A study investigated relationships between two instructional dimensions and change in the literacy practices of adult literacy students: degree of authenticity of activities and texts in class and degree of teacher/student collaboration. Data on class activities and texts and degree of student influence on them were triangulated from teacher…

The most extensive research and development (R&D) into the adult cognitive skills essential for workplace literacy has been conducted by the U.S. military. Military R&D related to workplace literacy has been concentrated in the following areas: formulation of developmental model for literacy in four stages (basic adaptive processes, conscious…

This monograph attempts to integrate experience and research findings in several related disciplines and bring them to bear on the problem of how to make language programs in schools simultaneously accommodate the needs of both the language curriculum and the general curriculum. It addresses four issues: (1) how specific languages, in all their…

The effect of teaching behaviors on student reading achievement in Spanish was investigated. A group of 18 teachers of Spanish reading and their classes were observed across two reading lessons having similar content. Each lesson was presented in two twenty-minute segments, thus allowing for four videotaping sessions. Students were pre- and…

This report describes four experiments in English for Special Purposes conducted by or involving the Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pedagogiques en Langues. English for Special Purposes is discussed in relation to language skills, grammatical and functional progression, "autonomization" and individualization of language acquisition, and…

Teaching language-minority students to read and write well in English is an urgent challenge in the nation's K-12 schools. Literacy in English is essential to achievement in every academic subject-and to educational and economic opportunities beyond schooling. Compounding this challenge are increasing numbers and diversity of language-minority…

The Vermont Institute for Self Reliance (VISR) conducted a Basic Educational Skills for Training (BEST) program, a national demonstration project in workplace literacy, from April 1990 to March 1992. BEST provided learner-centered, context-based literacy instruction onsite, on company time, at two General Electric (GE) Aircraft Engines Rutland…

This study assessed the factor structure of the LanguEdge™ test and the invariance of its factors across language groups. Confirmatory factor analyses of individual tasks and subsets of items in the four sections of the test, Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing, was carried out for Arabic-, Chinese-, and Spanish-speaking test takers. Two…

The reports of research in this monograph reflect 18 years of observation of the behaviors of children learning to read in New Zealand schools. The first section of the monograph urges teachers to look more closely at language behaviors in their classrooms to see how children go about the tasks set before them. The second section reports on…

Materials developed by teacher participants in the Content Area Reading Project are presented in this appendix to the Project report. The first section provides group informal reading inventories developed for use in adult education, teaching English as a second language, and nine content areas; it then presents cloze tests developed for use in…

The purpose of this practicum was to develop a bilingual management system to enable bilingual teachers to monitor individual students' performance in the bilingual program. This required: (1) revising the kindergarten thru sixth grade student performance objectives; (2) developing kindergarten thru sixth grade criterion-referenced tests and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 22 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) black English and reading; (2) academic achievement, self-concept, and attitudes toward reading of students in bilingual and traditional programs; (3) cultural…

In response to the need for dynamic foreign language materials with a communicative focus, this report addresses the relationship between learner characteristics and success in language learning. It suggests that a self-pacing individualized option should be available to students to deal with unique problems. The problems may be dealt with by…

This paper examines the questions of whether or not previous knowledge of Spanish (oral and/or written) interferes with an English as a second language (ESL) student's acquisition of English reading skills, which skills are affected, and what classroom techniques are successful in dealing with it. Two contrasting views of reading are examined:…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 40 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of oral reading of literature by teachers on reading attitudes of fourth grade students; (2) two instructional programs for teaching first grade…