Analyzes how two groups of eighth graders and their teacher create literary texts during small group discussion, and suggests the importance of talk as a means of constructing meaning. (NKA)

While more research needs to be done in the area of adolescent literacy, there is growing agreement about some of the characteristics successful literacy intervention programs share. The purpose of this brief is to provide information to help policymakers, educators, parents, and others concerned with adolescent literacy make informed decisions…

How do some students extract complex information from advanced reading materials while others struggle to find the meaning of even simple passages? What characteristics do strategic readers exhibit that others don't possess? Unlocking the cognitive strategies of exceptional readers means finding ways to teach every student to read strategically,…

This teacher's guide is designed to assist in teaching an eight-level supplemental reading series to help students learn and practice a variety of reading comprehension strategies. It explains the format of the eight student books; provides a complete scope and sequence chart for the series; and includes a brief introduction to reading…

This booklet describes key principles of and research on teaching additional languages. The 10 chapters focus on the following: (1) "Comprehensible Input" (learners need exposure to meaningful, understandable language); (2) "Language Opportunities" (classroom activities should let students use natural and meaningful language with their…

The materials in this document present the results of a study of French second language immersion testing in Alberta (Canada) public schools for grades 1-3 based on the curriculum instituted in 1998. As a result of the study, this collection was developed for grades 1-3 students who need to be taught French as a second language. A separate section…

This packet provides generic versions of curriculum developed for the Michelin Tire Corporation workplace literacy program, specifically the mathematics portion. Altered material included in the packet protects proprietary information; some lessons include lines that take the place of deleted information. Other companies are recommended to use…

Essays on second-language (L2) listening comprehension include: "On Second Language Comprehension and Acquisition: Interactional and Psycholinguistic Perspectives" (Teresa Cadierno), a general theoretical overview of these processes; "Listening to Lectures" (Anne Jensen), a discussion of some characteristics of lectures and description of a study…

A teacher of English in China describes his experiences teaching the listening component of a summer course designed to help 37 doctoral students improve their English skills before beginning an agricultural economics program. In the listening component, students were to gain experience in notetaking while listening to extended academic lectures.…

Provides a detailed analysis of techniques used for second language vocabulary assessment and the implied assumptions about the underlying construct of vocabulary knowledge. The article notes that existing measures of vocabulary size are uninformative as to the depth of knowledge that learners have about particular words. (56 references)…

Presents the results of two studies where children were taught to identify textual cues, syntactic and semantic, in order to locate main ideas. The children also built graphic representations of these structures and were taught relevant questions to ask regarding comprehension. Results showed significant improvement, especially with older…

Examines the relationship between story-telling and children's construction of meaning. Includes transcripts of children's discussions of a story involving Vietnamese refugee children. Maintains that children, especially when given encouraging contexts, can construct and discover meaningful insights. Discusses the role of the teacher in this…

Analysis of reading comprehension errors made by 22 Spanish-speaking fourth-graders in decoding English text found that comprehension "errors" began at the word level and advanced to larger misinterpretations at the sentence level. The cognitive processes of English language learners when comprehending English texts showed individual differences,…

Describes a computer program that takes multiple-choice cloze passages and compiles them into proofreading exercises. Results reveal that such a computerized test type can be used to accurately measure the proficiency of students of English as a Second Language in Hong Kong. (14 references) (Author/CK)

Investigates the effects of science students' domain-specific knowledge and language proficiency on local lexical and syntactic processing and on semantic and higher conceptual processing of biology texts written in the students' first and second languages. Results indicate that language proficiency affects lower-level processing and…