College students' strategies to discriminate relevant from irrelevant information in algebra story problems were identified and compared to strategies used by younger students in previous studies. College students identified numbers relevant for solution (Experiment 1) or provided verbal reports as they computed answers (Experiment 2). Type of…

The present study used a mediated priming paradigm to examine whether developmental differences exist in the integration of semantic information with orthographic and phonological information during visual word recognition. In Experiment 1, we found that the integration of semantics with phonology and orthography differed among third-grade,…

One of the tasks of language learning is the discovery of the intricate division of labour between the lexical-semantic content of an expression and the pragmatic inferences the expression can be used to convey. Here we investigate experimentally the development of the semantics-pragmatics interface, focusing on Greek-speaking five-year-olds'…

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students…

Previous research suggests that young ESOL learners in mainstream English-medium classrooms are afforded limited opportunities to engage with curriculum content. This paper reports on a study of a five-year-old boy from Samoa who was just beginning to learn English in a mainstream New Zealand classroom. Interactions between the boy and his …

Purpose: This article examined the phonological skills of 2 groups of Cantonese-speaking children with prelingual, profound bilateral hearing loss. The phonological abilities of 7 children fitted with hearing aids were compared with the abilities of 7 children who wore cochlear implants. Method: Participants in each group ranged in age from 5;1…

This comment attempts to identify different "semiotic perspectives" proposed by the authors of this special issue according to the problems they discuss. These problems can be distinguished as problems concerning the representation of mathematical knowledge, the definition and objectivity of meaning, epistemological questions of learning and…

A discussion of aspectual morphemes in Mandarin Chinese broadens the perspective on aspect to examine its grammar, or the relationship between aspectual and non-aspectual elements, between different aspectual elements, and between the related categories of tense, aspect, and modality. Previous assumptions about Mandarin aspectual markers are…

This book presents 14 essays on the topic of "E-Prime," a variant of the English language that eliminates the verbs of the "to be" family. Essays in the book claim that some of the benefits of using E-Prime in speech and writing are lively, concise writing and speaking; clearer, more critical thinking; better communication,…

This study examined different shades of meaning that a single word may have in Chinese in an effort to better understand the relationship between language and culture. An understanding of the exact meaning of Chinese words and expressions can greatly assist non-Chinese in understanding both the language and the society as a whole. A total of 102…

This study examined the effects of the second level (intermediate acoustical processing of rhyming words) and the third level (deep-semantic processing of words in sentences) of the "levels of processing" framework on memory performance of four types of intermediate-grade students (52 "normal" students, 50 students with…

A study investigated the way in which monolingual English-speaking college students developed new concepts for the linguistic structures and sociocultural symbolic meanings of gender that are unique to the Spanish language. Subjects were seven students of first-year intensive Spanish. They were asked to perform two problem-solving tasks: defining,…

Articles included in this compilation represent functional approaches to literary analysis. Most of these papers were presented at the Sixteenth International Systemics Congress held in Helsinki, Finland, in 1989. The aim of the congress was to establish dialogue between various functional approaches to the theoretical study of language, to…

Victor Raskin's taxonomy of knowledge, based on semantics theory, is adapted and applied to composition in English as a Second Language (ESL). Raskin's classification of knowledge as linguistic and encyclopedic is converted to a continuum from textual to extra-contextual, with contextual knowledge situated between the two. Textual knowledge is…

This literature review examines a hypermedia learning environment from a semantic network basis and the application of such an environment to second language learning. (A semantic network is defined as a conceptual representation of knowledge in human memory). The discussion is organized under the following headings and subheadings: (1) Advantages…