Because students encounter a steady stream of new words in their reading, structural analysis--the ability to gain information about the meaning, pronunciation, and part of speech of new words from their prefixes, roots, and suffixes--is an important component of skilled reading. It follows, then, that effective reading instruction should include…

Even at an early age, children are guided by their intuitions as they write. Intuitions are the culmination of perceptions that have been internalized and synthesized into patterns. Furthermore, they take time to develop. Consequently, if systematic instruction is to play a part in the formation of intuitions about written language then it must…

Because teachers are asking for specific suggestions to help students apply comprehension skills and read content material, a mechanism that assists students in acquiring and applying specific comprehension skills as they read content texts is being investigated. The mechanism is called marginal gloss because learning activities are placed in the…

The techniques for effective listening can be identified by the acronym PAT, which stands for three sets of techniques--physical, attitude, and thinking. Four kinds of physical techniques promote effective listening: appropriate eye contact and normal blinking rate, facial feedback, appropriate body language, and appropriate verbal feedback. Two…

This report examines how the making of inferences plays a role in the comprehension of narratives. The report poses and discusses seven questions: What are inferences? What functions do they perform? What is required to make inferences? What processes are involved? What kinds of inferences are there? How can readers' inferences be assessed? Can…

Most methods of literary analysis operate at so high a level of abstraction that the basic meaning is obscured. In the classroom the temptation is to ignore the physical text and to focus attention and discussion on secondary issues which arise out of the text. A distinction needs to be made between reading literature and interpreting or analyzing…

Teachers and testers should encourage children to repeat or restate verbal stimuli in order to enhance their comprehension. Changing the administration of a language comprehension test to include such restatement significantly raised the mean test scores of four- and five-year old Head Start children. (CTM)

By focusing their attention closely on a written text, cloze passages help students learn more about how language works--the interaction of vocabulary and syntax, the influence of diction on style, the important grammatical relationships between words in a sentence, and the logical relationships between sentences in a paragraph. (HOD)

The nature of simultaneous translation, often misunderstood, is a precarious balance of listening and analysis, production of discourse and memory. The work's quality would be improved by reinforcing interpretive skills, research in teaching methods, and study of precise interpretive techniques. (MSE)

Discusses story grammar and story schema. Demonstrates how two schema-based strategies--semantic webbing and the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity--can aid in improving comprehension. (FL)

Presents an exercise in listening comprehension that relates to a situation students are familiar with: listening to simulated flight announcements. While answering questions based on the announcements, students are asked to do some useful tasks which combine aural and visual processing. (Author/PJM)

Considers why basic writers write in "phrases patched upon phrases." Examines how language is patterned and acquired to clarify a framework for teaching basic writers. States that speaking and writing, two different ways of organizing and presenting information, have different structures. Explores what cognitive psychology can say about…

Examines certain instructional effects on second-language acquisition, such as code-focused instruction and classroom interaction. Empirical research on instructional effects are outlined in relation to some basic issues, including learning environment influences and processing constraints. (54 references) (GLR)

Argues that the teaching of grammar supplements learners' natural tendency to formulate and test hypotheses about the language. Complicated linguistic analyses can impede this process. Pedagogical grammar can be made less formal by keeping the analysis and metalanguage to the minimum. (36 references) (Author/CK)

Investigated the possible effects of two types of form-focused instruction on the acquisition of a specific feature of the Italian verbal morphology system. Processing instruction was compared to an output-based type of grammar instruction. (Author/VWL)