Stage Two of the Title IV Quality Control Study evaluated quality in the Department of Education's major student financial assistance programs, by identifying, measuring, and analyzing the causes of inaccurate awarding of student aid funds. This volume recommends and evaluates four major levels of corrective actions to reduce error: (1) reducing…

Discusses why Japanese students frequently passivize certain intransitive English verbs. It is suggested that students might make this error because they associate adversity with the passive construction and use passives whenever adversity is implied. Discussion of other expressions implying adversity and implications for both applied and…

Outlines issues in the teaching of discourse organization to learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Describes such discourse features as turn-taking, turn-allocation, transaction, exchanges, repair strategies, topic selection and change, and error correction, and suggests classroom techniques and activities for teaching them. (MSE)

Critiques the practice of conforming to Standard English when teaching writing. Argues that when more attention is paid to form than to content, students' words and thoughts become devalued. Emphasizes the need to teach students to hold their own voices sacred, and discusses instructional strategies which encourage this attitude. (MM)

Explains why teachers might feel uneasy about the apparent lessening of their crucial position at the front of the class when a learner-centered model is used. Attempts to show how teacher ego is not incompatible with different teacher roles; acceptance of a predilection for performance may be the first stage in a richer description of teacher…

Some personal observations are offered about second-language teaching where nonnative speakers of Portuguese participated in class discussions via real time computer networks. Preliminary observations suggest that computer-assisted class discussions may promote student participation, reduce anxiety, and increase identification of language errors.…

The ability of 378 elementary school students (aged 9-12 years) in Israel to extract "lawfulnesses" (invariants) from experience and to react to error by reexamining the problem and finding the error was studied on a self-paced inference task. Results are discussed in terms of postfailure reflectivity and postfailure impulsivity. (SLD)

Typical markup methods for providing feedback to foreign language learners are not applicable to languages not written in a strictly linear fashion. A modification of Hart's edit markup software is described, along with a second variation based on a simple edit distance algorithm adapted to a general Southeast Asian font system. (10 references)…

A one-year study is reported that addresses whether and in which way grammatically computer-assisted language learning (CALL) can help English writing instruction in a Taiwanese setting. Results of a CALL courseware intervention with first-year college students suggest that classroom instruction combined with grammatical CALL is at least not…

Describes an on-line mark-up-based composition learning environment system called CoCoA (Communicative Collection Assisting System). This system allows students and teachers to engage in marked-up documents via the Internet, and its environment is very similar to a real-world one in which people use pen and paper. CCML also facilitates teachers to…

Presents results of an exploratory study on advanced-level French second language (L2) learners' metalinguistic awareness. Specifically, learner performance was examined carrying out three steps of a written and oral grammaticality judgment test. Subjects' ability to identify and correct an error, and to provide the rule, were examined, and…

Examined a possible link between computer-generated feedback and changes in writing strategies of English-as-a-foreign-language business-writing students in Taiwan. Numerous detailed analyses were carried out using computer software that measured students' writing, including time spent on a document, amount of editing of a document, specific…

The relationship between the library and its patrons is damaged and the library's reputation suffers when returned items are not checked in. An informal survey reveals librarians' concern for this problem and their efforts to combat it, although few libraries collect objective measurements of errors or the effects of improvement efforts. Brigham…

Decision-makers in organizations often make what appear as being intuitively obviously and reasonable decisions, which often turn out to yield unintended outcomes. The cause of such ineffective decisions can be a combination of cognitive biases, poor mental models of complex systems, and errors in thinking provoked by anxiety, all of which tend to…

Rodrigo, Chamizo, McLaren, & Mackintosh (1997) demonstrated the blocking effect in a navigational task using a swimming pool: rats initially trained to use three landmarks (ABC) to find an invisible platform learned less about a fourth landmark (X) added later than did rats trained from the outset with these four landmarks (ABCX). The aim of the…