Out of school time (OST) STEM opportunities are often presented as ways to support student achievement, understanding, and identity in STEM. Recent work has begun to explore how OST programs function within the STEM Learning Ecosystem, a holistic view of the various STEM learning opportunities available to youth in a given area. In order to…

The present study examined the influence of a human or computer "partner" on the production of fillers ("um" and "uh") during a question and answer task. Experiment 1 investigated whether or not responding to a human partner as opposed to a computer partner results in a higher rate of filler production. Participants…

This study concerns the mechanisms involving temporal update in discourse comprehension, comparing traditional approaches based on "Aktionsart" and Iconicity against an approach based on narrative expectations. Our experiments suggest that readers pay more attention to fine-grained discourse properties (such as salient temporal…

To explore the multimodality of two representative EFL textbook series for Chinese college students, their visual and verbal semiotic modes were compared. The target textbooks are "Experiencing English" and "New Century College English". Through multimodal discourse analysis, the study aims to shed some light on how to develop…

This in-depth study explores problem areas of Hong Kong secondary and university students in writing narrative and argumentative compositions on two different themes. Subjects were 40 university English majors, 40 form four and 40 form six secondary students. The research indicates that the students at these grade levels experienced difficulty in…

Examines differences in oral narrative discourse of adult second-language learners of English on narrative tasks simulating the ability to describe events in the Here-and-Now versus the There-and-Then. Results indicate that complex tasks elicit less fluent, but more accurate and complex narration than do simpler tasks. (90 references) (Author/CK)

The problems encountered by native Japanese-speakers in reading English as a second language are examined. The available literature on the subject as well as firsthand experiences in teaching English, developing reading materials, and conducting research projects are discussed. The discussion focuses on five major areas: the reading process; the…