On a picture vocabulary test, 42 hearing students performed better than 42 hearing-impaired students (ages 10-18) in selecting primary and secondary meanings of multimeaning words. Both groups chose primary meanings more often than secondary ones, and both groups' ability to select two meanings of words did not improve with age. (Author/JDD)

Arguing that the failure of instructional materials is frequently due to misconceptions held by their developers concerning the nature of comprehension, this chapter examines the factors involved in comprehension and relates them to the design of instructional materials. Three types of errors in comprehension are discussed, and ways to avoid them…

Presents a technique designed to help most readers' vocabulary grow with their every day reading. (JM)

This document presents a brief overview of the history and origins of mainly European family names from the 1100s forward, and is envisioned as a one class-period session for secondary or college English teachers and those interested in semantics. Sections included are history of naming, reasons for naming, guidelines for name origins, and special…

The cloze technique can be used to help word-by-word readers acquire more mature reading strategies. This article provides suggestions for creating and using cloze exercises which vary in difficulty and focus. Recommendations are made for introducing and directing cloze training. Sample exercises are given. (Author/PJM)

Examines word families, words grouped together by common meaning, orthography, form, and spelling. Discusses ways to encourage children's language acquisition and understanding of how words work in specific contexts. (HTH)

Discusses the difficulty in recognizing and expressing the formation of concession and counter-assertion. Words like "although" and "if," while familiar in other contexts, present problems when used for these functions. While the markers for concession are interchangeable, those for counter-assertion are not. Two different types of…

Discusses the problems involved in teaching Italian students the English equivalents of the verb "dovere." (CFM)

Thirty learning-disabled and 30 nonhandicapped intermediate grade children were assessed on memory performance for stimulus words, which were presented with congruent and noncongruent rhyming words and semantically congruent and noncongruent sentence frames. Both groups performed significantly better on words encoded using deep level congruent…

The article offers teachers suggestions on ways to instruct elementary students in the vocabulary of mathematics. It gives examples of math difficulties at the elementary school level, math difficulties related to vocabulary, and math difficulties related to problem solving. (DB)

Culturally specific compounds in Chinese could be more effectively studied from a cognitive approach, using the underlying idealized cognitive models defined by Lakoff. It is argued that the formation of Chinese compounds are systematically guided by idealized cognitive models and compounds are semantically compositional. (seven references) (LB)

A simplified pattern of noun formation is outlined that can assist the German teacher in helping students understand constituent relationships in long or obscure German nouns, providing an overview of significant patterns that covers a relatively complete noun system. First, significant patterns in nouns outside the process of formation, and…

Beyond the first several thousand most commonly used words in a language, direct vocabulary instruction is not efficient. Use of inferential skills then becomes the most effective way of learning new vocabulary; it is the way native speakers build their 60,000 word vocabularies. Because the skill is not automatically transferable, it must be…

A model for studying written language is described and illustrated in a written language sample of a 12-year-old with profound hearing impairment. Approaches are noted for analyzing semantic components, coherence, and causality. Implications for remediation are offered. (CL)

Fifteen exercises are presented that are intended to increase reading comprehension in seventh and eighth graders via emphasis on word recognition, language comprehension (syntax and semantics), and reasoning skills (including inference, analogies, relationships, and direction following). (CL)