This paper examines evaluation in reading. Evaluation refers to the processes by which readers monitor their ongoing text comprehension to assess performance and task difficulties. Monitoring is assumed to explain a large proportion of individual differences in text comprehension, in that individuals need to be aware of their objectives and…

This article examines the significance of emotion for the processes of teaching, studying and learning. The goal is to demonstrate on the basis of both theoretical examination and empirical data that emotional processes are crucial for human learning and should be taken into account in online teaching and learning as well. Emotional factors during…

An increasing number of students are choosing online education programs to complete their higher education. Research concludes that student satisfaction and retention are related to program completion. Furthermore, research indicates that physical distance alone does not influence student satisfaction and retention. In this study, we examined…

The purposes of this study were to survey the views of female adolescents about: (a) their classroom teachers' language used during instruction, (b) their attitudes toward the language of classroom instruction, and (c) views about listening behaviors. A survey design was used with 31 participants ranging in age from 15 to 18 with a mean age of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 23 fourth-grade students with different writing abilities translated their teacher's literacy instruction into an understanding of audience awareness when writing for Internet publication. As part of their classroom literacy instruction, students learned the textual features indicative of different…

The ultimate goal of reading is to construct text meaning based on visually encoded information. Essentially, it entails converting print into language and then to the message intended by the author. It is hardly accidental, therefore, that, in all languages, reading builds on oral language competence and that learning to read uniformly requires…

This study investigated the word recognition processes of readers of Chinese as a native language (L1) and as a second language (L2), focusing on the effects of two factors, word familiarity and word structure difficulty (complexity of orthographic symbol), on reading accuracy and response time. Subjects were in three groups: (1) 14 adult native…

The difficulty of 44 items from the life sciences subscale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1985-86 science assessment was analyzed in terms of item attributes and science educators' judgments of difficulty. The attributes included ratings of various characteristics of the items' text and option set, the items' cognitive…

Assigning letter grades in a consistent manner to tests in large classes across semesters is problematic if absolute grading standards are used. It may be unreasonable to implement the usual standard-setting approaches recommended for large-scale criterion-referenced testing due to both time constraints and a desire to have criteria that appear…

A study investigated the dynamics of second language classroom dyadic interactions in which one participant assumes the expert role and one the novice role. The study was conducted in a university-level Japanese language class, in which pairs were videotaped doing role play; analysis focused on one particular pair playing the roles of a teacher…

The use of the Work Keys Listening and Writing Assessment, part of an assessment system of the generic employability skills of individuals, needs to be accompanied by systematic evaluation of its technical qualities. This study examined sampling variability and generalizability of Listening and Writing scores when multiple forms, raters, and…

An item analysis study was conducted for two multiple-choice tests of introductory psychology created from a publisher's test bank. A 47-item multiple-choice test was administered to 247 students, and 433 students took a different 42-item multiple-choice test. Participants were from a large northeastern suburban community college. The difficulty…

The learning difficulties described by students in statistics courses continue to engage researchers from several disciplines. One source of difficulty for graduate students in educational statistics courses is the reading difficulty of the textbook. Instructors making decisions about a textbook typically have little information about the reading…

The final project report on development of an advanced Russian language listening and reading proficiency test is presented. It summarizes activities in the second year of the project, including dissemination of summer 1985 test validation results to participating higher education institutions, item analyses, completion of the final test edition,…

The relationship between instruction and instructional design is explored. The aim of instruction is to assist the individual as learner. The Learner, the Content, the Media, the Teacher Function, and the Context within which learning is to occur interact during a period of time to form an instructional episode (the CMT paradigm). Considering all…