According to cognitive psychologists, consistent practice (i.e., tasks with a high degree of similarity) of a skill leads to the development of automaticity, with the degree of automatization being increased if the practice also involves exact repetition. Practice is skill specific, meaning that practicing one skill does not automatize related…

Visual aids have been developed to strengthen non-English speaking students' ability to speak and write English effectively in their subject areas. Among these aids, graphs have been valuable for economics students because they readily illustrate the nature of the relationship between two sets of numbers. Frequently, the ability to analyze graphs…

The research was conducted in Sydney and Hong Kong using students, from grades 5 to 9, whose first language or teaching medium was English, learning to read Chinese as second language. According to cognitive load theory, the processing of single Chinese characters accompanied by pictures should impose extraneous cognitive load and thus hinders…