A study was conducted to investigate the curricular experiences of the low achievers, including the quality of the programs they participated in and the congruence between their classroom and pullout programs. Three lower-middle-class first graders in the Pacific Northwest participated in the study: John spent the entire day in the classroom;…

This paper reports on an experiment designed to determine whether a novice second-language (L2) reader can be characterized as concept-oriented or syntactic-structure oriented. The operating premise was that high school L2 students read and understand not so much by translating as by combining conceptual fragments into a tentative "script," which…

Intended to discourage classroom reading teachers from relying on "phonics instruction" as a remedy for students' inadequate reading performance, this pamphlet presents reasons why phonics drills should not be taught at all in the classroom and offers a set of practical phonic awareness activities to help poor readers overcome reading…

A study examined (1) the relative contributions of skill in name retrieval and alphabetic mapping to the acquisition of skill in word identification, (2) the differential aspects of deficiencies in each of these processes on word identification, and (3) the differential effects of name familiarization and training in phonemic segmentation and…

Mathematical word problems are notoriously difficult to solve for students at all grade levels. Performance deficiencies have been attributed to students lacking abstract logico-mathematical knowledge or to insufficiently developed language comprehension skills. At least four general sources of difficulty can be distinguished in mathematical word…

A study of Greek speakers' ability to understand and produce two varieities of codes--Katharevousa (K) and Demotic (D)--is reported. The investigation was undertaken to provide evidence supporting or refuting the Greek government's decision to legislate Demotic as the official language of the country. A sample of 545 informants were tested with a…

A practicum project emphasizing critical thinking skills was undertaken in an eighth grade history class to make students aware of the nature and seriousness of plagiarism. The 10-week unit was preceded by a reading comprehension test and an essay assignment on a major Civil War battle. Plagiarized portions of the essays were highlighted and the…

A supplemental reading intervention program was designed and implemented to increase the reading comprehension for at-risk students. Subjects, 11 fourth graders in two different classes, were chosen on the basis of below grade reading level as evidenced by both classroom performance and national achievement tests' score. The 10-week reading…

This document reports on a practicum experience on the improvement of thinking skills of middle school students. There has been much discussion in educational circles that mastery of higher- order thinking skills should be given greater attention in the public schools. A program of teaching thinking skills directly to grade seven geography classes…

A study investigated the validity of an English listening skills test by comparing the results of native American and British English speakers with those of Dutch students of English as a second language. A hypothesis suggested that two-thirds of the items would test listening skills and the remaining third would test other knowledge. Test results…

In the Dutch national examinations, reading comprehension tests are used for all languages. For the native language, reading comprehension is tested with reading passages and related questions to which the test-taker provides his own response, not choosing from a group of alternatives. One problem encountered in testing with these items is…

Many educators have long assumed that reading ability is directly related to science achievement, that reading plays a major role in science instruction, and that direct instruction on science reading skills would improve science achievement. The pilot study reported here investigated whether an instructional strategy could be designed to overcome…

A teacher describes the use of closed-caption decoding of television melodramas to teach English as a second language (ESL). The approach uses evening soap operas that afford a range of English usage and accents, realistic dialogue, entertainment, and coverage of current social issues and are closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired. The programs…

This investigation--the first Dutch longitudinal research project on reading and spelling spanning the whole 6-year period of primary education--examined (1) whether it is possible to identify certain aspects of literacy--namely decoding skills, reading comprehension, and spelling skills--within verbal intelligence as latent variables, and…

Presented in this curriculum guide are materials for eighth grade United States history instruction suitable for students of English as a second language. The guide contains three sections on early American history covering the period of discovery and exploration, the colonies in North America, and the American Revolution. Each section contains…