An Investigation of the Demands on Oral Language Skills of Learning Disabled Students in Secondary Classrooms

Abstract

The demands placed upon students in mainstream secondary classrooms by the oral language behaviors of teachers were investigated by applying 12 categories of utterance types to audiotape-recorded class sessions. Data were analyzed for the total group of 32 teachers, for junior and senior high teachers as two independent groups, and for teachers of English, mathematics, science and social studies as four independent groups. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in favor of lectures over questions, commands over checks of understanding of commands, and commands over feedback. Results support a conclusion that the lecture format of secondary core classrooms does not take into account the learning characteristics of learning disabled students.