Investigated children's understanding of meaning of the cognitive verb "know" (as defined by an abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy). Found that knowledge increased with development, and low levels of meaning were mastered before high levels, and more rapidly. Understanding in audio-taped stories was more difficult than in video-taped…

Notes the importance of listening in the learning process. Describes cause for concern for deteriorating listening skills among students and teachers, and the need for promoting active listening skills in the classroom and eventually integrating listening across the curriculum. Gives basic classroom principles, suggestions for successful…

Four experiments involving 101 first and third graders investigated developmental changes in children's knowledge about the types of strategies that are appropriate for achieving goals of comprehension or memorization. Only third graders distinguished between comprehension and memory by consistently selecting the appropriate strategy. (SLD)

This article challenges the word-identification view of reading and the resultant assumption that anyone who has difficulty reading words is dyslexic. It describes research demonstrating that word identification is less important in proficient reading than coordinating various language cues and metacognitive strategies to construct meaning. The…

Studies whether giving English-as-a-Second-Language college students practice in comprehension monitoring would improve their reading comprehension. Statistically equivalent pairs of subjects were formed. Five articles from daily newspapers were read by participants, who then took a quiz measuring their comprehension of article content. Results…

Integrating debate on controversial topics into the syllabus enriches learners' interaction with the Spanish language and stimulates intermediate students to express themselves in Spanish. This article lists some practical suggestions for setting up debates as well as criteria for evaluating them. (Author/CK)

The ideal computer-based foreign language reading program must include cognitive background, a learning taxonomy, sound computer design, and knowledge of what is needed for the specific language. Machiavelli's "Il demonia che prese moglie" is chosen for study due to its historical interest. (63 references) (CK)

Studied reading comprehension demands in a seventh-grade social studies classroom to reveal existing classroom cultures and complexities surrounding expository text comprehension. Found that in the particular classroom, the textbook determined knowledge exploration and had a damaging pedagogical effect on the students' literacy practices.…

This study compared factors contributing to Quick Incidental Learning of new vocabulary by 50 5-year olds with specific language impairment (SLI) and 2 comparison groups. Although SLI children exhibited a robust representational mapping ability, performance was modulated by a minimum input constraint and apparent problems with storage into…

Two experiments investigated the focusing properties of thematic roles, and a third examined the view that thematic role preferences reflect a focusing on the consequences of the represented event. Results focus on the structure of represented events, top-down and bottom-up processes, thematic hierarchies and pronoun comprehension. (35 references)…

Includes five articles with the following topics: a computerized reading motivation/comprehension program used to enrich a high school curriculum; a summer reading-ahead program for seventh and eighth graders; educating students about censorship; protecting books from theft; and an author's visit that showed a high school how to integrate reading…

Reports on a development in interactive Japanese at a new facility where lexicographical information can be viewed with full contextual information. This information is available for any word in the 65 texts incorporated in the course. This method of showing all the collocations of a word was implemented to help users monitor progress. (24…

Investigates the effectiveness of instruction in story mapping as a means to promote first-grade students' comprehension of central story elements in children's literature. Concludes that instruction in story mapping is an effective instructional strategy for promoting first-grade students' ability to identify central narrative elements in…

Investigated whether specific strategies of commenting or questioning by the adult reader would influence the complexity and type of spontaneous comments to story details made by children listening to stories. Results suggest that parents and teachers should combine questioning and commenting during storybook readings to induce lengthier comments…

Describes a study with undergraduate students that examined whether the appearance of graphics and other visuals in a television newscast would result in lower recall of audio content, whether such visuals would promote comprehension of each story as a whole, and whether subjects would prefer stories with visuals. (24 references) (LRW)