Two types of sentence-level writing problems are often observed in student writing: (1) those that violate conventions of standard written English, such as subject-verb agreement errors and comma splices; and (2) those that involve a stylistic choice, such as beginning a sentence with an expletive structure like "There are" or using "if" rather…

Recently, "Developmental Psychology" published 2 articles on the shape bias; both rejected the authors' previous proposals about the role of attentional learning in the development of a shape bias in object name learning. A. Cimpian and E. Markman (2005; see record EJ733667) did so by arguing that the shape bias does not exist but is an…

This article describes activities that promote students' understanding of equation solving through analyzing and correcting student work. (Contains 5 figures.)

Although fluency instruction is an essential part of teaching reading, there is limited information on providing this type of instruction with students who have physical disabilities. This article examines three case studies across two students, one with cerebral palsy and the other with both arthrogryposis and spina bifida. In the first study,…

A significant, but rarely posed, question in EFL writing is what new language the writers assimilate from the process. In this study, a group of intermediate EFL students in a state secondary school in Spain completed an L1(Spanish)-to-FL(English) written translation task on their own, with bilingual dictionary/glossary support. Three days later,…

This study investigates the effect of a cross-cultural bilingual communication project on students' second language learning. A collaborative key-pal project was conducted between Japanese university students learning English and Canadian university students learning Japanese. Ethnographic data were collected from the students' exchanged messages…

The present study evaluated the effects of both a traditional lecture and the conservative dual-criterion (CDC) judgment aid on the ability of 6 university students to visually inspect AB-design line graphs. The traditional lecture reliably failed to improve visual inspection accuracy, whereas the CDC method substantially improved the performance…

The current study examined 24 Japanese university students' processes of negotiation in conditions of self revision and of peer revision about their English as a foreign language (EFL) writing. Analyzing their negotiation episodes and text changes, I categorized within a common coding scheme the types of negotiation from (a) think-aloud protocols…

This research investigates the usefulness of two major types of interactional feedback (elicitation and reformulation) in dyadic interaction. The focus is on the different ways in which each feedback type is provided and their relationship with learner repair. The participants were 42 adult intermediate English as a second language learners and…

The purpose of this section is to specify the procedure for making changes to the ERIC database after the data involved have been announced in the abstract journals RIE or CIJE. As a matter of general ERIC policy, a document or journal article is not re-announced or re-entered into the database as a new accession for the purpose of accomplishing a…

Taguchi methods are methods of product quality improvement that analyze major contributions and how they can be controlled to reduce variability of poor performance. In this approach, knowledge is used to shorten testing. Taguchi methods are concerned with process improvement rather than with process measurement. This manual is designed to be used…

A study at Lansing, Michigan Community College investigated whether the current policy of grading the students according to the number of errors in their compositions was actually helping the students to make fewer errors in their writing. Error data were collected from 4 graded essays from each of 311 students in 2 writing courses (one on…

Children often have difficulty developing debugging skills. This may be attributable to instructional methods that discourage reflection on one's reasoning errors. Logo instruction may encourage such reflection. Two studies examined Logo's effect on confirmation bias--the tendency to select confirming over disconfirming information to prove an…

Revision is the heart of the composing process--the means by which ideas emerge and evolve and meanings are clarified. Yet students often see revision not as an opportunity to develop and improve a piece of writing but as an indication that they have failed to do it right the first time. Revision, whether done with computers or with pen and paper,…

This textbook is targeted at educators teaching students the seventh year in spoken and written English. Its objectives are: (1) a full development of the sentence sense, including the ability to analyze commonly used grammatical constructions and to discriminate accurately between dependent clauses and sentences; (2) reasonable skill in writing…