Prediction in language comprehension has become a key mechanism in recent psycholinguistic theory, with evidence from lexical prediction as a primary source. Less work has focused on whether comprehenders also make structural predictions above the lexical level. Previous research shows that processing is facilitated for syntactic structures which…

The present study examined the extent to which first language (L1) awareness can benefit second language (L2) grammatical learning of the French "Imparfait", a crosslinguistically complex target feature. Sixty-nine English-speaking learners of L2 French received different types of explicit information (EI) about L2 or L2 + L1…

Children with good and poor listening comprehension (n = 17 in each group) 9-10 years of age were trained to self-generate mental images for sentences and stories. Their ability to identify the antecedents of personal pronouns in individual sentences and also to select the appropriate pronoun in a story cloze task was assessed pre- and…

Professor J. Charles Alderson grew up in the town of Burnley, in the North-West of England, and is still based in the North West but in the ancient city of Lancaster. From Burnley to Lancaster, however, lies a journey and a career that took him all around the world to share his knowledge, skills, and experience in language testing and to learn…

Research on the use of linguistic context (prediction of a word by using the text) in reading showed that children were better at using the preceding context and good readers used the suceeding context better. The study could not determine whether good readers used better strategies or were more skillful at using strategies. (Author/MJL)

This article reports studies of adolescent passive and active vocabulary development. It describes measuring instruments applied to the oral and written language of 12- and 15-year-old students drawn from 10 social backgrounds in England and Australia. Implications for education are drawn from the results of these studies. (IAH)

Analysis of advanced English-as-a-second-language students' responses to proficiency tests and conversational cloze tests after a six-month residency in England revealed that, while written multiple-choice tests clearly showed linguistic improvement, the oral cloze tests separated out subjects more effectively. (Author/CB)

The cloze procedure, a technique developed for use with textual material and employed in the testing of readability and comprehension, may be useful in the investigation of cognitive mapping skills. The technical problems associated with the design of cloze tests are examined and the results of some empirical tests are reported. (BT)

This paper describes Directed Activities Related to Text (DART), procedures that were developed and are used in the Reading for Learning Project at the University of Nottingham (England) to enhance learning from texts and that fall into two broad categories: (1) text analysis procedures, which require students to engage in some form of analysis of…

This paper describes a community's attempts to raise the knowledge and awareness of environmental issues of early years pupils through the use of "Environmental Story Sacks". The results of the small scale evaluation, using a pre and post activity oral "cloze" exercise, showed that reception year pupils' response scores to…

Studies the effects of two comprehension training methods (one based on imagery and inferencing, the other based on text structure) on various aspects of third and fifth graders' reading performance. Results indicate that neither method had a measurable impact on reading comprehension nor on metacognitive knowledge of the reading process. (RS)

In January 1975, 31 Venzuelan students of science were admitted to the University of Essex. It was suggested that a pre-first-year period be divided equally between attendance of regular college courses and English courses designed especially for them. This article describes the English course hurriedly prepared to meet this specific situation.…