As interest and concern rise in U.S. educational circles around the reading achievement of English language learners (ELLs) and struggling readers, researchers and practitioners alike are calling for the increased use of technology as a means to decrease achievement gaps in reading (Jimenez, 2003; Strangman & Dalton, 2005). In this article, we…

The Reading Rescue tutoring intervention model was investigated with 64 low-socioeconomic status, language-minority first graders with reading difficulties. School staff provided tutoring in phonological awareness, systematic phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and reading comprehension. Tutored students made significantly greater gains reading words…

The domain of second language reading is a rich source for insights into bilingual cognitive processing. Most cross-language transfer research has been carried out on acquisition and production of second-language (L2) structures. Relatively little work has been done on cross-language transfer in bilingual reading. An overreliance on top-down,…

This volume offers a set of listening activities at three levels of proficiency on the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages proficiency scale: Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. It has been designed to accompany any type of textbook with any type of instruction. Its purpose is to provide learners with the opportunity to hear…

The speech introduces a colloquium on the teaching of listening comprehension to students of English for academic purposes (EAP). The colloquium's aim is to address ways that EAP instructors can improve students' lecture listening skills by discussing the types of background discourse knowledge and listening strategies that…

An experimental investigation conducted in a rural area of the Province of Quebec (Canada) was designed to show that the assignment of specific reading tasks enhances the development of listening comprehension ability when using authentic video material with intermediate-level English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners. Using a pre-test post-test…

The acquisition order of English morphemes by adult second language learners from Asian language backgrounds was investigated. It was hypothesized that adult speakers of the noninflected Asian languages, having passed the critical stage for second language acquisition without having mastered the linguistic concept of morphology, might face an…

Emphasizes the necessity of teaching listening comprehension along with written language skills in English as a second language. (Available from English Inspectorate, Ministry of Education and Culture, P. O. Box 292, Jerusalem, Israel.) (CHK)

A study to evaluate seven commonly employed reading comprehension testing techniques in terms of predictive validity, difficulty and discriminability is described. (Author/RM)

Five teaching experiments with French songs, in grades 7, 8 and 9, are described. Aural understanding was practiced first, then use of the text. In the 9th grade, work on the content became most important, with the aim of correcting and expanding the common conception of France. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

The relationship between ease of comprehension and the syntactic form used to convey indirect requests was investigated among intermediate and advanced learners of English as a second language (ESL). The results were compared to those of native English speaking children and adults. Subjects were 82 college students enrolled in intensive ESL…

Sketches vocabulary work for improving performance, especially in hearing and understanding television lessons in carrying on conversations. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

In this analysis of prior knowledge and bilingual literacy, it is suggested that the basis upon which cognitive decisions are made and nonvisual inferences are drawn comes from the background knowledge that the reader possesses as tacit or prior knowledge. It is claimed that the only model that can account for the pluralistic nature of language is…

This module provides theoretical aspects of listening comprehension and practical teaching suggestions. Learning activities are designed to achieve the following objectives: (a) explain briefly a theory of the speech process; (b) define redundancy, semantic encoding, phonic patterning, and phonological decoding; (c) enumerate and explain the…

Recent interest may indicate increasing use of radio in foreign language learning despite some of the very realistic obstacles that face the beginner. Shortwave radio can be used imaginatively in a variety of ways, including: (1) increasing the reality, currency, and accuracy of listening comprehension skills; (2) actual communication with…