This Middlebury College summer 1974 commencement address is an informal presentation of the author's experiences as a language learner. The effectiveness of such pedagogical methods as the grammar-translation, audio-lingual, and "balanced" approaches, and of language learning with the aid of an informant, is discussed. It is concluded that, given…

The Workshop on Instructional Development was one of a number of workshops organized on various issues concerning teaching and learning in the Ontario universities. It was held in an attempt to provide some exchange of information among the Ontario universities on the organized activities initiated on their campuses concerned with improving…

An educational experiment concerning second language acquisition is described in this report. It is hypothesized that low ethnocentrism, positive attitudes toward the other group, and an integrative orientation toward language comprise high motivation, with the opposite criteria controlling low motivation. Puerto Rican children involved in the…

This study attempts to determine whether stated behavioral objectives, learner activities, and self-pacing increase both learner input into instructional decision making and comprehension as well as improve attitude. The subjects for the study were drawn from three sections of a principles of communication course which were all taught by the same…

The first part of this paper discusses the general decline in reading and writing ability in the United States and suggests several methods for improving literacy education, including teaching students the reading process several times a year from kindergarten through grade twelve. The second part of the paper makes two positive assumptions: that…

In order to determine the extent to which Pass/Fail grading affects the learning process by altering student motivation, the author studied the grades of 61 Pass/Fail and 61 traditionally graded students who had enrolled in the "Introduction to Africa" course at York College (Pennsylvania) during the three semesters of 1973-74. All…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of individual adult-child conferences in increasing the independent reading of elementary school children. Following an 8-week baseline period, second, fourth, and sixth graders of both high and low reading achievement were randomly assigned to no-conference, teacher-conference, or…

When students inductively study linguistic patterns and then apply their understanding to achieve sentence variety, their interest in composition is heightened and their writing styles improve. Through examples in music and in nonsense and model sentences, students became aware of their language's basic structural patterns (subject-verb word…

Studies were some problems of learning motivation and extrinsic reinforcement in a group of disadvantaged youngsters. Also tested was the hypothesis that learning would be facilitated for those children who received regular individual tutoring in addition to classroom instruction, regardless of conditions of reinforcement. Subjects were 60 Negro…

Reported is a demonstration project which involved 20 disadvantaged eighth grade students in a series of specially designed physical sciences experiments. It was hypothesized that these students, classified as nonliterate, would respond favorably to an approach which tended to break up their patterns of failure. Moreover, successful science…

Programs conducted by the City University of New York (CUNY) for helping disadvantaged youth prepare for and succeed in college are described. An Urban Center program runs several projects, notably a College Adapter Program which helps high school students who are not qualified for college admission. The community colleges provide 2-year terminal…

This document reports on one of a series of three surveys conducted on behalf of the Commission on Non-Traditional Study. The chief purpose of this study is to describe in detail the potential market for adult learning. A second general purpose is to analyze the learning activities of men and women who are engaged in adult learning. To gather this…

The learning contract, a written agreement between a student and a sponsor (teacher, counselor, "facilitator"), describes what the student wants to learn and states the basis on which credit is to be earned. Use of the latter concept to utilize community resources evidences the realization that learning takes place not only in schools but wherever…

Using the case history method, this book documents the actual experiences of three top management groups seeking to develop the full potential of the technical and human resources of their organizations and to grow profitably in both economic and human terms. Each of the organizations is at some stage of the process of changing from the…

The purpose of this study is to examine and assess the expectations, needs and opinions of educationally deficient adults on their returning to school for academic upgrading. The hypothesis to be tested is that programs of academic up-grading for adults, which belong to a new field and suffer many of the uncertainties that pervade all fields of…