Recently arrived English as a second language (ESL) students were compared to their unilingual and multilingual Canadian-born peers on measures of French proficiency. All of the participants were enrolled in secondary core French (CF)--the ESL students were studying introductory French, whereas the Canadian-born students were in Grade 9 CF, their…

Cognitive task analysis grew out of efforts by cognitive psychologists to understand problem-solving in a lab setting. It has proved a useful tool for describing expert performance in complex problem solving domains. This review considers two general models of cognitive task analysis and examines the procedures and results of analyses in three…

The "Competent Group Communicator" is an assessment tool designed to evaluate the performance of individual members who participate in task-oriented small group discussions. This instrument is designed to be used to evaluate the performance of students enrolled in a small group communication course, as a course placement tool, as a pre-…

This study examined the relationship between children's gender-typed conversational styles and joint problem-solving performance. Sixty preschool children between 4 and 5 1/2 years completed three problems with a same-sex or opposite-sex peer. Two structured tasks, copying a Tinkertoy model and stringing beads; and one unstructured task, building…

This four-part report describes the development of a plan for Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library's (HCL) next steps in the automation of operations including the public catalog, cataloging, circulation control, and acquisitions. The objectives of the plan were to improve patron access to materials and to provide for cost effective operations.…

This study investigated the assignments of both male and female student-teacher supervisors to check for equity of assignment, utilizing gender as one of the variables. A task analysis was done using real data from an unidentified university in Indiana. It was determined that the most important considerations for task analysis of the college…

The Texas Conference on Libraries and Information Services was one of a series of meetings held throughout the nation to allow the public to identify critical issues for consideration at the second White House Conference on Library and Information Services (WHCLIS II; Washington, DC, July 9-13, 1991). The 28 resolutions that were produced as a…

This document contains a task analysis for health occupations (professional nurse) in the nursing cluster. For each task listed, occupation, duty area, performance standard, steps, knowledge, attitudes, safety, equipment/supplies, source of analysis, and Illinois state goals for learning are listed. For the duty area of "providing therapeutic…

The complexity of the optimization algorithm for staff utilization in any medium to large organization can cause major problems in meeting schedules while still keeping all of the work force in full employment, working at a level appropriate to their experience, and also giving staff an opportunity to develop new skills and experiences that will…

In order to individualize instruction for learning disabled students, tasks should be matched to students' abilities and learning styles. Two types of task modifications include modifying the task content to coincide with what students are ready to learn and modifying task processes and features to match how students prefer to learn. Readiness…

The willingness to manipulate others has been called Machiavellianism. The purpose of the present study was to acquire a preliminary answer to the question: what verbal communicative strategies do people with high Machiavellian characteristics employ which permit them to influence and control the group process? (Author)

Discusses briefly some general problems in the development of taxonomic systems applicable to descriptions of human performance and tasks, describing some alternative approaches and provisional classification schemes, and reviewing some attempts to evaluate the utility and validity of these systems. (Author/JM)

An example is given of the use of task analysis and functional analysis to pinpoint the environmental cause of what appeared to be a perceptual handicap in an elementary grade girl. (DB)