educational programs available to many implanted children with additional needs do not adequately support both implant-facilitated language growth and the development of alternative forms of communication.

Retaking ability tests in a selection setting: implications for practice effects, training performance, and turnover.

This field study investigated the effect of retaking identical selection tests on subsequent test scores of 4,726 candidates for law enforcement positions. For both cognitive ability and oral communication ability selection tests, candidates produced significant score increases between the 1st and 2nd and the 2nd and 3rd test administrations. Furthermore, the repeat testing relationships with posthire training performance and turnover were examined in a sample of 1,515 candidates eventually selected into the organization. As predicted from persistence and continuance commitment rationales, the number of tests necessary to gain entry into the organization was positively associated with training performance and negatively associated with turnover probability.

Test Biases of a Listening Comprehension Test Administered to Japanese and Korean High School Students : An Analysis Based on the Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory

In English language teaching in junior and senior high schools, development of listening comprehension tests focusing on oral communication abilities is needed due to the shift of the course of study toward a more communication-oriented approach (Monbusho 1989). Our previous studies (Kinoshita et al. 1996, 1998a, 1998b) reported the formation of a listening comprehension test focusing on oral communication abilities and presented an analysis of the test which was administered to Japanese and Korean high school students. The results of our previous analysis (Kinoshita et al. 1998a, 1998b) indicated that there were no significant differences between the scores of Japanese and Korean test takers, though some differences were found to be statistically significant in the performance of certain aspects of listening skills. Our previous studies, however, could not identify clearly why some differences happened because several conditions of the test takers differed. This study deals with only the test data taken from the test takers under the same condition and reanalyzes the data based on the Classical Test Theory and Item Response Theory. As a result, we find that some test items are biased by cultural differences between Japan and Korea and some differences are due to the differences of the instruction itself. To test listening comprehension abilities focusing on oral communication, it is important to take account of the cultural differences among the test takers at a high school level. Finally, our results suggest that the way to teach listening in Japan needs to be revised because Japanese test takers show poorer performance in test items focusing on everyday situations.

Listening Comprehension Test Focusing on Oral Communication Ability : Effects of the Testing Conditions on the Test Results

Due to the revisions of the guidelines of the course of study to improve communicative competence in foreign language learning in junior and senior high schools, development of listening comprehension tests focusing on oral communication abilities is needed. In 1995, we developed two trial listening comprehension tests focusing on oral communication and collected the test data from 758 high school students. After the analysis of the trial tests, we made some adjustments and designed a final test in which a marking-sheet system was adopted for grading. By comparing the results of our final test, which was administered to 800 high school students in 1996, with those of two trial tests, we can examine how the change of the testing conditions affected the test results of high school students. In this paper, the following conditions are discussed: 1) How often should the test takers listen to the monologues and dialogues on tape?-- once or twice?; 2) How should they answer the questions?-- in a written form or by a marking-sheet system?; 3) How do the changes in the dialogues affect the results of the test?, and 4) How do the adjustments of time for marking answers and reading directions affect the results of the test? According to our analysis, we find that the following conditions are important for designing a listening comprehension test: 1) It is desirable to have the students listen to the monologues and dialogues on tape only one time if they are provided with some visual aids. 2) There are no significant differences in the Discrimination Indexes between questions needing written answers and questions scored by a marking-sheet system. 3) A small change in the dialogue had a noticeable effect on the test results. Moreover, dialogues used must be realistic and interactive. 4) Adequate time for marking answers is needed most. This may suggest that Japanese high school students are weak in responding spontaneously.