This study examines the use of strategies and knowledge sources in L2 lexical inferencing and their relationship with inferential success. Data consist of introspective and retrospective think-aloud protocols of 21 intermediate ESL learners who attempted to infer new word meanings from context. Analysis reveals that (a) overall, the rate of…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and other recent changes in federal legislation have placed greater emphasis on accountability in large-scale testing. Included in this emphasis are regulations that require assessments to be accessible. States are accountable for the success of all students, and tests should be designed in a way that…

The current study examined special education teachers' ratings of the usefulness of strategy microanalytic assessment (SMA) (i.e., self-regulation, strategy use) and standardized norm-referenced assessment information (SNRA) (i.e., cognitive and academic skills). Ninety-six participants separately rated the frequency with which SMA and SNRA are…

This study examined critical incidents in graduate students' multicultural counseling training. Trainees (N=59) were asked to describe a critical incident and their multicultural training environment by responding to a critical incident protocol and the multicultural environment Inventory-Revised (D. B. Pope-Davis, W. M. Liu, J. Nevitt, & R. L.…

The importance of reading for academic study cannot be overemphasized. At the postgraduate level, students are faced with complex text interpretation processes. Yet, while concerns have been expressed regarding the English as a second language literacy (Fitzgerald, 1995), few international students have been asked for their views on their…

Web site usability concerns anyone with a Web site to maintain. Libraries, however, are often the biggest offenders in terms of usability. In our efforts to provide users with everything they need for research, we often overwhelm them with sites that are confusing in structure, difficult to navigate, and weighed down with jargon. Dowling College…

A study explored the cognitive processes and social-situational influences underlying students' assessment of their own foreign language proficiency, focusing on process rather than result of self-evaluation. The subjects, 28 college student learners of French at different course levels, were administered a self-assessment questionnaire on the…

In four experiments studying the think-aloud method, two first-year and two fifth-year students of translation were asked to produce a written translation from English into Finnish. This paper discusses the differences in how the two levels of students used various sorts of reference material. The fifth-year students proved to be very skillful and…

A study focused on enhancing the validity of foreign language (L2) reading comprehension assessment measures. Subjects included 131 cadets (88 beginners and 43 non-beginners) enrolled in French courses at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. First language (L1) reading comprehension was measured using the…

A study investigated the strategies used by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) to comprehend texts written in English. Subjects were 15 student teachers enrolled at a state university in Indonesia. Data were gathered using think-aloud tasks, retellings, a reading comprehension test, in-depth interviews, and casual observation. Two…

Current theory posits that comprehension and meaning involve not only text but also what the reader brings to the text and the contextual elements of the reading. A study investigated how eight students in grade 9 read and created meaning from short story assignments in their English classrooms. Concurrent think-aloud protocols from four short…

Peer tutoring sessions involving two eighth-grade girls were recorded and analyzed through a Vygotskian lens. A "microgenetic analysis" of particular protocol excerpts from the tutoring sessions was conducted. When a lapse of intersubjectivity existed, participants frequently launched into narrative as a mediating device to negotiate a…

A study examined good and poor readers' inferencing strategies as they read unambiguous texts. Subjects, 42 fifth-grade students from 11 classrooms in a Boston metropolitan area urban school district, read 2 well-constructed mystery stories divided into 6 episodes--each episode ended with the introduction of a new clue related to solving the case.…

This study explored secondary preservice science teachers' attempts to implement a constructivist approach to science teaching in a practicum setting. Described is the secondary science education program at St. Francis Xavier University. Interview excerpts are presented as data. Results indicated: (1) student teachers went through two…

A series of three studies examined the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' main idea construction processes. Eight expert readers read texts from familiar and unfamiliar content domains, and gave verbal reports of the processes they used for constructing main ideas. Five distinct main idea construction processes were reported: (1)…