Readers confronted with unfamiliar and controversial scientific debates tend to rely on simple heuristics such as the perceived plausibility to focus their cognitive resources on specific information during comprehension. In the present experiment, we tested the assumption that plausibility judgments as an integral part of comprehension are used…

Critical thinking skills are widely considered to be important transferable skills gained from taking college-level economics courses that are also highly valued by employers. Yet, the literature on intentionally teaching critical thinking skills in undergraduate economics classes is still relatively sparse. The author of this article outlines an…

The widespread use of technology and the Internet have changed many of language learners' everyday practices, including literacies. While there have been many studies with the focus on language learners' digital literacies, few, however, have explored language learners' digital information literacy and online reading practices with the use of…

The high-school-to-college transition can be difficult as students are adapting to a multitude of academic and social changes simultaneously. The University of Wyoming has created a first-semester program targeted at development of student skills for at-risk students using paired first-year seminar classes. Using student survey data from both pre-…

Literacy in the 21st century is about constructing and validating knowledge. Digital technologies have enabled the spread of all kinds of information, displacing traditional formats of usually more carefully curated information such as encyclopaedias and newspapers. The massive information flow of the digital era demands that readers be able to…

The number of multilingual students is increasing every year in the U.S. educational institutions. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), the number of international students in the United States has doubled in the past ten years, from 547,873 in 2000-2001 to 1,095,299 students in 2018-2019 (NCES, 2021). This rise…

Literacy today relies on a readers' ability to analyse text critically. This case study investigated preservice teachers' critical analysis of media text containing visuals and representations. In particular, the analysis focused on mathematical factors that impact on readers' interpretation of diverse visuals. Data was gathered from the 23…

This paper seeks to identify threshold concepts in academic reading. It builds on existing research on the subject by working in collaboration with three groups of academic readers (1: academic staff and subject lecturers; 2: learning developers and librarians; 3: students) to co-identify a list of potential threshold concepts of academic reading.…

Synthesizing academic literature into new knowledge through writing is a core skill that doctoral students engaged in research must learn. However, developing efficacy in synthesis skills as an academic writer is a culturally and cognitively demanding process that occurs over many years, requires abstraction, and draws upon critical reading…

Due to the tumultuous COVID-19 pandemic, the use of advanced technology in language education is currently on the rise, with English education being no exception. Simultaneously, the advancement and expansion of technology provide English as a foreign language students with multiple channels and opportunities to reinforce the four skills of…

The objective of the study was to recognize the self-perception of students linked to undergraduate programs of a faculty of business sciences regarding the development of transversal learning. It corresponds to research designed under the empirical-analytical paradigm, the quantitative approach and the nonexperimental deductive method -…

This article describes a seminar I taught on Christianity and colonialism. I wanted to introduce students to some content while also allowing them to practice some of the expert skills that we use in religious studies, and more specifically in my own sub-discipline, the anthropology of religion. In particular, I wanted to make more visible some of…

This article develops an account of an extracurricular reading group convened in a small theatre/performance department, consisting of postgraduate and honours students. The origins of the group in a formal seminar/class are discussed, including a shift in syllabus design based upon breadth of reading/content to one based upon depth, taking up the…

The aim of this article is to argue for the relevance of critical visual literacy (CVL) in relation to intercultural learning in ELT and present a redesign task that has been implemented with secondary school EFL learners in Norway. CVL is an approach to reading images which acknowledges that all texts are constructed, rather than neutral, and…

In this article, the author describes the use of primary literature readings in an upper-division undergraduate field course. One of the two main learning goals of the course was to teach students how to read academic articles in economics with a critical eye. This was accomplished by providing students with a structured framework for summarizing…