Noting the importance of establishing a cooperative relationship with a school-age child before he or she reaches high school, this guide is designed to assist parents of grade 4-8 students in helping their children establish good learning habits and complete homework assignments, while promoting active, lifelong learning. The guide's introduction…

Premised on E.D. Hirsch's call for cultural literacy, argues that school curricula should include law-related courses to promote legal literacy. Contends law-related courses incorporate reading and critical thinking skills and teach citizenship responsibilities. Defines objectives and rationale of law-related courses. Includes list of law-related…

Offers three activities for middle school classrooms. Activity 1 uses a newspaper reporter exercise to demonstrate two viewpoints of the U.S. Civil War. Activity 2 develops geographic awareness of direction and distance on a sphere through study of the great circle route. Activity 3 provides associative learning clues and mnemonic devices for…

To be successful, a vocabulary improvement program should teach vocabulary directly but in a meaningful context, involve teachers and use vocabulary from all content areas, and represent a long term commitment. Strategies promoting an effective program include the following: (1) teaching word consciousness, (2) using materials at students'…

If a student is to develop reading comprehension, he must possess and activate a number of linguistic and cognitive skills. He comes to the text with certain expectations and uses a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing, and confirming to understand it. The overall goal of reading instruction is to produce motivated, independent,…

Eight experiments studied the following aspects of associative strategies in learning: classification; verbalization at three developmental levels; verbalization by normal and educable children; facilitation of associative learning among educable retardates; effectiveness of familiarization and differentiation training on the successful employment…

To supplement other lists of most useful words based on such criteria as frequency of usage, range, and availability, this listing measures the capacity of 3,000 words of the French vocabulary to define, extend the meaning of, or to replace other words. Descriptions of the measures of definition, inclusion, extension, and combination are followed…

Developmental differences in the acquisition of information about strategy efficiency gleaned from observation of a peer model were assessed among 60 second and 60 seventh graders and 60 undergraduate students. At each age level, 20 subjects were randomly assigned to each of 3 experimental conditions. Developmental differences were considerable.…

Compares strategies used to infer the meanings of unknown words by three NNS readers--a good reader, an average reader, and a poor reader--from a series of six readings. The good reader uses a wider range of strategies than the weaker ones; all readers "read in" meanings from their own specialized subject (in this case chemistry). (15…

How the nervous system encodes learning and memory processes has interested researchers for 100 years. Over this span of time, a number of basic neuroscience methods has been developed to explore the relationship between learning and the brain, including brain lesion, stimulation, pharmacology, anatomy, imaging, and recording techniques. In this…

A series of four experiments explored a discrepancy in the findings of research regarding the use of the keyword method for learning vocabulary, specifically whether the presentation method (paced vs. unpaced) or the treatment administration (subjects in groups vs. subjects as individuals) determines its effectiveness. Two experiments involved…

A study was carried out to test the hypothesis that a difference exists between the results of a paradigmatic/syntagmatic word association test given in an individual's native language and in his second language. The sample used in this study consists of 23 Iranian officers attending a course at Air University in Alabama. Their primary language is…

This review of professional literature on the psychology of language summarizes and interprets selected books and articles published during the period 1957-60. The literature, selected on the basis of importance and applicability to education, is considered under the following headings: theories, research techniques, verbal learning, and…

Representational competence refers to the individual's capability to respond appropriately to external representations. For example, a child engaged in a grouping task may collect together all like objects even if the group contains varying representations of the object, including (1) the object itself, (2) a three-dimensional likeness of the…

Three game approaches to the teaching of poetry, designed to make the student actively involved with poems are described as "teaching tools." The semantico-dictionary or word-cross game involves programing techniques, logic, and lexicography in poetic analysis. The punched-out poem game involves filling in the blanks of a poem in which all the…