Examines whether artificially manipulating specific typographical conditions in which text is proofread promotes better initial recognition of deviant spelling. Involved 60 Spanish native speakers enrolled in an undergraduate writing class, all of whom had been previously designated as underachieving. (Author/VWL)

Investigated university English-as-a-Second-Language students abilities to self-edit texts across three feedback conditions: errors marked with codes from different categories; errors in the same five categories underlined but not otherwise marked or labeled; no feedback. Both feedback groups outperformed the no-feedback group in self-editing;…

Focuses on error correction strategies employed by learners of Japanese when revising their written work. Investigates the effectiveness of the coding system employed by a university entrance assessment in Australia; types of code symbols that lead to successful self-correction; strategies used for self-correction; and successful and unsuccessful…

Describes theoretical and practical considerations related to the provision of feedback in the written compositions of advanced foreign language learners of French. Discusses the approach taken to teaching and assessing writing skills of students and considers how using a computer-based composition annotation program can contribute to reduction of…

Over the past five years, the No Child Left Behind Act, with its mandates for collecting and documenting student achievement statistics, has fueled a surge in the volume of data collected by schools, districts, and state education departments. This information explosion has gone hand in hand with technology's growing affordability and…

This article examines whether an analysis of student answers to a standards-based, summative examination can be used to improve a teacher's instruction. The author, who is a chemistry teacher at Saratoga Springs High School, analyzed both the multiple-choice and the constructed response questions of the June 2003 New York State chemistry exam…

Institutional researchers frequently use national datasets such as those provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The authors of this chapter explore the adjustments required when analyzing NCES data collected using complex sample designs. (Contains 8 tables.)

Because surveys now can be implemented with relative ease and little cost, many researchers are overlooking the basic principles of survey research. This chapter discusses sources of error that researchers should consider when conducting a survey, and gives readers basic suggestions for reducing error. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

This article extends Simpson's (2003) research on sex differences in social dilemmas. To test the hypotheses that men defect in response to greed and women to fear, Simpson created Fear and Greed Dilemmas, but experiments using these games supported the greed hypothesis only. In this article I focus on why the fear hypothesis failed and suggest…

Although a number of studies have associated recasts with second language development, the actual mechanisms by which recasts work to impact learning are still little understood. In particular, researchers have sought to gain a deeper understanding of the connections among recasts, learners' responses to recasts, and subsequent development. To…

Choosing the most appropriate method to handle missing data during analyses is one of the most challenging decisions confronting researchers. Often, missing values are just ignored rather than replaced with a reliable imputation method. Six methods of data imputation were used to replace missing data from two data sets of varying sizes; this…

This article reports on the results of a research study that investigated the effectiveness of using an algorithmic approach to error correction to help Hong Kong English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners overcome persistent lexico-grammatical problems. Ten error types were selected for the experiment, and one set of remedial instructional…

Recently, tasks have been advocated for their role in promoting participation in L2 interaction and the provision and use of feedback by language learners (Bygate, M., Skehan, P., Swain, M. (Eds.), 2001. "Researching Pedagogical Tasks: Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing." Pearson Education, Harlow). The relationship between various…

This paper describes a study in which we investigated the effects of corrective feedback on learner uptake in CALL. Learner uptake is here defined as learner responses to corrective feedback in which, in case of an error, students attempt to correct their mistake(s). 177 students from three Canadian universities participated in the study during…

The aim of this study was to identify the type of conceptual change (assimilation or accommodation) that can be induced by a refutational text. Individual interviews were carried out with a stratified sample of eighty-seven grade 9 students. Forty-four percent of them were found to have a misconception about the concept of ecological role--they…