Five units of instruction for teaching vocabulary and higher order thinking skills in foreign language classes are presented. Introductory material considers the differences between language fluency and communication, and lists higher order thinking skills as: (1) classifying, verifying, hypothesizing; (2) making associations and generalizing; (3)…

This paper synthesizes research on vocabulary learning and vocabulary instruction to provide teachers with a basis for using different techniques of vocabulary instruction to improve reading comprehension. The limitations of traditional definition and context-based instruction are discussed in the paper, and principles are outlined which explain…

A technique for "warming up" a class in English as a second language involves writing a non-threatening, noncontroversial but thought-provoking word related to the day's general topic on the board and giving students time to write down as many related words as they can think of. Students are asked to volunteer their words, one at a time, to be…

Although knowledge of multimeaning words is important for reading comprehension, deaf readers may know only the most common meanings or nuances of high-frequency multimeaning words. Results of a study are reported in which 33 profoundly hearing impaired students stratified into three equal age groups (ages 10, 11, and 12) were administered a…

A study looks at young children's responses to tough movement structures, focusing on complements to "easy." The study examines the development of the two major types of rule usage: primitive and adult, and focuses on the inconsistent fluctuations between the primitive and adult levels. It is proposed that the source of complexity in…

Four classroom exercises for second language instruction are described. In the first exercise, the teacher tells a story from a skeleton outline. Then the teacher pairs the students, provides them with a series of questions about the story, and invites them to cross out the ones they do not like and then to ask their preferred questions of another…

A new method of continuous stroke manuscript print called D'Nealian Manuscript is challenging the traditional circle-stick method of teaching children how to write. The circle-stick uses component or splinter parts to form whole letters. Children are forced to form all writing with verticle lines and to learn a manuscript print that goes nowhere.…

The 12 activities presented in this pamphlet are intended to help make vocabulary study a stimulating experience for both teacher and student. The activities are as follows: (1) a commercially prepared list of suggestions for vocabulary development, (2) an exercise designed to relate vocabulary study to every day reading, (3) a variation of the…

Planned, individualized vocabulary instruction is an essential ingredient of developmental reading classes, and deserves special attention, since expanding word knowledge is the one area related to reading comprehension in which student progress can be directly observed and measured by the learner in daily or weekly increments. The two factors…

An investigation of the language transfer in second language (L2) lexico-semantic development looked at the relationship of the level of L2 proficiency and interlingual patterns of lexico-semantic correspondence. The linguistic categories used were verbs and adjectives. Relative degrees of difficulty for L2 learners were determined for four…

One of six related documents, this publication contains a U.S. Air Force course designed to help students improve their reading skills. The chapters contain lessons on reading habits and how they affect the reader, exercises to identify one's reading speed, an improvement program, exercises to improve eye movement and to reduce eye fixations,…

This study examined input enhancement and second language (L2) vocabulary learning while exploring the role of "distinctiveness," the degree to which an item in the input diverges from the form in which other items in the input are presented, with regard to the nature and direction of the effects of enhancement. In this study,…

Reading the language of mathematics textbooks is very different from reading the narrative in traditional basal textbooks, and children should be taught how to read in a mathematics course; teachers should not assume a transfer of skills will occur. Specific skills, such as noting details, following directions, and seeing relationships, should be…