Because inexperienced or basic writers depend on the semantics of everyday spoken dialogue when writing, research on written composition and the developmental links between spoken and written language should be more accessible to the practitioners who teach writing to those students. A review of the literature supports the theory of a semantic…

Reading teachers vary in their teaching methods for reading instruction, usually emphasizing either the meaningful functions (meaning) or the technical features (coding) of written language. This paper reviews literature on the meaning/coding dichotomy and focuses on a "cognitive clarity theory" that stresses linguistic awareness and…

The value of using more than one data collection procedure to investigate an educational question is illustrated. A semantic differential instrument provided an index of the direction and intensity of teachers' attitudes, but an unstructured interview provided a more detailed portrayal of their opinions. (RM)

The article describes seven methods to help special needs learners improve reading comprehension: the Pre Reading Plan; the six-step survey technique; semantic mapping; story maps; mental imagery; learning logs; and use of question-answer relationships. (DB)

This contribution deals with the adoption and interpretation of the monitorial system of education in Colombia between 1821 and 1844, a period during which this pedagogical method was almost mandatory for all the country's elementary schools. The analysis focuses on the differences between "local necessities" and "local semantic…

The 9th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2016) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in the USA. The conference, held June 29-July 2, 2016, follows the eight previous editions (Madrid 2015, London 2014, Memphis…

The author discusses the benefits of applying cognitive linguistics, L1 acquisition, and neo-Vygotskian (Vygotsky) approaches to the teaching of a second language to young learners, using the example of teaching the preposition "on." The author briefly reviews how prepositions are taught to adult learners and the challenges of teaching…

Science is suggested as an excellent content area for teaching primary students the creative and critical thinking skills that can help them become better problem solvers. J. P. Guilford's Structure of Intellect model and Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives serve as the basis for developing exercises which lead to improvement of…

This paper describes work that was done at Athabasca University as part of the "EduSource Canada" project. This work centered around learning object development based on pre-authored educational content. The major outcomes of the work were the development of an explicit semantic structure with strong educational focus for learning…

Restatement and paraphrase, and the syntactic operations that generate them, can serve as the basis for techniques involving explanation, and the production of new sentences in the second language classroom. The basic operations involved are known intuitively by the native speaker but must be taught and practiced if the ESL learner is to get a…

Typically, teachers approach ambiguity in student writing by suggesting that students focus on diction, syntax, and writing format; however, the works of modernists (including T.S. Eliot, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Marx, and Pablo Picasso) suggest the importance of conceptions of semantic clarity. Transformational models for syntactic elements in…

Teaching children to read letters first is regarded by many theorists as the foundation on which the teaching of words should be based. To test this assumption, 26 nursery school children were presented four items (two letters and two words) in a paired associate learning paradigm. The subjects were randomly divided into two groups for the purpose…

The central feature of language is symbolic meaning, and the act of reading is a part of the symbolic process that characterizes human life. Meaning occurs as a result of interpretation in a context, not as a result of response or reaction. Signs have a literal meaning in a specific context, while symbols have a figurative meaning in an implicit…

Concerned with the study of lexical changes, this unit for grade 9 is intended to develop the student's understanding of several specific ways in which the meanings of words change, of the interpersonal relationships and the social values which cause such change, and of general concepts related to language change. Discussion questions, lectures,…

High on the list of today's educational priorities is the effective programing of pictorial stimuli as language teaching tools. The value of any image depends on its content of information, and essential for clear comprehension of any picture are the principles of causality, parallelism, and contrast or negative comparison. Both artist and teacher…