Hesitation serves many purposes, allowing us to choose and combine words better, make discourse more cohesive and regulate its flow, and think. Frequency and length varies with the cognitive activity, but is not always easy to interpret. Foreign language instruction can help students interpret hesitations and use them to advantage. (MSE)

Stresses that learning to understand and speak a foreign language is the acquisition of a skill, not of a system of abstract knowledge. Primary objective is understanding through a receptive, semantic approach, which incorporates rising expectancy level, discrepency feedback levels, and confidence in later speech production. Suggests incorporating…

Examines whether paragraph dominant readers at the fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade levels would outscore word dominant readers when tested on their ability to use context clues to determine word meaning. Concludes that this was true only for fifth grade paragraph dominant readers. (FL)

Presents the major problems plaguing teachers of French literature: (1) the huge split between the methods of teaching language and the methods of teaching literature courses, (2) the gulf between theoretical interests and the reality of the classroom, (3) many students' disinterest in literature. Suggests recentering the teaching of literature…

The miscues of thirty randomly chosen third-year French students in four high schools were examined and analyzed to discover the strategies they used. (Author/RM)

It is asserted that the teacher and learner of a foreign language must learn to direct his attention to the auditory phenomena of the new language. Several auditory exercises in which some of the basic parameters of speech are involved--number, order, duration, pitch, vowel quality--are described. (RM)

An attempt was made to evaluate the effectiveness of a standard one-year advanced English course at Haifa University by administering the same English comprehension test to students before and after the course. Results show that the higher the initial level of the student, the higher his improvement score. (CHK)

Rather than learning just a series of responses to drills, a student can learn "real" French by using L2-L2 (second language) precis work in the language laboratory. The student listens to a previously unheard text and then reproduces it in a shortened form. (CFM)

The Humboldt-Dienst functions as a teaching aid. Some eight times a year it tapes collections of foreign-language information broadcasts, and issues student work sheets and teachers' guides for use therewith. The materials are available at cost; an address for ordering is given. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

With the advances of computer and network technologies, student enrollment in distance education has increased rapidly since the 1990s. In 2003, it is estimated that about 40,000 to 50,000 K-12 students are enrolled in online courses nationwide (Golden, Wicks, & Williams, 2004). With the ever-increasing number of K-12 students who attend…

Good teachers are storytellers. They use stories to promote interest in the classroom; to help students understand and remember events, places, people, and ideas; to provide context for teaching abstract concepts and systematic processes such as math and research skills; and to promote understanding of other cultures and people. Storytelling can…

This study examined format differences in the measurement of fifth grade students' reading comprehension achievement. Children were given a multiple-choice reading comprehension test, followed 4 weeks later by a constructed response test on 2 of the same text passages. Results indicated that little comprehension of text content was transferred…

The reading comprehension program described in this lesson introduces the components of think-alouds and text interactions, and helps students to develop the ability to use think-alouds to aid in reading comprehension tasks. During two 45-minute lessons, students will: explore the use of the think-aloud strategy; vocalize interactions with texts;…

This action research project describes a program for improving reading fluency in order to increase reading rate and raise comprehension. The targeted population consisted of second and third graders in a middle class community, located in a suburb of a large metropolitan area. The problems of lack of reading fluency and low comprehension were…

Vocabulary knowledge provides a source of prior knowledge and word meaning that can be used to enhance reading comprehension. It is important that teachers be aware and knowledgeable of the many strategies available to enhance vocabulary growth, and also how to teach these strategies to students. These strategies can range from the use of context…