This handbook, prepared by teachers enrolled in the 1992 summer session of Reading 508 at Northeast Louisiana State University (Monroe, Louisiana) under the guidance of Dr. Harry Miller, discusses (in separate sections) reading readiness, word recognition, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. Each section of the book also presents…

A study compared students' cognitive word knowledge of the cognates of "think" and "know" within a theoretical framework focused on hierarchical levels of meaning. Subjects were 31 fifth, 32 seventh, and 21 tenth graders attending single-gender private schools in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and 70 college…

An extensive literature review led to the formation of a framework for vocabulary instruction that can be used to analyze the relationship between knowledge of word meanings and comprehension and to suggest more effective means of vocabulary instruction. The framework posits two types of information students hold about words--definitional and…

To test the hypothesis that aspects of one's personality are associated with expansion of his or her vocabulary, a study focused on thirteen students of various ages who constituted a vocabulary development class. Students were taught techniques for discovering meaning through context or extracting meaning through word structure. Considerable time…

Describes a method for improving vocabulary skills of disadvantaged college freshmen. (RB)

Contains remarks on the advantages and limitations of work with filmstrips, methodological procedures in the introduction of these, e.g. in vocabulary work, the treatment of grammatical points, and speaking both in monologue and in dialogue. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Stressing that building vocabulary knowledge is a continuously developing skill, acquired over a lifetime and in a variety of ways, this concept paper suggests instructional strategies that lead to word knowledge. Following a research summary and a section on implications for instructions, the paper focuses on the various instructional strategies…

To determine the usefulness of two commonly taught phonics rules concerning the pronounciation of two-syllable words, a study analyzed more than 138,000 words in the "New Grolier Webster International Dictionary of the English Language." The rules state that (1) a vowel is short when the only vowel in a syllable is not the last letter in…

This study was designed to answer the following three questions: (1) Are infants' first words always context-bound when they are initially acquired? (2) Do mothers use infants' first words in a context-bound manner when interacting with their infants? (3) What relationship, if any, exists between infants' initial use of early words and mothers'…

German second language instructional materials include a summary of German folk dance terminology and 11 folk dances with music, lyrics, and dance instructions. Specific folk songs and dances (arranged in order of difficulty) include "Schusterpolka,""Polka zu Dreien,""Jagermarsch,""Lang Englisch," and "Schuhplattler." (MSE)

A study investigated the distribution and specific use of adjectives and related expressions in the naturally acquired German of one Turkish and two Italian migrant workers in West Germany. The research was part of a larger study of untutored language acquisition by migrant workers in Europe. Specifically, this study examined the learning of…

A study examined whether children increased their vocabularies as a result of hearing unfamiliar words within the oral context of a story and observed the oral strategies the children employed as they attempted to define a new word. Subjects, 64 males and 64 females, were from self-contained third-grade classrooms in public schools in a small town…

Most freshman composition textbooks are inadequate in giving information to students on how to interpret dictionaries: instead of presenting them as aids in exploring word usage, textbooks foster a naive trust in dictionaries as arbiters of all usage questions. Rather than treating words as discrete items to be mastered without knowledge of…

The ability to retain many songs in memory makes them an important tool for language learning, but one that is often underused. A commercially-produced set of materials called "Singlingual" puts everyday German words and phrases to well-known tunes, a technique students can use to develop their own songs. In addition to readily-available…

The relation definition theory proposed in this paper is explicitly different from previous semantic memory theories since it is the first to make a relation's definition the basis of semantic processing. The paper suggests that this relation definition theory successfully predicts relation similarity on the basis of one key primary assumption:…