Teaching English language learners has long presented challenges for teachers tasked with bringing these students to a level of language comprehension comparable to that of native speakers. These challenges and issues can lead to difficulty comprehending core academic topics for those learning the English language. "Optimizing Elementary…

A total of 42 language-deficient second- through fourth-grade children participated in an experiment investigating the effects on children's skills and self-efficacy of strategy self-verbalization during listening comprehension instruction. An equal number of boys and girls who had been placed in remedial classes received didactic instruction in…

Comparison of alpha amplitudes of 12 children with learning disabilities and 12 normally achieving controls in three task situations found no significant differences between groups in alpha amplitude but a significant task effect with the vigilance, story comprehension, and rehearsal conditions showing decreasing alpha amplitudes in both groups of…

This study compared comprehension of idioms in 66 children comprising 3 groups: normal 9 year olds, 9-year-old children with mild mental retardation, and younger normal children matched with the retarded children for receptive vocabulary age. Although the normal nine year olds comprehended the most idioms, the mentally retarded children performed…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of promoting relational thinking, using "elaborative interrogation" techniques, to facilitate the content acquisition of 36 elementary school students with mild disabilities. Results indicated that students coached in relational thinking who generated their own explanations outperformed students who…

Presents five experiments that examine the ability of first graders, fourth graders, and adults to make causal inferences that explain how an unexpected and inconsistent "outcome" follows from an initial premise in a story. Results indicate that referential and causal coherence are empirically separable and should be distinguished…

This study tested the role of visual processing speed and IQ in reading with 124 children either with or without reading disability. Results indicated that processing speed explains a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension, as does IQ. Path analyses indicated that the effect of IQ on reading is partially mediated by decoding in…

Designed to assess a reader's comprehension of items differing in contrastive vocal stress, this test consists of 64 items divided evenly between eight sentence types: declarative active, declarative passive, interrogative, and imperative, with each in a positive and negative form. The element of contrastive stress is placed on nouns functioning…

This study investigated the development and application of two widely used methods of vertical equating: Rasch and Equipercentile. The assumptions underlying both techniques are discussed. Procedures for utilization of the Rasch method are illustrated. The study was conducted to determine whether, based upon Rasch vertical equating, a local school…

The principles of cognitive psychology as they relate to rational number learning and instruction are discussed. Issues of knowledge acquisition, organization, retrieval and transfer are reviewed as they affect this area of the elementary school curriculum. Specific problems in learning about rational numbers and systematic student errors are…

Compared performance of Malaysian children with that of English children on a test into the understanding of number concepts. Findings indicate that difficulties of Malaysian children may be quite different from those of English children. Among the difficulties identified were misconceptions about the order of operation in division and…

The study compared comprehension of American Sign Language (ASL) between 12 deaf subjects in a program using Signing Exact English (SEE-2) and 14 deaf subjects in a residential program using Signed English, Pidgin Signed English, and ASL. Students exposed to SEE-2 could comprehend ASL as well as residential school peers. (Author/DB)

The study compared the effectiveness of providing elementary students with learning disabilities with either (1) instruction in both story structure and self-questioning techniques or (2) just training in story structure identification. The combined self-questioning and story structure group demonstrated the greatest gains in reading…

Effects of instructional complexity and role reciprocity within classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) programs were examined with a total of 119 students (learning disabled, low achieving, or normally achieving) in grades 2 through 5. Students in all CWPT conditions outperformed controls on a reading fluency measure; however only those in CWPT with role…

To refine methodology, a study was made of how 52 first-, third-, and fifth-grade boys and girls understood feelings in themselves and their parents. It was expected that older children would use more complex criteria than younger children and that differences would result from the number of points of view subjects had to consider to answer a…