In this study, we define the term "screener test," elaborate key considerations in test design, and describe how to incorporate the concepts of practicality and argument-based validation to drive an evaluation of screener tests for language assessment. A screener test is defined as a brief assessment designed to identify an examinee as a…

Executive functions (EF) can be promoted by classroom interventions. Our study investigated whether (a) an intervention conducted by teachers improves EF in children; (b) there are effects on behaviour and academic achievement; and (c) there are stable benefits in a one-year follow-up. Fifty-eight first-graders, divided into experimental (EG = 28)…

Several recent studies have shown that retrieval is more efficient than restudy in enhancing the long-term retention of memories. However, studies investigating this effect in children are still rare. Here, we report an experiment in which third-grade children initially read a brief encyclopaedic text twice and then either performed a cued recall…

A number of studies claim that knowledge of 5,000-8,000 of the most frequent words should provide at least 95% coverage of most unsimplified texts in English, arguably enough to guess or ignore most unknown words while reading (Hirsh & Nation, 1992; Hu & Nation, 2000; Laufer, 1991; Nation, 2006). However, perhaps hidden in that 95% figure…

In 19 (sub)samples from seven countries (United States, Austria, Germany, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Vietnam, Brazil), we analyzed the impact of parental education compared with wealth on the cognitive ability of children (aged 4-22 years, total N = 15,297). The background of their families ranged from poor indigenous remote villagers to academic…

The number of schools that have access to computers and the Internet has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s. However, evidence of their effectiveness as pedagogical tools to acquire reading and math skills is still the object of debate. We use repeated cross-section data from Brazil to evaluate the effect of the availability of a…

The "Comparative Indicators of Education" report series has been published on a biennial basis since it began in 2002, although this year's is the first to expand its focus to the G-20 countries, having previously been focused on the G-8 countries. "Comparative Indicators of Education in the United States and Other G-20 Countries:…

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between working memory capacity and L2 reading comprehension of both linear texts and hypertexts. Three different instruments were used to measure comprehension (recall, comprehension questions and perception of contradictions) and the Reading Span Test (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980) was…

This work presents the analysis of the 2001 Brazilian Basic Education Evaluation System (SAEB) achievement exam. The SAEB tested 4th, 8th, and 11th grade students, in mathematics and reading (Portuguese). We classified the students into seven socioeconomic classes, and for each class, compared the test results according to frequency of computer…