Besides language competence, international students must develop a systematic approach to processing information and follow up with co-construction of the knowledge acquired. Critical thinking is a crucial principle commonly required in North American universities for evaluating academic texts. This practice may present certain difficulties for…

Higher education ranks as Australia's sixth largest export sector, making a financial contribution of over $9 billion to the economy in 2004-2005. Surveys of potential students and projections by IDP-Education Australia on marketing higher education in 2025 are that the overseas student intake will rise by 14% to 850,000, earning in export trade…

In this paper we present the "grounded adaptive agent" computational framework for studying the emergence of communication and language. This modeling framework is based on simulations of population of cognitive agents that evolve linguistic capabilities by interacting with their social and physical environment (internal and external symbol…

Seeks to establish that contextual factors informed by certain postulated cultural experiences can influence cognitive performance of African-American children. Designs models to explain fundamental link between culture and cognition. Argues that much school failure exhibited by African-American children can be explained in terms of cultural…

In trying to minimize the disadvantages of children from minority cultures in their first years of elementary school, the usual approach is to employ diagnostic tools which yield quantitative measures of such children's inadequacies, and then to teach in an attempt to yield higher scores. In the area of speech-communication, this approach focuses…

Studies cognitive pragmatics in order to bridge the gap between the universality and culture-specificity of politeness by means of the idea of the "frame" or "specific knowledge" combined with the theory of relevance by Sperber and Wilson. The article concludes that a general theory of politeness as a particular subsystem in a…

The study examined: (1) whether children from different ethnic backgrounds structure their inquiry into social problems along different lines and (2) whether these children have different value orientations at various age levels. The sample consisted of children, ages 7 to 12 years, from three groups: (1) American--no foreign language spoken…

Research on perception and cognition suggests that whereas East Asians view the world holistically, attending to the entire field and relations among objects, Westerners view the world analytically, focusing on the attributes of salient objects. These propositions were examined in the change-blindness paradigm. Research in that paradigm finds…

The purpose of this manual is to provide a course development method that deals with all aspects of intercultural communication, not just the linguistic aspect. The first chapter orients the reader to the approach of the manual. Chapters 2 and 3 provide specific steps that guide the developer through all stages of course development. Chapter 4…

This study explores a learning model which suggests that a concept is acquired first through manipulation of concrete objects followed by transformation of the concrete objects into semi-concrete representations, followed by internalization of the concept through abstract representations. Microcomputer simulations of manipulative activities were…

This paper analyses some changing aspects of learning and "cultures of learning" in China: these are related to meeting the needs of Chinese learners studying in higher education in the UK. We use the term "cultures of learning" to draw attention to the socio-cultural aspects of key practices, expectations and interpretations…

Among 51 papers and 3 symposia are the following: "Learning What?" (Andruske); "Stories Adult Learners Tell" (Armstrong); "Towards a Pedagogy for Disempowering Our Enemies" (Baptiste); "Teaching Scholarly Writing to Doctoral Students" (Barnett et al.); "The Outcomes and Impact of Adult Literacy Education" (Beder); "A Feminist Critique of Human…