Ninety-five rural eighth graders completed the Idiom Comprehension Test in three contexts: idioms in a short story, in isolation, and in a verification task. Performance in the story condition and on high-familiarity idioms showed the greatest accuracy. Associations existed between performance and reading ability for the story and verification…

Discusses the importance of the home setting for the development of literacy. The article focuses on a pilot study employing homelike interactive models in classroom settings. Results reveal that pupils of low socioeconomic status in an experimental group, who were exposed systematically to series books in English, had higher reading comprehension…

Investigates the linguistic and metalinguistic transfers that arise when French students learn comprehension and production in English. Analyzes how part of the metalinguistic knowledge they have of French is transferred into their metalinguistic knowledge of English, especially concerning simple preterite vs preterite + "be" +…

In this article, autonomous learning in foreign languages is defined and the steps for introducing it to Year 9 low-ability students and Year 10 high-ability students are described. (six references) (CK)

This study of 461 Colorado students (ages 7-18) with deafness or partial hearing investigated the students' psychoeducational development by age and hearing loss, including syntactic comprehension and production, reading comprehension, social maturity, speech intelligibility, and math calculation skills. Traditional standardized measures of…

Describes how a middle school principal, concerned with the growing number of failing students, found a successful way to improve students' performance in content area classes: she observed and worked with students, demonstrated information processing strategies, and interviewed students about strategies that worked best for them. Describes how…

Longitudinal change in syntax comprehension and production skill, measured over six years, was modeled in 31 individuals (ages 5-20) with Down syndrome. The best fitting Hierarchical Linear Modeling model of comprehension uses age and visual and auditory short-term memory as predictors of initial status, and age for growth trajectory. (Contains…

Examined the effect of cross-cultural awareness training and explicit linguistic instruction on attitudes towards and comprehension of foreign-accented speech in three groups of students. Listening comprehension passages read in Vietnamese-accented speech before and after an 8-week instruction period revealed no cross-group differences. Attitude…

Studied the effects of Language 1-assisted (L1) reciprocal teaching (in this case, Mandarin) on the comprehension of English expository text by 12 year-7 and year-8 (grades 6 and 7) Taiwanese students. The use of reciprocal L1 and L2 (English) teaching appeared to increase comprehension when reading L1 and L2 texts. (SLD)

This study investigated use of the Reading Component Model to subgroup poor readers. Poor readers were identified in second grade and subgrouped into four significantly different groups on the basis of relative strengths and weaknesses in word recognition and listening comprehension. Further analysis found poor readers' abilities were foreshadowed…

Shares how the author designed reading activities to increase students' understanding of nonfiction by adhering to three principles: purpose, classification, and collaboration. Recounts how students responded to the reading materials and each other as they developed an understanding of the information available to them. (MG)

The Moss Point, Mississippi, school district uses a semantic mapping teaching approach called "Writing to Learn" that visually and graphically displays ideas and concepts. Students use computers to work on writing projects, and their achievement scores in the state's reading and writing examinations have increased remarkably. Outlines…

This article discusses the concept of world knowledge and its relevance to intervention processes. Roles of linguistic and physical context in interpretation and levels of speaker experience are discussed. Levels of involvement are related to communication goals, and these principles are extended to applications in the teaching of language skills.…

Investigates the usefulness of using grammatical cohesion to evaluate the macro- or discourse-level, and the micro-level reading comprehension of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students. Finds a relationship between anaphora and coherence that contributes to reading difficulty. (MG)

The discriminant validity of two subscales of the Reynell Developmental Language Scales (RDLS) was investigated using data from 225 children given the RDLS at age 4 and the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities at age 5. Results support the hypothesis; the RDLS scales measure distinct but correlated language abilities. (SLD)