Previous research has demonstrated that writing instruction can support reading achievement (Graham & Hebert, 2011); however much of this work involved carefully designed interventions. In this study, we evaluated a conceptual framework of the direct and indirect effects of typical writing instruction and student writing practice on reading…

How best to promote fluency with basic sums and differences is still not entirely clear. Some advocate a direct approach--using drill to foster memorization of basic facts by rote. Others recommend an indirect approach that first involves learning reasoning strategies. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of 2…

A typical mathematics assignment consists primarily of practice problems requiring the strategy introduced in the immediately preceding lesson (e.g., a dozen problems that are solved by using the Pythagorean theorem). This means that students know which strategy is needed to solve each problem before they read the problem. In an alternative…

This experiment tested the hypothesis that organizing arithmetic fact practice by equivalent values facilitates children's understanding of math equivalence. Children (M age = 8 years 6 months, N = 104) were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 practice conditions: (a) equivalent values, in which problems were grouped by equivalent sums (e.g., 3 + 4 = 7, 2…

The Writing Pal (W-Pal) is a novel intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that offers writing strategy instruction, game-based practice, essay writing practice, and formative feedback to developing writers. Compared to more tractable and constrained learning domains for ITS, writing is an ill-defined domain because the features of effective writing are…

A testing effect occurs when a learner performs better on a retention test after studying the material and taking a practice-retention test than after studying the material twice. In the present study, 282 participants watched a narrated animation about lightning formation and then watched the presentation again (restudy), took a…

This study examined effects of a repeated reading intervention, Quick Reads, with incidental word-level scaffolding instruction. Second- and third-grade students with passage-reading fluency performance between the 10th and 60th percentiles were randomly assigned to dyads, which were in turn randomly assigned to treatment (paired tutoring, n = 82)…

The study examines whether teachers' homework objectives, implementation practices, and attitudes toward parental involvement are associated with the development of students' homework effort, homework emotions, and achievement during Grade 8. A total of 63 teachers (40 male, 23 female; mean teaching experience: M = 17.5 years) of French as a 2nd…

A direct-instruction approach to computer-assisted instruction is proposed, with the corrective feedback paradigm. Features of the paradigm include adaptive feedback techniques with discrimination training and increasing ratio review. An experiment where 102 undergraduate students learned English-Japanese (transliterated) word pairs demonstrated…

The relative effectiveness of practice and motivation was studied with 18 sixth grade classes learning English usage. Results suggest that the most effective device for learning is to increase the amount of practice, while the prime function of motivation is to make the practice more palatable. (SLD)

In the first drill, the branching type, subjects received problems matched to their ability. In the second drill, the fixed type, subjects received problems from all difficulty levels. Performance on both the pretest and posttest indicated that the fixed drill yielded the highest gains for more difficult problems. (Author/CP)

A study conducted with 105 university students investigated the effectiveness of using previous research findings as a means of teaching students how to interpret verbal and nonverbal behavior (decoding). Practice may be the critical feature for training in decoding. Research findings were successfully converted into educational techniques. (SLD)