Noting that there are no standardized manual communication curricula or proficiency assessments available to teacher preparation programs, the author used a case study to describe how preservice teachers of the deaf are taught to incorporate American Sign Language and various forms of signed English as effective communication tools for students…

During the 2004-2005 school year, Maya Kadakia conducted a pilot study of her master's project which focuses on how student engagement is affected by a curriculum that incorporates popular culture. She created a Language Arts unit which incorporates the video game Morrowhid. Maya teaches seventh grade Language Arts and Social Studies at a diverse…

This study examined demographic and clinical data from a specialty deaf inpatient unit so as to better understand characteristics of severely and chronically mentally ill deaf people. The study compares deaf and hearing psychiatric inpatients on demographic variables, psychiatric discharge diagnoses, a language assessment measure, a cognitive…

In this article, Maria Estela Zarate and Ronald Gallimore identify factors that predicted college enrollment for Latino and Latina students. Using data from a 15-year study of randomly recruited Latino and Latina youth (primarily second-generation Mexican Americans), they found that different factors were associated with their college enrollment.…

East Asian students, the largest international student group in US higher education, are as a group typically known to be silent or reticent in class. This survey examined views of East Asian international graduate students concerning required academic listening and speaking skill levels in their university courses, their own difficulties in…

This paper introduces the Website Acceptability Tiered Checklist (WATCH), a preliminary version of a multi-trait scale that could be used by instructors and students to assess the quality of websites chosen as source materials in students' research papers in a Humanities program. The scale includes bands for assessing: (i) the authority and…

Presents tips on improving the writing process of students with learning disabilities (LD). Information on a literacy intervention curriculum for students with LD; Impact of the strategy on the sentence writing skills of students; Process of the curriculum with its corresponding modifications; Benefits of the writing instruction program to improve…

Open and distance learning is experiencing rapid growth throughout the world. China in particular is undergoing a massive expansion of its distance EFL programmes. This global phenomenon challenges all those involved in delivering distance learning materials to examine current practice and the assumptions and expectations that underlie it, with…

Success and failure in school is contingent upon one's ability to regulate and situate identities, utilise culturally-developed semiotic tools and negotiate models of meaning in shared social activity. However, many language minority students lack such success, struggling with conflicts between their primary-and community-based identities, and…

The TeachScheme! Project aims to reform three aspects of introductory programming courses in secondary schools. First, we use a design method that asks students to develop programs in a stepwise fashion such that each step produces a well-specified intermediate product. Second, we use an entire series of sublanguages, not just one. Each element of…

Index for Inclusion is a programme to assist in developing learning and participation in schools. It was written by Tony Booth and Mel Ainscow from the Centre for Studies on Inclusive Education, UK. Central Normal School was pleased to have the opportunity to trial this programme.

In this paper, different means of assessing cognitive development in children with severe impairments in "both" their expressive language and their motor skills are reviewed. A range of techniques are considered, including traditional cognitive tests and behavioral and physiological measures, but these techniques are generally impractical and…

This paper opens with a discussion of the relevance of service integration to the successful implementation of the Integrated Community Schools (ICS) policy in Scotland. It continues to offer an overview of the teacher/speech and language therapist (SLT) collaboration policy context and introduces some of the relevant wider children's services…

This article suggests ways of writing a truly effective cover letter, an extremely important document in the search for a job. First, features gleaned from 13 model letters in technical writing textbooks yield figures on the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs per letter, plus the average number of words per sentence and paragraph,…

Student diversity and inclusion presents a unique set of challenges to foreign language teachers. In fact, it has long been recognized that children with learning disabilities, especially those whose difficulties are language-based, will be challenged by foreign language education. Including children with disabilities in a foreign language class…