Debate about the value of providing corrective feedback on L2 writing has been prominent in recent years as a result of Truscott's [Truscott, J. (1996). The case against grammar correction in L2 writing classes. Language Learning, 46, 327-369] claim that it is both ineffective and harmful and should therefore be abandoned. A growing body of…

Data-driven decision-making (D3M) appears to be the new buzz phrase for this century, the information age. On the education front, teachers and administrators are engaging in data-centered dialog in grade-level meetings, lounges, hallways, and classrooms as they brainstorm toward closing the gap in student achievement. Clearly, such discussion…

Children usually improve their writing in response to teacher comments. HARRY is a computer tutor, designed to assist children improve their narrative writing, focusing particularly upon grammar and style. Providing assistance involved identifying aspects of grammar and style on which to concentrate, including ways to enable the computer to detect…

The Imposter is a strategy that encourages a focused approach to reading among adolescents. Contradictions or other types of conceptual flaws are inserted into a reading passage. The reader, knowing that flaws are hidden in the text, attempts to discover the errors. The reader then justifies his or her identification of flaws based on the concepts…

Previous studies have consistently demonstrated self-correction to be more effective than "traditional" approaches to spelling instruction. This investigation examined the comparative effects of self-correction after attempting each word and self-correction after attempting a list of 10 words by six fifth-graders with learning disabilities or…

The focus of the paper is the development of a novel conceptual framework that aims to remedy a critical mis-specification in prior research on the impact of financial aid on academic outcomes: the blending of the effect of aid eligibility with the influence of aid amounts on academic outcomes. To assess the impact of aid amounts received on…

The authors present 3 experiments demonstrating ways to reduce illegal moves in problem-solving tasks. They propose a 3-stage framework for the rejection of illegal moves. An illegal move must come to mind and be selected, checked for legality, and correctly rejected. Illegal move reduction can occur at any stage. Control group participants…

The article presents findings from a comprehensive study of oral corrective feedback involving 207 classroom learners of English as a foreign language at different age and proficiency levels who elicited 1700 instances of corrective feedback. The study showed that those who are corrected profit from the correction in about 50% of all cases, as…

This research investigates the usefulness of two major types of interactional feedback (elicitation and reformulation) in dyadic interaction. The focus is on the different ways in which each feedback type is provided and their relationship with learner repair. The participants were 42 adult intermediate English as a second language learners and…

This paper is a report on an attempt to teach students in their first and second year of university how to write mathematics. The problems faced by these students are outlined and the system devised to emphasize the importance of communicating mathematics is explained.

The purpose of this section is to specify the procedure for making changes to the ERIC database after the data involved have been announced in the abstract journals RIE or CIJE. As a matter of general ERIC policy, a document or journal article is not re-announced or re-entered into the database as a new accession for the purpose of accomplishing a…

Taguchi methods are methods of product quality improvement that analyze major contributions and how they can be controlled to reduce variability of poor performance. In this approach, knowledge is used to shorten testing. Taguchi methods are concerned with process improvement rather than with process measurement. This manual is designed to be used…

A study at Lansing, Michigan Community College investigated whether the current policy of grading the students according to the number of errors in their compositions was actually helping the students to make fewer errors in their writing. Error data were collected from 4 graded essays from each of 311 students in 2 writing courses (one on…

Children often have difficulty developing debugging skills. This may be attributable to instructional methods that discourage reflection on one's reasoning errors. Logo instruction may encourage such reflection. Two studies examined Logo's effect on confirmation bias--the tendency to select confirming over disconfirming information to prove an…

Revision is the heart of the composing process--the means by which ideas emerge and evolve and meanings are clarified. Yet students often see revision not as an opportunity to develop and improve a piece of writing but as an indication that they have failed to do it right the first time. Revision, whether done with computers or with pen and paper,…