This study sought to determine the extent of the serial position effect in listening to French and to specify the relationship between problem areas in listening to French and the position effect. The study addressed three hypotheses relative to the serial position effect and listening to French: (1) Was there a significant difference between the…

A project to develop curriculum materials geared to the immediate, specific language needs of limited English speaking foreign students at Douglas College (British Columbia, Canada) is reported. The materials designed were intended for orientation and acculturation, containing cultural content that could be integrated into the college's…

The Adult New Reader Collection-Model Project proposed to serve five targeted groups by providing literacy, language development, and English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) materials. The five groups included: literacy tutors; students identified by the staff and matched to their trained tutors; adult library users not connected to a literacy program…

A study examined cultural practices of female international students at the University of Texas at Austin. Data were collected from 259 students (representing a 24.7 percent response rate) who revealed those aspects of their own culture which the students retained or modified as well as which American practices they borrowed. A two-page…

Based on the premise that improvement in students' reading, writing, and content area skills occurs when authentic literature is used as the core of reading instruction, this book offer guidelines for teachers who wish to incorporate literature into their classrooms. According to the book, the educational value of children's books as teaching…

This article describes how second language learners become more autonomous in the language learning process, how the cooperative learning strategy helps improve the learning outcome, and how second language learners apply learning strategies to learning tasks both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. Three activities were offered:…

The report describes improved algorithms within a computer program for identifying spelling and word order errors in student responses. A "markup analysis" compares a student's response string to an author-specified model string and generates a graphical error markup that indicates spelling, capitalization, and accent errors, extra or…

Project Comienzo, a bilingual pre-kindergarten program, was designed to help Spanish-speaking 3-year-old children flourish academically and socially, supported by the ratio of adults to children. The program served 17 students of limited English proficiency. A full-time bilingual teacher and a full-time educational assistant were used, and parents…

Criticisms of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) have included speculation that the listening test places too much burden on short-term memory as compared with comprehension, that a knowledge of reading is required to respond successfully, and that many items appear to require mere recall and matching rather than higher-order…

The Toronto Board of Education Benchmarks are libraries of reference materials that demonstrate student achievement at various levels. Each library contains video benchmarks, print benchmarks, a staff handbook, and summary and introductory documents. This book is about the development and the history of the benchmark program. It has taken over 3…

Since 1992, Britain's Further Education Unit (FEU) has sponsored a series of projects, including two conferences and a number of case studies, to identify refugees' education and training needs and explore appropriate curriculum and accreditation of refugees who have professional qualifications. The projects established the following: (1) unlike…

Using Jeanne Chall's widely applied model of reading development, this book examines the strengths and weaknesses in the reading, writing, and language development of children from low-income families to help identify the onset of their difficulties. The book shows how, in the transition from learning the medium to understanding the message, the…

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of the Wyoming Deaf-Blind Grant, a 3-year federally supported project to identify children who have deaf-blindness and to provide technical assistance in the development of educational services for these children. Major accomplishments of the project included: identification of more…

Preliminary data was gathered to guide subsequent research that will shape training procedures and scoring practice for performance assessment activities that integrate multiple content areas. Content area integration is a key feature of many of the tasks in the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP), a large-scale assessment of…

The Arabic Picture Vocabulary Test (APVT) was derived from the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in order to provide an estimate of a student's acquired verbal ability in Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) through his or her aural vocabulary. It is an individually administered norm-referenced power test for students aged 5 to 9 plus years. Each item…