Students' native language is a valuable resource in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom. Use of native languages may increase a student's sense of efficacy for learning English by: (a) facilitating vocabulary acquisition, (b) aiding learners in comprehension, (c) encouraging self-regulation, (d) making routines and explanations clear…

Background: Readability tests are indicators that measure how easy a document can be read and understood. Simple, but very often ignored, readability statistics cannot only provide information about the level of difficulty of the readability of particular documents but also can increase an evaluator's credibility. Purpose: The purpose of this…

This retrospective study examined the impact of prior mathematics achievement on the relationship between high school mathematics curricula and student postsecondary mathematics performance. The sample (N = 4,144 from 266 high schools) was partitioned into 3 strata by ACT mathematics scores. Students completing 3 or more years of a commercially…

Most studies in the second language (L2) literature that deal with interface issues do so in holistic terms. On the one hand, researchers have suggested that interface relations between the syntax and other domains are particularly difficult for adult L2 learners. On the other, it has been argued that such relations can be established in a…

This article offers a linguistic analysis of interpersonal stancetaking in four argumentative term papers written in an upper-level undergraduate course in economics. Two of the papers were written by English L2 writers who experienced particular difficulty with the assignment and two by English L1 writers who received the highest grades among the…

This paper reports findings of a post test experimental control group design conducted to investigate the role of modified Moore learning approach on improving students' mathematical understanding and proving abilities. Subjects of study were 56 undergraduate students of one state university in Bandung, who took advanced abstract algebra course.…

This paper reports activities (as part of a university course in language teacher education on teaching reading) in which primary school student teachers (all ESL in-service teacher trainees) explored their own skills of determining textbook readability using an online software tool and a cloze test completed by two hundred and seventy-eight Grade…

There is much debate on the merits and pitfalls of standardized tests for college admission, with questions regarding the format (multiple-choice versus constructed response), cognitive complexity, and content of these assessments (achievement versus aptitude) at the forefront of the discussion. This study addressed these questions by…

In a Spring 2011 survey about professional development opportunity needs, Austin Independent School District teachers and campus administrators most often requested training in the state's new academic assessment and using technology.

Previously, a small scale, interview-based, 3-year longitudinal study (ages 11-14) in one school had suggested a learning progression related to the concept of a substance. This article presents the results of a large-scale, cross-sectional study which used Rasch modeling to test the hypothesis of the learning progression. Data were collected from…

Facilitating successful focus groups requires both science and art. One element that can fully challenge focus group facilitators includes how to handle the unfocused focus group. This article describes "unfocus" and the benefits and disadvantages of unfocus in focus groups. Lessons learned from and approaches taken on this journey are shared to…

In this article, the author proposes a dynamic, interdisciplinary, network conception of expertise that differs from conventional static, linear conceptions. Using a range of graphic images, the author propose specific visualizations of this network conception of expertise. First, he discusses attempts to pin expertise down in a definition. Then…

Information technology (IT) artifacts such as animations are increasingly used in educational institutions. Researchers caution that, if we are to derive benefits from animations and other such IT artifacts, we must understand how to use it optimally. In this study, we look at the effects of animations in supporting learning processes. IT-enabled…

Introduction: This study explores the relationship among three variables--cognitive load, foreign language anxiety, and task performance. Cognitive load refers to the load imposed on working memory while performing a particular task. The authors hypothesized that anxiety consumes the resources of working memory, leaving less capacity for cognitive…

Goal-directed behavior lowers activity in brain areas that include the medial frontal cortex, the medial and lateral parietal cortex, and limbic and paralimbic brain regions, commonly referred to as the "default network." These activity decreases are believed to reflect the interruption of processes that are ongoing when the mind is in a restful…