Studied differences in learning activities between students who were successful using the CONTACT-2 strategy and those who were not. CONTACT-2 is characterized by continuous computer-assisted activation of the concepts of individual learners as they process expository texts. Results for 10 fifth and sixth graders show the importance of the second…

Process approaches to writing instruction in primary-grade classrooms have become widespread due to the influence of Graves (1983), Calkins (1986), Avery (1993), and others. Their work emphasizes expressive writing, particularly personal narrative, more than expository or informational writing. As a consequence, expressive writing is what children…

Stance-taking and stance-support are two discourse behaviours that define the expository/argumentative essay genre, the mastery of which is the key to academic success in higher education. The aim of this study is to discover the extent to which a group of high school students from a non-native English-speaking background are capable of engaging…

From cherry-picked data through tortured statistics, Mr. Bracey sets the story straight on the past year in education.

The role of extensive reading in building vocabulary continues to receive considerable attention in first and second language research and pedagogy. This study analyses the lexical differences between narrative and expository reading materials used in upper-elementary education (10- and 11-year-old children), and explores how these differences…

This article examines the process a diverse group of eighth grade students go through when charged with writing about the ways in which race might matter at their desegregated school. Students' articulations are bounded by a school culture of silence around race. The regulatory aspect of this school culture was enacted when students first make…

There are as many different definitions of conflict as there are reasons for it to occur. Staff conflict is one of the realities of organizational life. Given the range of things that can cause or contribute to staff conflict, and the likelihood of workplace conflict, the author offers principles that can contribute to resolution of workplace or…

As the authors look ahead toward the World Forum on May 2005, they consider prospects of coming together with international, multilingual leaders in early care and education. They asked some questions to stimulate thinking and to share cross-cultural perspectives on the topic of "Culture and Leadership". In this article, the authors…

The authors are pleased with commentators' willingness to respond to their target article's challenge to identify observable reproducible phenomena that could be widely accepted as strong scientific evidence for innate talent. In this reply, the authors have organized the ideas in the commentaries into three general categories, namely the…

Educators are generally aware that federal law protects persons with disabilities from unjustified discrimination, but they may not be familiar with the details of how these protections come into play when decisions are made about an individual's educational or employment opportunities. This article focuses on the protections that two federal…

Expository hypertexts may contain specific types of signals such as navigable topical overviews and hyperlinks that map conceptual relationships between text contents. Two experiments with German university students (N = 130, 75% female, mean age 25 years) were conducted to test the hypothesis that hypertext-specific signals particularly support…

This study examined the influence of critical reading orientation on use of external strategies such as note-taking and underlining while reading an expository text. In two experiments, undergraduate students were asked either to review an article on a linguistic policy (critical reading) or to summarise it (less-critical reading). Experiment 1…

The process of writing a term paper requires certain necessary steps. This guide offers specific and practical directions for writing a comprehensive term paper on any subject and addresses the three main concerns: the procuring of information; format and organization of the paper; and reading and proofreading the paper. Step-by-step examples are…

The development of English syntactic maturity was investigated among Chinese secondary school students learning English as a second language. Narrative and expository compositions written by 60 students at three grade levels were analyzed for increases in T-unit length, clause length, number of clauses per T-unit, and the use of nominals,…

Writing can be a rich source of information for science teachers who wish to take their students' present understandings into account as they plan and carry out instruction. The responses students give when asked to explain in writing what happened in an experiment can help the teacher address particular student's misunderstandings. Even writers…