The "informal process" for writing reports, which incorporates the mechanics of textbook theory but emphasizes the composition process, may be more successful for teaching fifth graders how to write reports than the traditional approach. This process recommends a number of nontraditional teaching methods. Student choice of topic should…

To determine students' metacognitive knowledge of the expository writing process, a study analyzed fifth and sixth graders' declarative, procedural, and conditional knowledge by means of group questionnaires and individual interviews at all stages of their participation in one of three year-long writing programs. The programs emphasized social…

Cosponsored by Hanyang University as a demonstration of its founding philosophy, "love in deed and truth," this conference focused on literacy and languages from cross-cultural and instructional perspectives. The papers selected for this yearbook and their authors are as follows: (1) "Designing Tasks for Slow Learners in L2"…

Research summarized here demonstrates how similarity thinking can be used in training programs to help ethnic minority children acquire basic skills. Current achievements are often attenuated by poor language skills, especially when English is not the first language of the child. Similarity thinking assesses the child's ability to learn without…

Research was conducted to further investigate the results of an earlier 1985 study (Dwyer, et al.) which found that a moderately externally-paced microcomputer-based instructional program was more effective than either a self-paced or a more aggressive externally-paced condition. Instructional programs (heart parts and verbal labels) were…

Four similarities between reading and writing and their corresponding instructional significance are examined in this literature review. Each of the four reviewed topics is prefaced by general instructional suggestions based on research cited in the review. Topics and suggestions are as follows: (1) linguistic--whenever possible, the processes of…

Reading comprehension skills can be taught effectively across the curriculum leading to enhanced critical thinking and reading skills, as well as improved performance in content areas. Skilled readers plan their approach to the task at hand, monitor their learning as they read, apply strategies to foster learning, evaluate, and if necessary,…

To determine the influence of media on learning, a study explored students' preferences, perceived difficulty, and learning in relation to a variety of activities. A randomly selected panel of 611 students, grades three through ten, was drawn from the nine schools (six elementary, two junior high, and one senior high) that make up an entire public…

The usefulness of studying thought processes in the construct validation of ability tests was examined using a sample consisting of 343 Canadian senior high school students. Four levels of probing were used by the interviewer to examine the students' thinking processes while taking the Test on Appraising Observations: (1) think aloud; (2)…

The essays in this book address various cognitive and emotional dimensions of disrupted composing and describe some of the situational variables that can contribute to it. The titles and authors are as follows: "Blocking and the Young Writer" (Donald H. Graves); "Emotional Scenarios in the Writing Process: An Examination of Young…

To cope with some social problems, Japanese educational planners are drafting some proposals for research into innovations in the educational system. This paper reports on some research recently done which looked into the relationships of the Japanese educational environment and the reasoning/thinking skills and process skills of students in…

This study attempted to evaluate the efficacy of time delay in increasing the academic response accuracy of moderately retarded adolescents. The time delay technique provided a means by which "cognitive organizers" could be taught to the students to mediate their behavior and improve academic performance. A modified multiple baseline…

Students of reasoning have long tried to understand how people revise systems of beliefs. This paper maintains that people often change their beliefs in ways driven by considerations of explanatory coherence. In this report, a computational model is described of how experimental subjects revise their naive beliefs about physical motion. First,…

The objectives of this study were to: (1) develop a working model based on Pierre van Hiele and Dina van Hiele-Geldof's five levels of thought development in geometry; (2) characterize the thinking in geometry of sixth (N=16) and ninth (N=16) graders in terms of these levels (examining at what level they are at, if they show potential for progress…

Sixteen third grade students, 16 college students, and 16 older adults performed a lexical decision (word-nonword) task to determine age-related differences in the magnitude of contextual priming effects. Context length and target quality (intact versus degraded) were within subject manipulations. A significant Age X Context Length X…