Nonverbal context is important in the language acquisition process. The present study compares different amounts and ordering of pictorial context with respect to their effect on learning word-referent relations in a second language. Twenty-five monolingual English-speaking high school students were shown twenty Spanish sentences and pictures of…

This paper is based on a longitudinal study of the development of questions in the spontaneous speech of two anglophone boys learning French by attending French language schools. The development of form-meaning relations in information questions in the children's French L2 speech was examined and comparisons were made with the same form-meaning…

The importance of cognitive internal state words in skilled reading comprehension was studied with 31 5th graders, 32 7th graders, and 10th graders. Positive correlations with cognitive word knowledge were significantly higher for verbal than quantitative achievement percentiles. The order of cognitive word acquisition depends on complex factors.…

An age-dependent answer-selection sequence of answers on multiple-choice tests suggested by previous studies was supported using statistical rather than clinical means. Results with 2,810 students aged 88 months through 241 months given a reading comprehension test twice during a 5-month interval support the systematically connected age-dependent…

Studies from information-processing and language comprehension research have reported that background knowledge facilitates reading and writing. By comparing Chinese language development of heritage students who had home background in Chinese language and culture with those who did not, this study found that heritage learners did significantly…

This study tested two theoretical models of perceived understanding as a potential mediator of perceived teacher confirmation and students' ratings of instruction. Participants included 651 undergraduate students who completed survey measures. Results of structural equation modeling provided greater support for the confirmation process model,…

This article provides renewed converging empirical evidence for the hypothesis that asking test-takers to respond to text passages with multiple-choice questions induces response processes that are strikingly different from those that respondents would draw on when reading in non-testing contexts. Moreover, the article shows that the construct of…

This study of second language learning investigated the effects of a written reading comprehension exercise and an oral discussion activity as alternative tasks mediating between a written text and learners' summaries of the text. Subjects were 80 University of Hong Kong freshmen, randomly assigned to three groups. Each group was provided a…

A collection of essays on pronunciation instruction theory and practice includes: "Teaching Pronunciation as Communication" (Marianne Celce-Murcia); "Learner Variables and Prepronunciation Considerations in Teaching Pronunciation" (Rita Wong); "Pronunciation and Listening Comprehension" (Judy B. Gilbert); "Pronunciation Tutorials for Nonnative…

Reading evaluation should (1) be a continuous process using many samples of a learner's work, (2) allow students to engage in uninterrupted reading, (3) constitute a learning situation, and (4) indicate new directions for improvement in an open-ended manner. Current practices for evaluating children's reading processes are usually based on samples…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The seven titles deal with the following topics: (1) the prediction of reading comprehension from critical thinking skills, cognitive thinking skills, and meaning vocabulary with college freshmen; (2) the effects of instruction in…

Designed to explore the ways language functions to help children gain access to meaning as they progress through the educational system, this journal issue views communication as a social, interactive process in which speakers and writers attempt to link into what listeners and readers know, want to know, or need to know. The 12 articles in the…

Intended for reading educators and researchers, this handbook characterizes the current state of methodology and the cumulative research-based knowledge of reading. The book's three sections cover methodological issues, basic reading processes, and instructional practices. The 25 chapters discuss the following topics: (1) reading research history,…

Papers in this report were presented at a conference on text characteristics, convened as part of the Learning from Text Project. The foreword describes the University of California and California State University Joint Projects Steering Committee project to determine the relationship between ability to learn from text and academic achievement,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 19 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) factual, elaborative, and inferential levels of text processing; (2) the effect of explicitly and implicitly presented rhetorical functions on the…