Sixth and eighth grade students who are English language learners must be able to read and interpret 39 math word problems in order to successfully calculate the answers on the Massachusetts state math assessment (MCAS). The first year that MCAS was administered, many ELL students read the questions, found them confusing, and left them blank,…

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the reading comprehension of hearing impaired 8th graders who are being trained through an auditory-oral approach. The evaluation is conducted through miscue analysis using complex stories. To realize this aim, the following research questions are formulated. (1) To what extent do hearing impaired…

When older students fail to gain rapid and accurate decoding skills by the third or fourth grade, they not only struggle with reading comprehension, but they also fall behind their average reading peers in academic performance and achievement--and they rarely catch up. When presented with academic tasks that require reading, these students often…

The present study addresses the reactivity of two types of verbal protocols in SLA research. It expands on the work of Leow and Morgan-Short (2004), who found nonmetalinguistic verbalization during a second-language reading task to be nonreactive for beginning learners' text comprehension, intake, and production of the targeted morphological form.…

This study focused on the nature of interpersonal understanding in 4- and 5-year-olds. Early childhood constitutes a critical transition period during which children become able to understand their own and others' "inner world" as it relates to actions. A neo-Piagetian theoretical and analytic framework was used to study children's understandings…

Although it is recognized that ESL students often need assistance to become more comprehensible speakers, their teachers usually have limited time to devote to pronunciation instruction. Research should help teachers set priorities for pronunciation teaching to address these students' needs as efficiently as possible. Here we test the usefulness…

In this manuscript, the author explores the question, What does research suggest for middle level readers? To answer it, she conducts a synthesis of empirical studies published between 1990 and 2001 that appeared in journals linked to the author's professional membership (i.e., "Research in Middle Level Education" ("RMLE"), "Reading Research…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the 9th-grade students' understandings of the nature of scientific knowledge. The study also aimed to investigate the differences in students' understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge by gender, and school types. A total of 575 ninth grade students from four different school types (General…

Keeping a good balance in the classroom and in the library media center is no easy task. It is an on-going process that will continually involve reflective thinking, research, professional reading, networking among other professionals, and collaboration among teachers and fellow library media specialists. In this article, the author discusses what…

The effect of the self-monitoring training on reading accuracy and fluency of second-grade poor readers was examined. The participants were assigned in one experimental and three control groups. The experimental group was reinforced with token-economy for self-correction and fluent reading. One control group practiced reading without feedback, the…

This study examined the interaction between working memory and language comprehension in children with specific language impairment (SLI), focusing on the function of the central executive component and its interaction with the phonological loop (A. D. Baddeley, 1986) in complex working memory tasks. Thirteen children with SLI and 13 age-matched…

The experiment reported here was concerned with the effect of repeat-viewing and adult co-viewing on the comprehension of an animated feature length movie. Four- to six-year-old children watched a movie on video either once or five times, and either with their mother present or on their own. The findings revealed that, after controlling for…

Second language researchers and trainers have met with some success in teaching language learners the skill of inferring meaning from context while reading, using a variety of teaching methods. This paper describes a study that attempts to compare the effectiveness of three teaching methods, on ESL learners' ability to infer from context and…

This pilot study investigated the efficacy of "Phonics Alive 2: The Sound Blender", a computer-based phonological skills training program, delivered with both at-home and at-school components over a 10-week period, as a potential treatment of phonological dyslexia. Participants were 20 dyslexic primary students with an average delay of…

The compensatory-encoding theory (C-ET) of reading specifies how the efficiency of performance subcomponents affects comprehension under diverse task conditions. It maintains that readers can overcome weak skills through compensatory processes. To test whether C-ET captures more general principles underlying scholastic performance, the authors…