This study sought to investigate the link between preferred learning styles, performance, and cognitive load. After determining learning styles (visual or auditory), undergraduate students were assigned to three instructional formats, namely: Listen Only, Read Only, and Read + Listen. A pretest was administered to assess students' prior knowledge…

The purpose of this study was to explore elementary students' listening comprehension changes using a Web-based teaching system that can diagnose and remediate students' science listening comprehension problems during scientific inquiry. The 3-component system consisted of a 9-item science listening comprehension test, a 37-item diagnostic test,…

This study examined the attitudes of postgraduate biology students of three top-ranked Russian universities towards the foreign accents of non-native English-speaking lecturers. Fifty participants responded to a questionnaire, the main purpose of which was to explore the listeners' perceptions of professors' accents and their influence on…

Students as early as elementary school age are capable of learning the aspects of the nature of science (NOS), and the National Benchmarks incorporate the NOS as part of the learning objectives for K-2 students. Learning more about elementary science instruction can aid in understanding how the NOS can be taught or potentially integrated into…

Comprehension of text is developmental in that it begins with a child's ability to listen and make sense of language. Though listening comprehension is often the predecessor towards reading comprehension; some children maintain difficulties in listening comprehension throughout schooling and into adulthood. This quasi-experimental study…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

Many resources are available to elementary teachers who wish to support science learning with literature. Unfortunately, somewhere between middle school and high school, the emphasis on using literature to teach science content--particularly the exercise of reading aloud--has all but disappeared. However, the practice of reading aloud is helpful…

The present research analyzes instructional strategies used to integrate the learning of content and English as a foreign language in a bilingual physics class at a university in Shanghai, China. It examines how the instructor handles meaning and form of new English science vocabulary in concept-focused physics lectures and the strategies he used…

This paper discusses the use of oral examinations to assess student understanding in a general chemistry course and in an advanced inorganic chemistry course. Examination design, administration, and grading are explored, as well as the benefits to both instructors and students. Students react positively to the oral examination format and generally…

Content-Based Instruction (CBI) may result in improved proficiency in language skills due to the meaningful combination of subject matter and foreign language as a means of communication. This paper shows how university students improved their level of English by means of a content methodology as they attended a course called Topics in Molecular…

Language for success in curricular and extracurricular contexts shows a range and complexity beyond the scope of most secondary school ESL programs in Canadian schools. The subject-specific language structure, rhetoric, and vocabulary for secondary level geography, history, and science are used as examples. (MSE)

Measures of comprehension of the content indicated no significant difference in the amount of information each group of students retained when the historical or biological content was presented to their particular group aurally at an expanded, normal, or compressed rate of speech. (Author)

This study investigated whether undergraduate non-native speakers of English had difficulties comprehending information in a science lecture whose discourse organization went beyond a basic problem-solution structure. It found that the comprehension difficulties of the non-native speakers were also found among many of the native speakers. (25…

Suggesting that listening is a learned behavior, offers a number of techniques to help science teachers develop listening skills in their students. These include speaking loud enough with directness and clarity, emphasizing important material by repetition, and keeping vocabulary on the student level. (Author/JN)

Physicists and physics students have been studied with respect to the variation in the ways they expound on their topic of research and a physics problem, respectively. A phenomenographic approach has been employed; six fourth-year physics students and 10 teacher-researcher physicists at various stages of their careers have been interviewed. Four…