One of the prevalent misconceptions that severely limits the possibilities of curriculum change in schools is the belief that theory has no direct relevance to pedagogical problems and that what is really needed are practical ideas for classroom instruction. Serious curriculum change requires an explicit dependence upon improved applications of…

Forty-four junior high school students were randomly assigned to two vocabulary instruction treatments. One treatment used context-rich, three-sentence passages as sources for target word definition. The other, the semantic mapping treatment, entailed learning new words by identifying the similarities and differences with related, known words.…

The most important consideration with regard to classroom use of films in an English as a second language (ESL) class is that it should be previewed by the teacher and selected according to criteria such as those suggested here. In example, short silent films that are uncluttered in appearance are good vehicles for teaching vocabulary. Some…

A study explored a potential aptitude-by-treatment interaction associated with the keyword method of vocabulary acquisition. This method is a two-stage mnemonic process whereby an unfamiliar term is first transformed into a familiar concrete stimulus and then a thematic relationship is created between the transformed stimulus and the information…

Ten second grade students in a slow reading group were studied to compare the effects of basal and language experience instruction on word recognition skills. For four weeks, all the students received 90 minutes of basal instruction each morning. During the afternoon sessions, the five language experience students dictated and read stories related…

The effects of graphic preorganizers (structured overviews) and prereading vocabulary instruction upon literal (lower level) and inferential/evaluative (upper level) comprehension was studied, using six sections of college students enrolled in a developmental reading and study skills course. The class sections were randomly assigned to use either…

This introductory French course guide is intended to be used by classroom teachers in the primary grades. The course and materials are designed for teachers who may not have had any background in the foreign language; the tapescript of each lesson is therefore highly structured. They are intended as an experiential or enrichment component of the…

This introductory Spanish course guide is intended to be used by classroom teachers in the primary grades. The course and materials are designed for teachers who may not have had any background in the foreign language; the tapescript of each lesson is therefore highly structured. They are intended as an experiential or enrichment component of the…

This introductory German course guide is intended to be used by classroom teachers in the primary grades. The course and materials are designed for teachers who may not have had any background in the foreign language; the tapescript of each lesson is therefore highly structured. They are intended as an experiential or enrichment component of the…

As part of a continuing effort by the Indiana Department of Public Instruction to share practical, easy-to-implement reading techniques, this booklet offers a collection of teaching activities under various topics related to reading. Of the eight sections in the booklet, four deal with writing, because an anticipated outgrowth of improved skill in…

The middle childhood years are a period of refinement of the semantics and syntax acquired in the early years, of substantial metalinguistic development, and of subtle changes in actual processing strategies. In a study undertaken to determine how these three factors interact, children aged 6 to 11 were asked to produce and recognize paraphrases.…

Production data from a longitudinal study of seven children in their first attempts to produce words containing fricatives are presented to illustrate how children use four distinct strategies to approach this relatively difficult class of sounds. The strategies are: (1) favorite sounds--an approach used by a subject who seemed to enjoy playing…

After research between 1960 and 1977 relating to college reading program effectiveness was identified, a statistical procedure called Meta-Analysis was used to integrate findings and determine any composite benefit of instruction. Of 676 references on the initial list, 66 studies were identified as having quantifiable data within the limits of the…

A study is described in this paper that was conducted to determine the frequency and percentage of words containing Latin prefixes and roots in the "Harris Jacobson Core List" (Basic Elementary Reading Vocabularies, 1972). The results of the study indicate that the percentage of words containing Latin prefixes and roots increases…

SIXTY URBAN, MIDDLE-CLASS, FOURTH-GRADE TEACHERS IN THE SOUTHWEST WERE GIVEN THE EDWARDS PERSONAL PREFERENCE SCHEDULE (EPPS) AS A MEASURE OF PERSONALITY. THEIR CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR WAS THEN RECORDED ON A TEACHER OBSERVATION PERSONALITY SCHEDULE REFLECTING EDWARDS' DEFINITIONS OF HIS NEEDS FOR ACHIEVEMENT, ABASEMENT, AFFILIATION, DOMINANCE, CHANGE,…