In the English Language Training Unit of the Bank of Canada, the duties performed by an individual worker are examined closely and a language-use profile developed. Authentic recordings of specific problematic occupational situations are used and found to be highly motivating in training. Examples of exercise discourse are given. (MSE)

The impact of a grade two enrichment program in a French immersion course is evaluated. Small group activities under the supervision of a parent, grade six students, and a grade two monitor provided opportunities to practice French in a stimulating environment. Significant oral skills gains were measured. (Author/MSE)

Describes a minimal training program designed to improve the reading skills of adults in the business world. Concludes that the program had a significant effect of the vocabulary development, comprehension, and reading rates of the participants. (FL)

Reports results of measuring children's comprehension of basal reader stories that had been revised based on notions of the role of prior knowledge in comprehension and the establishment of key story content. (AEA)

Discusses the active contribution a learner/user must make in using a dictionary and breaks the look-up process into seven main steps. (EKN)

Discusses: (1) how mole concept is defined/used in textbooks; (2) development and administration of a multiple-choice test to secondary school pupils (N=783) in Bologna and the surrounding district; and (3) results of the diagnostic examination, focusing on student mistakes and misconceptions. (Author/JN)

Discusses results of research on the comprehension/production of oral and written language in a classroom. Suggests that effective school participation requires that students acquire various language skills for handling cognitive tasks and for interacting in classroom social situations. Describes a test to assess oral and written language…

Reports on a study in which high and low ability elementary school students pronounced synthetic words exemplifying certain phoneme grapheme correspondences. Compares these pronunciations to principle pronunciations indicated from type counts of letters and clusters appearing in a selected word corpus. Concludes that the technique led to greater…

Summarizes a study of advanced ESL university students from eight first-language backgrounds and discusses the proficiency differences found between several groups in processing two types of information patterns in written English. Suggests possible variables in cognitive strategies and skills related to the students' different cultural/linguistic…

Presents two studies done to identify problems students have in understanding the concepts of Darwinian evolution and adaptation. Results indicated poor understanding of the concept of time accounted for misconceptions in both studies (humans destroyed dinosaurs), and that only about 50 percent of students used logical reasoning. (JN)

Offers a model which is intended to facilitate the processing of ideational relationships within a paragraph and which is composed of three distinct parts: (1) direct teaching, (2) functional application, and (3) increased student interaction with the text. (FL)

Examines the effect of redundancy of information on the intelligibility of hearing and deaf children's speech. Based on intelligibility scores obtained for a set of words presented both in context and in isolation, suggests that the children do not use the same production strategies to assist listeners. (Author/MES)

Reviewed theoretical and empirical work in phonological recoding, concluding that phonological representation is used to aid comprehension and suggesting that decoding graphemic information into a phonological form is important for early readers. Asserts that future research should examine differences in the use of visual versus phonological…

This study investigated the hypothesis that sex biases (defined as disproportionate references to one sex) in a reading passage and on a comprehension test would lead to differential performance by 120 male and female undergraduates. An analysis of variance revealed no significant main effects or interactions. (Author/CTM)

Listed are classroom resources--films and filmstrips, textbooks, multimedia kits, and cassettes--for language arts. Included in each resource listing are a description of the content emphasis, organization and/or instructional method, objectives, recommendations/evaluations and, in some cases, student evaluations. (KC)