Two studies examined the effects of writing on subject learning. For the first study, 322 ninth and eleventh grade students read passages from high school social studies and science texts and engaged in six writing-to-study conditions. Students who wrote essays scored lower on immediate topic knowledge posttests, while the students who used study…

Reflecting the influence of James Britton in the field of language and learning, this book--a collection of essays by researchers and practitioners in the area of language and learning--focuses on recent issues of language development in learning. The book contains the following 27 essays: (1) "Social Interaction as Scaffold: The Power and…

Suggestions on how to enhance college teaching are provided. Lecturing is stressed as a critical component of teaching, and each lecture's introduction, main body, and conclusion must be correlated prior to any given lecture. Information on how to compose and give a lecture includes: what to put in an introduction; what can be done to help the…

To examine the role of phonetic code in memory, a study investigated the use of phonetic recoding strategies in fifth and sixth graders identified as good and poor readers. Subjects--120 students with IQ scores in the average range--were divided evenly between both grades. Thirty subjects from each grade who scored above the 50th percentile on the…

The paper looks at rules for discourse in the classroom and how they may complement or conflict with each other in facilitating the learning of language disordered children in the classroom or therapy session. Six critical skills are identified which children need for a good teaching-learning interaction. They are: attention, turn taking,…

Many previous studies have documented the importance of time needed for learning and time spent in learning as parameters of educational achievement. However, most of this research has not considered the different types of tasks students are asked to learn. This study examined differences in student learning rates, amount of information acquired,…

In order to document the self-directed, spontaneous growth in literary output of a six-year-old child, her writings during a one month period were collected and compiled. It was discovered that the child used writing to organize knowledge about the environment and the operations of print, to maintain personal relations, to establish impersonal or…

Misconceptions interfere with the formation of new insights and provide a faulty foundation. This causes difficulty in the learning of new materials. Therefore, effective teachers strive to know which misconceptions students have, and then develop a plan by which these suspected misconceptions can be corrected or averted. This paper reports on an…

Random parallel reading comprehension tests in Japanese and English were administered to a sample of native Japanese students enrolled in intensive English instruction. The students had been placed at three different levels of English language proficiency based on an independent proficiency assessment measure. Evidence for a threshold competency…

A framework for describing relationships among the different linguistic systems in a bilingual or second language learner is proposed. The framework attempts to represent the ways in which knowledge of one language is used in integrating into memory new knowledge about another language. The model is partially implemented in a computer program that…

Three purposes of this study were to: (1) propose some organizing theoretical and observational definitions of the anchor construct; (2) present some initial findings from a diagnostic test designed to uncover anchors for high school physics instruction; and (3) provoke an initial discussion of the new methodological issues that arise in this…

The monograph provides an integrative review on the environmental and instructional factors that appear to be most conducive to the complex, interactive, and interdependent process of learning. Ten instructional strategies empirically documented to have a critical impact on a student's ability to learn are discussed in detail. They are: (1) The…

Case study observations and analyses of learning styles in U.S. secondary schools comprise the crux of this monograph. The text provides testimony to the accomplishments of schools actually integrating differentiated learning styles into their diverse educational programs and concomitant coursework. With the notion that learning style provides…

A discussion of cloze procedure and Directed Reading and Thinking Activity (DRTA) proposes that the complementary use of the two procedures helps develop student awareness of language-learning processes (metacognition) for improved language proficiency. The paper defines metacognition, cloze, and DRTA, describes their use in teaching, reviews…

This paper illustrates a model of the layperson's reasoning patterns under conditions of uncertainty, the "outcome approach," which was developed from analysis of videotaped problem-solving interviews with 16 undergraduate students. According to the outcome approach, the goal in questions of uncertainty is to predict the outcome of an…