The ability to read is well-recognized as essential to being successful in school history. To be able to read history textbooks effectively, students can be made aware of some features typical of history discourse. Knowledge of how nominal groups are functional in history discourse can help students and teachers engage with the meanings presented…

Children ages 2-18 spend between two and four hours per day watching TV, a calculation that is even higher if DVDs, videos and the Internet are included. Although the amount of television watched by today's children has raised concerns about their literacy development, captions could hold a key to turning television into an educational asset.…

"Generation 1.5" is a term being used to describe a type of second language (L2) long-term U.S. resident who may demonstrate persistent language-related challenges (Roberge, Siegel, & Harklau, 2009). Among the difficulties commonly noted with Generation 1.5 students are problems in controlling the academic register expected in…

In this article, we describe how to help primary-grade English language learners use compare-contrast text structures. Specifically, we explain (a) how to teach students to identify the compare-contrast text structure, and to use this structure to support their comprehension, (b) how to use compare-contrast texts to activate and extend students'…

The author does not really like "Hamlet." He loves the play, the language, and the characters, but always finds it difficult to teach. Part of this is because he prefers to assign students scenes to perform as they read a Shakespeare text, but Hamlet does not divide nicely into manageable scenes, and he usually does not have enough teenage Ken…

Promotion of students' spiritual development is one of the goals of pastoral care in schools. The heritage of Chinese calligraphy is traditionally used as a way to enhance an individual's self-reflection and cultivation, and has an educational value in spiritual development. This study aims to examine the cultural meaning of Chinese calligraphy…

This action-research case study endeavors to enhance the summarization skills of first grade students who are reading at or above the third grade level during the first trimester of the academic school year. Students read "twin text" sources, meaning, fiction and nonfiction literary selections focusing on a common theme to help identify…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of comprehension training embedded in a program that taught science content to 2nd graders. The program included instruction about the structure of compare-contrast expository text, emphasizing clue words, generic questions, graphic organizers, and the close analysis of well-structured text exemplars. This…

Using a computer-based text analysis of 218 Asian Americans' writing samples, the authors found that enculturation as well as use of negative emotion and positive emotion words were associated with depressive symptoms. Enculturation was also found to moderate the relation between use of negative emotion words and cognitive--affective depressive…

The aim of this study was to improve 7th- and 8th-grade students' (N = 83) compare-contrast reports when writing from sources. An instructional unit was designed and implemented for this purpose. It focused on increasing students' knowledge of compare-contrast text structure and on having students memorize and use a table to plan the structure of…

Previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of the Text Structure Strategy for improving text recall. The strategy emphasizes the identification of text structure for encoding and recalling information. Traditionally, the efficacy of this strategy has been measured through free recall. The present study examined whether recall and eye-movement…

Basal reading series are used in a majority of classrooms in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the frequency of fiction and nonfiction genres included in four recently published first and second grade basal reading series and to compare the frequencies to studies of older basal reading series. Based on the work of…

This study examined how text features (i.e., cohesion) and individual differences (i.e., reading skill and prior knowledge) contribute to biology text comprehension. College students with low and high levels of biology knowledge read two biology texts, one of which was high in cohesion and the other low in cohesion. The two groups were similar in…

Metadiscourse is a new and interesting field of inquiry which is believed to play a vital role in organizing and producing persuasive writing, based on the norms and expectations of people involved. Metadiscourse embodies the idea that writing and speaking are more than just the communication of ideas and presentation of ideational meaning. Rather…

This study investigates the link between the linguistic principles of implicature and pragmatics and software documentation. When implicatures are created in conversation or text, the listener or reader is required to fill in missing information not overtly stated. This information is usually filled in on the basis of previous knowledge or…