Given the current popularity of ethnographic methods of researching teaching and teachers, many investigators commonly confront the task of analyzing interview transcripts in order to uncover speakers' meaning systems and the embedded perspectives on knowledge and practice upon which those meaning systems rely. Others have written about conducting…

Eight experiments investigated the effects of visual, spatial, auditory, and executive interference on the symbolic comparison of animal size and ferocity, semantic goodness of words, and numbers. Dynamic visual noise (DVN) and the reading of visually presented stimulus items were shown to selectively interfere with response times on the animal…

Two experiments explore the activation of semantic information during spoken word recognition. Experiment 1 shows that as the name of an object unfolds (e.g., lock), eye movements are drawn to pictorial representations of both the named object and semantically related objects (e.g., key). Experiment 2 shows that objects semantically related to an…

This paper addresses a problem of lexical choice that arises for ESL/EFL learners in the writing of research papers, critiques, interview reports, or any other sort of discourse that requires source attribution. The problem falls naturally into two parts. One part concerns the general lack of linguistic resources typically available (for various…

Language outcome in children experiencing fluctuant hearing loss due to otitis media (OME) remains highly equivocal. In the current study, we assessed performance on highly sensitive verbal short-term memory (STM), new word learning and phonological processing tasks in 8-year-old children who had suffered from recurrent OME before the age of 3.…

Two studies investigating young readers' use of conjunctions are reported. In Study One, 145 eight- to ten-year-olds completed one of two narrative cloze tasks in which different types of conjunction were deleted. Performance for additive conjunctions was not affected by age in this study, but older children were more likely to select the target…

Purpose--The aim of this paper is to describe a study of online, asynchronous dialogues between tutors and nine work-based postgraduate learners on learning through work (LtW) programmes. Design/methodology/approach-- Adopting a constructivist perspective and using a qualitative approach, 670 messages were segmented into semantic units and…

This paper reports the findings of a small-scale study which focused on reading strategy instruction for learners of French or Spanish as a modern foreign language. The objective of the study was to explore the potential of reading strategy instruction in raising the learner readers' awareness of reading strategies, in extending the range of…

We investigated the nature of graphic formulas in 5-, 7-, and 9-year-old children when they were asked to draw a house and a television in a free condition, and then to draw from photographs of these objects. Assuming that the frequency of occurrence of a feature in children's drawings reflects its semantic weight, we studied the relations between…

Many health educators view health as a subjective, comprehensive and multidimensional construct, such as the WHO concept that defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This paper, through a philosophical analysis, demonstrates that health is not…

This study used a phenomenological approach to investigate the recollections of participants of an environmental education (EE) residential program. Ten students who participated in a residential EE program in the fall of 2001 were interviewed in the fall of 2002. Three major themes relating to the participants' long-term memory of the residential…

Vocabulary knowledge contributes to comprehension, fluency, and student achievement. The goal of vocabulary instruction should be to build students' independent word-learning strategies. This article provides research and theory in support of nine key ideas about words and vocabulary instruction. These ideas are important for middle and secondary…

This article discusses the reasons why Chinese learners of English avoid using phrasal verbs in an English community context or when using English as an inter-language in China. The avoidance of phrasal verbs often leads to ineffective communication. By adopting appropriate pedagogical and methodological approaches or providing proper guidance to…

An account was tested of the development of the interplay between automatic processes and cognitive resources in reading. According to compensatory-encoding theory, with advancing skill, readers increasingly keep automatic processes from faltering and provide timely, accurate data to working memory by pausing, looking back, rereading, and…

The study of SLA began around the beginning of the 70s with the emergence of both theoretical and empirical studies. Undoubtedly, the acquisition of tense/aspect, besides other topics, has attracted much interest from researchers. This study investigated the use of telic and atelic verb forms in the oral production of Turkish speakers of English…