Composing print essays versus composing across modes: students' multimodal choices and overall preferences

The current study presents results from students' engagement of composing print essays and composing across modes on the same topic. It builds on the premise that print‐based reading and writing should complement and coexist with multimodal pedagogy. A group of Taiwanese adolescent students were invited to complete one print essay and one multimodal product on the same topic of “My favorite place in the world”. For their multimodal product, students were required to use at least two modes (e.g. words and image, sounds and words) in any medium (e.g. video, collage, scrapbook or website) of their choice. It was found that the most frequently used medium for students' multimodal projects was video which incorporated words, sounds and visuals. Most students felt that for the topic of “My favorite place in the world”, their multimodal products helped them to convey their ideas better because they provided the audience with more sensory information. To conclude the paper, a few future research directions are outlined to help move the research of multimodal composing forward.     

学习共同体与大学生职业英语口语能力培养对策研究

传统大学英语由于语境、评价方式以及学生自身心理因素等原因导致大学毕业生在职场中口语交际能力不能满足用人单位需求。学习共同体强调合作交流,能很好满足职业英语口头表达所需的环境,减轻学生心理压力,是提高职业英语口语能力的有效途径。     

Improving students' reading comprehension skills: Effects of strategy instruction and reciprocal teaching

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of three different forms of strategy instruction on 210 elementary-school students' reading comprehension. Students were assigned to any one of three intervention conditions or to a traditional instruction condition (control condition). Training students were taught four reading strategies (summarizing, questioning, clarifying, predicting) and practiced these strategies in small groups (reciprocal teaching), pairs, or instructor-guided small groups. At both the post- and follow-up test the intervention students attained higher scores on an experimenter-developed task of reading comprehension and strategy use than the control students who received traditional instruction. Furthermore, students who practiced reciprocal teaching in small groups outperformed students in instructor-guided and traditional instruction groups on a standardized reading comprehension test.     

Teaching learning disabled students goal-implementation skills

Eight learning disabled (LD) junior high school students were taught goal-setting and self-regulatory skills in a resource room setting. The training program was designed to help students set realistic goals, develop plans to achieve these goals, monitor and evaluate their own behavior, and accept responsibility for the outcome of goal-directed activities. The goal-implementation strategy was effective in increasing some students' rates of assignment completion in the resource room and the regular classroom. Following the training program, students attributed success to effort; failure was attributed to effort, luck, and task difficulty.     

Impact of instruction on learning disabled students' creative thinking

Forty-nine pupils from learning disabilities intermediate-level classrooms served as subjects in the study and were randomly assigned to an experimental and control group. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking were used as pretests and posttests. The Purdue Creative Training Program was used to stimulate the learning disabled experimental group's divergent thinking abilities for 14 weeks. Pupils in the learning disabled experimental group made significantly higher scores than did the comparison group on the creativity variables of the verbal subtest of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking.     

Promoting strategy generalization through self-instructional training in students with reading disabilities

Twenty Grade 5 and 6 students with reading disabilities, 20 average readers in Grade 3, and 20 average readers in Grades 5 and 6 were taught to use a self-questioning strategy for the identification of main ideas. They were randomly assigned to either a standard instruction or a generalization induction condition. In the latter, informed training and self-instructional training techniques were employed to promote generalization of strategy use. Subjects were posttested under both a cued and an uncued condition in their homerooms. Results indicated that the self-instructional training succeeded in facilitating the identification of main ideas among students with reading disabilities and in helping them to maintain their improved performance when they were no longer prompted to use the strategy in a transfer setting.     

Improving learning skills: a self-help group approach

A self-help group approach was used to enhance medical students' self-directed learning (SDL) skills within an elective course. The SDL task profile envisaged included personal responsibility for, self-direction, and self-monitoring of learning. Reflection and learning partnerships were supported and facilitated by discussion and exercises in a small group context. Self-assessment of SDL tasks, as well as measures of approaches to study using the Approaches to Studying Inventory, were obtained. The results showed increased level of self-efficacy regarding the SDL tasks at the end-of-course. The task self-ratings had significant relationships to measures of deep approach to study. Academic achievement (GPA) was significantly higher for students who participated in the elective experience than for controls. Among the participants, 67% showed enhancement of the SDL task profile. Reasons for lack of improvement are discussed. The findings suggest that the approach used maybenefit most, but not all students under constraining conditions.     

Social inference skills in learning disabled and nondisabled children

The study examined the performance of 30 learning disabled and 30 nondisabled children in grades 1 through 7 on the Test of Social Inference (TSI). Results indicated that disabled students obtained lower TSI total scores that did nondisabled students: they also performed relatively lower on TSI items requiring more verbal expression. While no difference was found between the groups on the Motor-Free Visual Perception Test (MVPT), the relationship between MVPT and TSI scores was shown to be significant within the disabled group only. Furthermore, this group made more perceptual-type errors on the TSI. Findings are discussed in relation to previous research suggesting a link between visual perception and/or language fluency and social inference skills among learning disabled children.