A personalized e-learning framework based on a user-interactive question-answering (QA) system is proposed, in which a user-modeling approach is used to capture personal information of students and a personalized answer extraction algorithm is proposed for personalized automatic answering. In our approach, a topic ontology (or concept hierarchy)…

The New Media Consortium's Horizon Project is an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact in education and other industries around the world over a five-year time period. The chief products of the project are the "Horizon Reports", an annual series of publications…

Given the paucity of research that has examined associations between learning styles and chosen academic discipline in connection with performance on different second language (L2) verbal fluency tasks, the authors undertook the current study with the aim of investigating the relationship between Greek students' learning styles and performance on…

This study examined the influence of first language (L1) orthographic experiences on decoding and semantic information retention of new words in a second language (L2). Hypotheses were that congruity in L1 and L2 orthographic experiences determines L2 decoding efficiency, which, in turn, affects semantic information encoding and retention.…

Despite calls for greater agreement in defining the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), terms that resemble SoTL are proliferating. An NSF-sponsored center for teaching and learning coined its own term, "teaching-as-research" (TAR), believing it would resonate better with research-active scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. To…

Cross-linguistic borrowing (overt use of words from the other language) and transfer (use of semantic or syntactic structures from the other language without active switching to that language) were examined during language production in Russian-English bilinguals. Grammatical category (noun/verb) and level of concreteness were found to influence…

The author investigated the importance of processing considerations within implicit memory in a developmental design. Second-graders (n = 87) and college students (n = 81) completed perceptual (word stem completion) and conceptual (category generation) implicit memory tests after studying target items either nonsemantically (read) or semantically…

This cross-cultural discourse analysis examines the construction of environmental issues on Greenpeace web pages in China, Japan and Germany. To uncover the semantic representation of environmental activism on these sites, the authors sought to identify discursive homogeneity and divergence and to bring to light embedded cultural assumptions. The…

The present study examines the impact of including lessons on aging in a 12th grade social studies course on student perceptions of aging and older adults, working with older persons, and knowledge of "facts" on aging. Pre/post-test data were collected from approximately 650 upstate New York 12th grade students enrolled in a government…

This experimental study on the acquisition of the double-object construction in Spanish as a second language (L2) by a group of first language (L1) English adults investigates the role of Universal Grammar (UG) and its interaction with L1 in two modules of grammar: morphosyntax and semantics. The double-object construction in Spanish differs from…

There are few well-standardized measures of conversational breakdown in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The study's objective was to develop a scale for measuring pragmatic impairments in conversations of individuals with ASD. We analyzed 46 semi-structured conversations of children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD using a functional…

The purpose of this study was to find out how teachers use questions in classroom discourse to scaffold student thinking and help students construct scientific knowledge. The study was conducted in large-class settings where the medium of instruction was English although the students were non-native speakers of the language. Six teachers teaching…

This study addresses the problem of an adequate distinction between the concepts of library science and information science. The study identifies and analyzes the definitions of these and related terms that have appeared in English-language literature over the past century, and evaluates the logical adequacy of the linguistic expression of these…

The book, designed as a textbook for introductory study of semantics within college-level linguistics, focuses on the study of meaning as it is systematically encoded in the vocabulary and grammar of natural languages. The term "semantics" is presumed here to include pragmatics. An introductory section explains fundamental theoretical and…

K'iche' Maya divides the breaking and cutting domains into much more specific actions than either English or Spanish. K'iche' does not have a general word for breaking that can be substituted for the specialized breaking verbs in the way that English "break" can be used to describe more specific senses of picking, popping, smashing, or…