Reviews multidisciplinary research on second culture and second language reading comprehension to support the claim that second language reading is an interactive process, involving the interrelationship of cultural schemata and discourse structure. Argues for the roles of cultural schemata and discourse structure in an interactive model of first…

Describes a systematic method for producing pictures to accompany textual instructional materials. The resulting instructional design model is then used in an attribute by treatment interaction study of post-secondary school students that was designed to investigate the role of analogical pictures in adult learners' acquisition of higher level…

Describes the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia that contains an online collection of full-text databases delivered through a single search program. Highlights include user support services; use of Standard Generalized Markup Language; users; and providing a model for other universities. (LRW)

Presents a review of cognitive psychology research dealing with the organization and functioning of oral and written language production mechanisms. Discusses works dealing with the microstructural aspects of language, primarily oral production. Describes how the research perspective has evolved from modular to connectionist models. Examines the…

Describes the development and implementation of a curriculum model seeking to integrate the study of different types of text in a coherent and meaningful way. Explains the rationale of the model, supported by exemplar tasks designed by teachers working within the context of an integrated English, media and drama curriculum. Evaluates the impact of…

Introduction: Experimental validation of a self-regulated learning procedure for university students, i.e. the "meaningful text-reading" strategy, is reported in this paper. The strategy's theoretical framework is the "ACRA Model" of learning strategies. The strategy consists of a flexible, recurring sequence of five mental operations of written…

The goal of this study was to analyze the development of the relationship between conceptual and linguistic processes as regards idea ordering and structuring (linearizing), when composing a text. Participants (from 7th graders to University students) were required to compose a text using a list of eleven scrambled ideas. Conceptual rules allow to…

Reflecting the concerns of researchers and practitioners about children's text comprehension, this book defines and provides examples of narrative and expository text and describes research-based strategies for helping children comprehend these two types of text. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "Research on Stories: Implications…

One hundred French children in grade five participated in an experiment to determine how the problem frame facilitates comprehension of a problem solution text. Results demonstrate the positive role of frames in macrostructure construction and support the model of T. A. van Dijk and W. Kintsch (1983). (SLD)

o complementary experiments analyzed the acquisition of text content linearization in writing, in French-speaking participants from third to ninth grades. In both experiments, a scrambled text paradigm was used: eleven ideas presented in random order had to be rearranged coherently so as to compose a text. Linearization was analyzed on the basis…

Reports on a study that analyzed and compared a restricted set of full-text articles from a sub-specialty of biochemistry in terms of co-occurrences and co-absences of words. The consequences for the lexicographical approach to generating artificial intelligence from scientific texts are discussed. (JAK)

Describes two studies that compared university students' judgments about the readability and studyability of two sets of computer screens: a set of model displays and a set of real screens copied from computer-assisted instruction programs. Relationships among viewers' preferences and field dependence/independence, conceptual style, and gender…

Focuses on the textual revisions involved in the creation of "successful" scientific research articles by nonnative novice researchers. A linguistic framework of text analysis and interpretive commentary show how the hard, norm-developing processes of interaction between inexperienced novice and expert writers in the scientific discourse…

Discusses changes in higher education that are resulting from the use of hypermedia. Topics addressed include the structure of traditional texts; a distributed model for academic communication; independent learning as a model for higher education; skills for hypermedia literacy; database searching; information retrieval; authoring skills; design…

Reviews research literature on the design of text for older readers. Topics include improving typographically simple layouts through the use of larger type, more readable text, clearer layouts, and summaries, headings and signals; and improving typographically complex texts such as income tax forms, diagrams, and procedural instructions. (31…