Designed to assess comprehension of written ambiguous and polysemous structures, this instrument is a series of written statements that include varying degrees and types of ambiguity. In the first part of the test students are asked to identify (from a choice of three) semantically acceptable paraphrases for an initial sentence. Then students must…

Designed to assess listening ability and to indicate implications for listening instruction, this instrument comes in a full and an abbreviated form. The 45 multiple choice items on the full form measure 53 specific listening skills in five categories: (1) simple recall, (2) recognizing and following spoken directions, (3) recognizing a speaker's…

The paper discusses problems with traditional definitions of dyslexia and reviews research that suggests a more comprehensive definition, viewing dyslexia as a developmental language disorder that involves a deficit in phonological processing. The disorder is seen as manifesting itself in various phonological difficulties as well as in a specific…

Designed to assess listeners' comprehension of ambiguous and polysemous utterances, this instrument is a series of 24 statements that include varying degrees and types of ambiguity. Subjects listen to prerecorded audio tapes of these statements, presented in a neutral tone that provides no stress or pitch cues to aid "disambiguation."…

This essay, the concluding section of a larger study, examines the present state of cognitive science and instructional theory as reflected in the study's earlier chapters. Cognitive analyses of tasks are reported in the broad domain of language comprehension and production (e.g., understanding, composing, and answering questions about texts). The…

As an introducation to a symposium on curricular innovation, a sociolinguistic perspective is used to tie together presentations to follow on collaborative and deliberative processes in pedagogy, research, and evaluation in school settings. Collaboration and deliberation, as processes, are bound by the same constraints and potentials inherent in…

Current research on information processing suggests that short term memory plays a central role in the sorting and manipulation of text information during reading. Because an entire text cannot be processed simultaneously, successive "chunks" or units of information enter the short term memory where they are compared to the reader's previous…

To determine whether the impressive rates for speed reading (e.g., 500 words per minute) can be approximated in speed listening, two experiments compared the comprehension level of material heard at a normal speaking rate with that heard at accelerated rates. In the first experiment, the major demonstration experiment, three groups of college…

Three sets of experiments compared skilled and unskilled college and school age (sixth through eighth grade) readers' processing of spoken and printed sentences in isolation and in story context. The two types of readers differed in their processing of the structural, thematic, and schematic properties of sentences in both reading and listening.…

This annotated bibliography of research articles pertaining to the use of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in the development of reading comprehension skills in students of all ages and abilities is introduced by brief statements of the problem addressed and the purpose, organization, and limitations of the study. A glossary is also provided.…

This set of five papers, written in German with abstracts in English, was collected by the Institut fuer Didaktit der Mathematik (Institute for the Teaching of Mathematics) at the University of Bielefeld in West Germany. In the first paper, Bauersfeld used a transcript of a videotaped scene of group work out of school as a basis for analyzing…

A theory of how people learn certain procedural skills is presented. It is based on the idea that the teaching and learning that goes on in a classroom is like an ordinary conversation. The speaker (teacher) compresses a non-linear knowledge structure (the target procedure) into a linear sequence of utterances (lessons). The listener (student)…

Language is a complex social event. The rules determining its use vary with (1) the language field--the subject, text, and purpose; (2) the tenor of the social interaction; and (3) the mode or type of communication being used. The impact of the field, tenor, and mode on language use is reflected in a college student's retelling of a story to a…

Advances in cognitive science have greatly increased our knowledge of how the human mind stores and uses information. That knowledge can be used to decompose curricular objectives so as to increase the specificity of instruction to a level of precision that should greatly enhance student writing. This article identifies some major types of…

A variety of sources, including writing samples and videotapes of writing sessions, were examined to determine what speech events underlie the written compositions of students from fourth through twelfth grades. Findings revealed a correlation between different levels of writing competency and four types of speech events: encoding, conversation,…