This study examined the effects of conversational language (e.g., asking questions, inviting replies, acknowledgments, referencing others by name, closing signatures, "I agree, but", greetings, etc.) on the frequency and types of responses posted in reply to given types of messages (e.g., argument, evidence, critique, explanation), and…

The conversation between myself and Professor Lederman took place in Malmö, Sweden on August 25, 2007. The purpose of the conversation was to elaborate on the past, present and future of nature of science research and also to provide insights for beginning researchers. In this text I am providing the questions about which we talked and my…

This book provides a framework to help teachers connect brain-compatible learning, multiple intelligences, and the Internet to help students learn and understand critical concepts and skills. Educators will find internet-based activities that feature interpersonal exchange, problem-solving, and information gathering and analysis, plus…

The purpose of this study was to determine if a case-based reasoning tool would improve a student's understanding of the complex concepts in a Java programming course. Subjects for the study were randomly assigned from two sections of an introductory Java programming course. Posttests were used to measure the effects of the case-based reasoning…

This guest editorial describes ways teachers can use guessing games about an unknown item in a "mystery box" to help children improve their abilities to listen to others, recall information, ask purposeful questions, classify items by class, make inferences, synthesize information, and draw conclusions. The author presents information…

This study investigates how the combination of instructor modeling and question prompts for peer-questioning influences students' online questioning and answering activities. Fourteen students in a turfgrass management online class at a large land-grant university participated in two three-week sessions of online discussion. Two randomly selected…

In the context of low fertility and Australia's ageing population, a national longitudinal telephone survey, "Negotiating the Life Course" (NLC), asks women about their childbearing intentions. This paper uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine interaction between an interviewer and respondents on one NLC question about the likelihood…

This study investigated the effect of the language in which a test is administered when assessing second language reading comprehension. Subjects were college students (ages 18-21) enrolled in first-semester (n=27) and third-semester (n=19) Spanish classes. Each group was given a different passage in Spanish to read. Two sets of questions were…

This report addresses the reliability of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), not as a measure of speaking ability, but rather as practiced by testers trained by the ACTFL, such as by the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR), in English as a Second Language (ESL), French, German,…

A study investigated the effects of inserting questions in a computer-mediated text that required readers to review relevant portions of the text when a question was answered incorrectly. Undergraduate students (n=36) served as their own controls while reading a scientific text under 3 treatment conditions that varied as to the consequences of an…

The intent of this book is to encourage teachers to examine how they question in order to generate richer classroom interaction. Part One sets out the reasons for the limited effectiveness of questions in present classroom practice, and examines the two structures which form the matrix of all educational processes: the structure for thinking and…

A study examined the effects that a metacognitive strategy, self-questioning prediction, had on the improvement of reading comprehension. The sample included 17 eighth-grade students in a South Amboy, New Jersey middle school. The Gates MacGinitie Reading Comprehension Tests were administered as both pre- and posttests. There were three weekly…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether learner-generated or experimenter-provided adjunct practice questions are superior for facilitating recall of lower-order and higher-order textual information. The subjects for this experiment were 74 sixth grade students from three classes, randomly assigned to lower-order and higher-order…

A second-grade teacher wanted to enable her students to look at several pieces of their own writing, pick the best piece, and write an explanation as to why it was chosen. She began by developing a series of probing questions that the students could ask themselves as they evaluated their own writing. So that students could fully understand the…

This paper presents an outline for a three-part workshop for parents who want to help their children become better readers. The paper provides lists of materials, the overheads, and the handouts for each of the three parts of the workshop. The parts of the workshop described in the paper discuss: (1) word recognition and questioning strategies;…