Common mistakes pupils make when adding fractions are categorized and analyzed. (MP)

Studied differences in the types of errors made by students with disabilities on a multiple choice reading test administered under oral reading accommodations. Findings for 2,999 high school students suggest that it is safe to adhere the same meaning to test scores for disability groups even when the test is administered under different…

Five experiments demonstrated that 6.5-month-olds perseverated in a violation-of-expectation task to examine reasoning about width information in containment events. After watching a familiarization event in which a ball was lowered into a wide container, infants failed to detect the violation when the same ball was lowered into a container half…

Investigated the relative effects of developmental level and domain-specific knowledge on 4- to 9-year-olds' ability to identify and make similarity decisions about objects based on haptic or tactile information. Found that older children explored models more exhaustively, found more differentiating features, and made fewer errors than younger…

Explores error in writing in relation to particular aspects of second language acquisition and theories of the writing process in the first and second language (L2). Argues that a focus on the writing process as a pedagogical tool is only appropriate for L2 learners if attention is given to linguistic development, and if learners are able to get…

Summarizes studies examining citation errors and illustrates errors resulting from a lack of standardization, misunderstanding of foreign languages, failure to examine the document cited, and general lack of training in citation norms. It is argued that the failure to detect and correct citation errors is due to diffusion of responsibility in the…

A study of error patterns in Polish students' use of the French article provides the basis for an instructional approach that focuses on developing students' linguistic awareness rather than teaching rules of usage. (MSE)

The study examining the nature of misreadings of vowels by 10 good and 10 poor grade 3 readers of the Kannada language (which has a phonetically regular script) found that both groups misread vowels in equal proportion to their total number of misreadings. (DB)

Argues that the context of writing improvement helps explain writing error. Findings imply that undue efforts by teachers to prevent mistakes may hinder improvement. (RAE)

The turn exchange behaviors of 5 specifically language-impaired (SLI) children, aged 8 to 13, were examined in adult-child interaction. Results indicated qualitative differences from those of normal language children in terms of turn errors, interruptions, interactive attention, responsiveness, and turn switch times, as well as variability related…

When 16 parents' and 13 nonparents' conversations with children were examined for evidence of adults' differential responses to children's syntactic, phonological, and semantic errors, results indicated that adults tended to respond differentially to children's language mistakes, with parents showing greater sensitivity than non-parents. (RH)

A test of handwriting legibility and 6 perceptual-motor tests were completed by 66 children ages 7-12. Among handwriting error patterns, execution was associated with visual-motor skill and sensory discrimination, aiming with visual-motor and fine-motor skills. The visual-spatial factor had no significant association with perceptual-motor…

Discusses errors made by remedial intermediate algebra students in factoring polynomials in light of student definitions of factoring. Found certain beliefs about factoring to logically imply many of the errors made. Suggests that belief-based teaching can be successful in teaching factoring. (16 references) (Author/MKR)

Illustrates, categorizes, and analyzes typical mathematical errors in algebra and trigonometry made by high school and lower division college students. (16 references) (Author/MKR)

Examines misspellings made by English speakers writing in English and German, concluding that English spelling is almost seven times more difficult than German. Classifies errors and discusses reasons for them. Relates the misspellings to the redundant letters removed in "Cut Spelng" to show how far such a technique for simplifying…