The Reflective Tutorial Dialogue System (ReTuDiS) is a system for learner modelling historical text comprehension through reflective dialogue. The system infers learners' cognitive profiles and constructs their learner models. Based on the learner model the system plans the appropriate--personalized for learners--reflective tutorial dialogue in…

In this paper we describe the ways that SCoT, a Spoken Conversational Tutor, uses flexible and adaptive planning as well as multimodal task modeling to support the contextualization of learning in reflective dialogues. Past research on human tutoring has shown reflective discussions (discussions occurring after problem-solving) to be effective in…

This paper reports the results of a University of Canberra Library survey of student research knowledge, skills, tools and resources. Students are experiencing difficulties interrogating databases, the internet and library catalogues because of the lack of consistency in terminology and various methods of interrogation. This research was an…

This report examines the readiness of Latino (Hispanic descent) high school students for college-level academic work based on their reading comprehension and verbal reasoning skills. Pertinent college admissions test data and educational survey data are reviewed, and findings are discussed from a variety of research fields that sharpen the…

A study investigated the processes used by bilinguals for organizing vocabulary by presenting subjects with bilingual word recognition tasks in two modalities (aural and visual) and using a repetition paradigm. Subjects were asked to decide whether a word presented to them was a nonsense word or a real word. Two separate experiments are described.…

Fifteen articles review code-switching in the four major areas: policy implications in specific institutional and community settings; perspectives of social theory of code-switching as a form of speech behavior in particular social contexts; the grammatical analysis of code-switching, including factors that constrain switching even within a…

A collection of essays on second language vocabulary learning includes: "Historical Trends in Second Language Vocabulary Instruction" (Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman); "The Lexical Plight in Second Language Reading: Words You Don't Know, Words You Think You Know, and Words You Can't Guess" (Batia Laufer); "Orthographic Knowledge in L2 Lexical Processing: A…

Seven original research papers are presented. The titles and authors are as follows: "Acquisition of the Argument-Structure of Verbs" (Mika Endo); "A Note on Semantic Selection" (Yoshio Endo); "The Governing Category Parameter in Second Language" (Makiko Hirakawa); "The Use of Connectives in English Academic…

A discussion of factors that influence English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learning by native speakers of Chinese focuses on three specific factors (cognitive style, individual differences, and native language interference), and offers classroom solutions. The effect of each of the three factors on ESL comprehension and production is considered,…

Focusing on children's production of written language, a two-year study, conducted on the Oodham (Papago) Indian Reservation in Arizona, explored social context, linguistic systems, and the creation of meaning as aspects of the writing process. Ten American Indian children in third and fourth grade provided over 200 stories that formed the basic…

Music education is uniquely suited to reinforce several basic skills that are part of the overall reading and writing processes of students. These skills include freedom of expression and the fluency of ideas, identifying a composer's purpose and message, and reasoning and comprehension. Musicians should develop the habit of using journals for…

Teaching literature as a basis for teaching writing affords a paradigm for teaching structure and meaning. While a truly integrated English department would put equal emphasis upon composition, language, literature, and reading, two-year college curricula have emphasized composition and challenged literature's place. A reader-based model for…

An annotated bibliography of over 100 books, articles, and studies on bilingual education includes a summary and a review of each work. The bibliography has three focal areas: (1) bilingual education in general, including the rationale for it, attitudes toward it, historical and/or sociological perspectives, legal aspects, and evaluation of…

The middle school and junior high school years are extremely important ones in the language, cognitive, and personal development of students. During this time, students should begin using longer sentences with more sophisticated embeddings and showing greater awareness of audience and organization in writing, speaking, listening, and reading. At…

Three main issues relating to the question of silent speech in reading are considered: (1) How do Chinese speakers process Chinese ideographs in short-term memory? (2) How is Chinese students' learning of written English affected by the transition to an alphabetic language? (3) Are the strategies for encoding written words in short-term memory…