A mnemonic device is any technique or system to improve or aid the memory by use of formulas. Memory aids enjoyed great popularity in ancient times, but with the advent of literacy, the need for memorization was lessened and mnemonics were not taught regularly. However, recent research in cognitive psychology suggests that mnemonics, taught and…

Fourth grade students' miscues occurring in signaled sentence combining exercises were compared with their reading miscues in a study relating cognitive style to miscue analysis of reading and writing. The records of 16 students were used, with reflective students and impulsive students so designated on the basis of their miscues per one-hundred…

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of embedded headings, with and without instructions on their usage, as processing aids for text material. It was expected that the Instructions/Headings group would outperform both the Headings Only and Control (no instructions or headings) groups, and that the performance of the Headings Only group…

This investigation of the impact of feedback upon scrambled discourse was intended to show the effects of idiosyncratic processing and to provide a more sensitive indicator of feedback usefulness. Learner schemata, text organization, and feedback strategies interact in processing discourse, although past research has favored limited models…

This paper discusses those aspects of personality development relevant to language learning. In particular, second language learning is shown to entail personality modification. References are made to the place of values, attitudes, and the model of the world in personality; to the role of language learning in developing favorable cross-cultural…

Study of equilibration between assimilatory and accommodatory processes in the learning styles of first-year French-speaking students of English as a second language indicated that: students' alternative frameworks should be exposed; intake is penetrable; equilibration leads to learning in the broad sense; and language pedagogy should downtone its…

A teacher educator describes his teaching experience in China and his finding that the Western behaviorist, alphabetic, linear mode of thinking has been widely adopted in education in that traditionally ideographic culture. The contrasting relationships of language, thought and behavior in the American and Chinese cultures is examined, and it is…

This discussion is based on the results of an earlier experiment in which four groups of deaf subjects, ranging in age of first exposure to signing from birth to over eighteen, were given lists of sentences in American Sign Language to shadow and recall immediately after presentation. It was found that in terms of overall accuracy, early learners…

Although successful reading comprehension is described as the interaction of text-based processes and processes related to the reader's existing background knowledge or schemata, under different conditions readers show different patterns of text-based versus knowledge-based processing. Recent research suggests that students of English as a second…

Since past studies have shown that females as well as left-handers do not demonstrate a right-ear advantage for verbal materials, suggesting that linguistic functions may not be handled in the left hemisphere exclusively, a study was conducted to examine these laterality effects more closely. Subjects, 24 undergraduate students at a small college…

Analyzes the language acquisition of a bilingual (Estonian/English) child. Discusses his preference for acquiring whole words as opposed to inflections and offers several possible reasons for this particular learning strategy. (EKN)

The decoding behavior of Cindy, a junior high school student of French, was analyzed. An examination of a transcript of her attempt to translate a French passage aloud into English revealed that she was not taking advantage of contextual guessing. During remedial sessions, an attempt was made to discover the best method of helping Cindy acquire…

Educational cognitive style refers to a person's preferred ways of gathering meaning from surroundings. It involves four groups of behaviors: receiving, expressing, reasoning, and handling the receiving/expressing in specific settings or modalities. A comparison of communication and educational cognitive style shows that several ideas are common…

This paper presents the results of a research study carried out with Mexican college students to analyze the relationship between readers' cognitive styles (field dependent/independent) and their performance at different levels of written discourse processing in Spanish (L1) and English (L2). The sample for the study included 452 undergraduate…

A review of research bearing on second language teaching methodology looks at what it tells about language processing and production, classroom interaction and second language learning, and learning strategy preferences. The perspective taken is that methodology consists of classroom tasks and activities. Implications of the research for the…