The vocabulary deficit shown by English Learners (ELs) has become evident among many educators over decades of research (Becker, 1977; Biemiller, 2001; Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1990; Hart & Riseley, 2003), and has shown that a student's limited vocabulary becomes a "major barrier to school success" (Graves, 2005, p. 18).…

Sometimes, the relationship between form and meaning in language is not one-to-one. Here, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to illuminate the neural correlates of such flexible syntax-semantics mappings during sentence comprehension by examining split-intransitivity. While some ("rigid") verbs consistently select one…

Previous research studies examining the effects of graphic organizers on reading comprehension for students with learning disabilities (LD) are reviewed. An extensive search of the professional literature between 1963 and June 2001 yielded a total of 21 group design intervention studies that met the criteria for inclusion in the synthesis. Using…

The study reported in this article describes second language (L2) vocabulary learning outcomes associated with adult L2 reading comprehension processes, thus connecting L2 learning with the complex cognitive and linguistic processing involved in reading. The study aimed to determine whether background knowledge moderated the relationship between…

Reviews research concerning instructional applications of discourse analysis for student reading and writing, including large-scale studies of student writing, text-based studies, reading comprehension, and semantic mapping. A large unannotated bibliography is included. (CB)

In 1987, as a vehicle for improving student performance, Moss Point (Mississippi) Schools embraced semantic or cognitive mapping. Using highly structured computer programs, students learn to construct visual maps representing the relationships of major ideas, subordinate ideas, and explicit information. Includes six references. (MLH)

A study compared the effectiveness of three classroom methods for teaching semantic mapping to college-level learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Subjects were 187 freshmen at an Egyptian university, randomly assigned to three treatment groups: teacher-initiated semantic mapping; student-mediated semantic mapping; and teacher-student…