Much of the research into language learners' use of corpus resources has been conducted by means of indirect observation methodologies, like questionnaires or self-reports. While this type of study provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on the benefits and limitations of using corpora to teach and learn language, the use of indirect…

A number of studies have suggested the possible benefits of using concordancers in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. To date, however, there is still limited understanding of how EFL writers may make use of such tools along with dictionaries when engaging in a writing task. To better understand the question, this study investigated a…

In the Human Development Index (HDI), life expectancy is the only indicator used in modeling the dimension "a long and healthy life". Whereas life expectancy is a direct measure of quantity of life, it is only an indirect measure of healthy years lived. In this paper we attempt to remedy this omission by introducing into the HDI the morbidity…

Concordancers are software programs that allow users to search for all occurrences of a word or sequences of words. Early descriptions of the potential for student concordancing were given by Tim Johns, who called it Data Driven Learning (DDL). Johns (1991) explains DDL as an investigation allowing students to form their own questions about the…

The literature on bibliometric indices for assessing scholarly impact, in particular the "h" index (Hirsch, 2005) and its many variants, is extensive, but nevertheless Ruscio and colleagues (this issue) succeed in making a valuable contribution. They have made the effort of collecting publication and citation data for no less than 1,750…

Updated to include the 2011 award and honor books, this new edition of the annual guide to the Newbery and Caldecott awards gathers together the books deemed most distinguished in American children's literature and illustration since the inception of the renowned prizes. Librarians and teachers everywhere rely on this guidebook for quick reference…

With the growing population of undergraduate students on our campus and an increased focus on their success, librarians at a large midwestern university were interested in the citation management styles of this university cohort. Our university library spends considerable resources each year to maintain and promote access to the robust…

This study examines the Outgroup Prejudice Index (see "Research in Education," 83, 2010) to see what factors best predict levels of outgroup prejudice among adolescents living in northern England. A sample of 2,502 eleven- to sixteen-year-old secondary school pupils completed a questionnaire that included measures of outgroup prejudice,…

A number of studies have suggested the potentials of corpus tools in vocabulary learning. However, there are still some concerns. Corpus tools might be too complicated to use; example sentences retrieved from corpus tools might be too difficult to understand; processing large number of sample sentences could be challenging and time-consuming;…

Multilingualism is a sensitive and complex subject in a global organisation such as the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the WTO legal texts, there is a need for full concordance, not simply translation. This article begins with an overview of the issues raised by multilingual processes at the WTO in the negotiation, drafting, translation,…

Ruscio and colleagues (Ruscio, Seaman, D'Oriano, Stremlo, & Mahalchik, this issue) have done a great service by systematically comparing indices of scholarly impact. Three aspects of their work are particularly valuable: (1) Their assessment of the proliferating collection of metrics, whose development has become something of a cottage industry,…

School accountability decisions based on standardized tests hinge on the degree of alignment of the test with a state's standards. Yet no established criteria were available for judging strength of alignment. Previous studies of alignment among tests, standards, and teachers' instruction have yielded mixed results that are difficult to interpret…

Over the last decade, and in the context of the fiscal crisis in the nation in general and in higher education in particular, a debate has raged over the value of humanities research. Various commentators have argued that unlike nonhumanities disciplines, fields such as English studies and other humanistic disciplines bring very little into their…

By convention U.S. bond markets announce the actual price of a bond as the sum the quoted price plus accrued interest. The economic meaning of accrued interest and its role in this price announcing convention is generally misunderstood by accounting textbook authors who mistakenly provide accrued interest with both an economic and administrative…

Athletic training faculty seeking tenure and promotion, or simply undergoing an annual merit review, may need an understanding of the impact of their scholarly work. To that end, citation counts are frequently used as a measure of impact that a journal article has had in a given discipline. As compared to the simple quantity of publications, the…