Those who work in second- and foreign-language testing often find Koretz's concern for validity inferences under high-stakes (VIHS) conditions both welcome and familiar. While the focus of the article is more narrowly on the potential for two instructional responses to test-based accountability, "reallocation" and "coaching,"…

Discusses techniques English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners can use to learn words in context. Highlights using structural clues, inference clues, and guessing. (Author/VWL)

This paper attempts to compare the nativist approach on the contextualization of vocabulary with approaches by behaviorists, empiricists, and neofunctionalists. It considers such themes and issues as the following: cognition, comprehension, and communication; prior knowledge and content; the process of contextualization; the skill and process of…

Investigates textual coherence of popular psychology articles mediated through the theory of frames and identifies the linguistic evidence of factual frames. Inferencing is also discussed as a supplementary means to comprehension, with particular reference to the notion of bridging assumptions. Evidence for textual frames is discussed in relation…

Describes an activity for teaching English that helps students deal with new words in context, grasp meaning of a text before going into detail, and infer the meaning of new words. The activity focuses on three main goals: building an understanding of the text in spite of new vocabulary; coping with new words, and building confidence. (Author/VWL)