Developmental skills related to writing and reading acquisition in the intermediate grades

Multiple measures of the fine motor system, the orthographic system, the phonological system, the working memory system, the verbal intelligence system, the writing system, and the reading system were administered to 300 students in grades 4, 5, and 6. Results showed that the writing system and the reading system share many of the same orthographic, phonological, and working memory sub-processes but thepatterns of concurrent relation between these sub-processes and writing and between these subprocesses and reading differ. These results are consistent with the view that writing and reading draw upon the same as well as unique cognitive systems.     

Relationships between writing motives,writing self-efficacy and time on writing among Chinese students: path models and cluster analyses

Reading and Writing - Motives for writing is a new research area in the field of writing motivation. Recent studies have identified important motives for students’ writing. Adding to this...     

Syntactic skills in sentence reading comprehension among Chinese elementary school children

The present study examined the role of syntactic skills for reading comprehension in Chinese. Two hundred and seventy-two Chinese children were tested on their phonological processing, orthographic, morphological, syntactic, and literacy skills at Grades 1 and 2. Hierarchical multiple regression results showed that syntactic skills, in terms of word order, connective usage, and knowledge of morphosyntactic structure (measured by an oral cloze task) in Grade 1, significantly predicted sentence reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for the children’s age, IQ, and word level reading-related cognitive skills in Grade 1, and word reading in Grade 2. As in alphabetic languages, syntactic skills are essential for reading comprehension in Chinese. The unique roles of individual syntactic skills for understanding sentences in Chinese are discussed.     

Relations between early reading and writing skills among Spanish-speaking language minority children

Although there is a growing body of literature on the development of reading skills of Spanish-speaking language minority children, little research has focused on the development of writing skills in this population. This study evaluated whether children’s Spanish early reading skills (i.e., print knowledge, phonological awareness, oral language) were related to their Spanish and English early writing skills using a sample of 554 children whose home language was Spanish. Multivariate regression analyses with simultaneous outcomes (Spanish and English invented spelling skills) were conducted to evaluate whether children’s early reading and writing skills were related across languages. Results indicated that children’s print knowledge and phonological awareness skills, but not oral language skills, were significantly related to their Spanish and English invented spelling skills. Spanish early literacy skills were not differentially related to Spanish and English reading and writing skills. The magnitude of the relations between print knowledge and oral language skills and children’s invented spelling skills varied as a function of child age; however, the magnitude of the relation between phonological awareness and invented spelling skills did not differ as a function of child age. Furthermore, results suggested that language minority children’s early reading and writing skills are related but distinct constructs and that children may be able to apply information gained from learning to read and write in their first language when learning to write in their second language.     

The relationships between reading processes and English skills of deaf college students

This research project investigated the relationships between various working memory (WM) recoding processes and English language skills in a sample of 86 prelingually deaf college students from varied educational backgrounds. Part 1 reports the results of a short-term memory (STM) experiment and a Recoding Strategies questionnaire. The STM results suggested that, for most deaf students, neither the speech, sign, or visual codes are as efficient as the speech code of hearing persons for the purpose of maintaining English linguistic information in WM. However, the ability to use speech-based recoding processes was positively correlated with WM capacity, and the use of sign recoding was found to decrease as the ability to make efficient use of a speech recoding strategy increased. In addition, the questionnaire data suggested that neither the speech nor sign recoding systems provide the majority of students with a complete internal representation of English surface structure grammatical information in WM. There was no evidence that the use of sign language in education interfered with the ability to develop a speech recoding strategy, or that knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) negatively influenced the acquisition of English skills. The overall pattern of results suggested that WM processes and recoding strategies may be influencing grammatical processes, and the acquisition of English skills, in distinctive ways.     

The associations between teacher-child relationships and academic skills: A longitudinal study among Chinese preschool children

The current study followed a sample of 656 Chinese preschool children to examine reciprocal associations between teacher-child relationships and children’s academic skills by testing three cross-lagged models: the relationship-driven model, the child-driven model, and the reciprocal model. Fifty-nine head teachers reported teacher-child relationships, and children’s academic skills were assessed at three time points during the 2nd and 3rd preschool year. Results showed that the reciprocal model was the best fit in explaining the associations between teacher-child relationships and children’s academic skills (math achievement, character recognition and executive function), and the child-driven model was the best fit in explaining the relation between teacher-child relationships and children’s receptive vocabulary. The results contribute to understand the dynamic relations between teacher-child relationships and children's academic skills in the Chinese preschool context. Implications for educational practices are discussed.     

The relationship between personal epistemology and self-regulation among Turkish elementary school students

The purpose of the study was to determine the level of the relationship among Turkish elementary school students' personal epistemologies, motivation, learning strategies, and achievements in science. A total of 322 fifth-grade students participated in the study. Results from the structural equation modeling showed that students' personal epistemologies influence both their motivation and metacognitive strategies in science learning. Viewing scientific knowledge as constructed by the learner contributes to the students having high motivations, high science achievement, and the ability to engage metacognitively in learning tasks.     

Examining relationships between academic motivation and personality among college students

Relationships between personality and academic motivation were examined using 451 first-year college students. Multiple regressions compared three types of intrinsic motivation, three types of extrinsic motivation and amotivation to five personality factors. Results indicated that those who were intrinsically motivated to attend college tended to be extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, and open to new experiences; although these trends varied depending on the specific type of intrinsic motivation. Those who were extrinsically motivated tended to be extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, and neurotic; depending on the type of extrinsic motivation. Those who lacked motivation tended to be disagreeable and careless. These results suggest that students with different personality characteristics have different reasons for pursuing college degrees and different academic priorities.     

Detecting the correlation between mobile learning behavior and personal characteristics among elementary school students

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to explore the features of mobile learning behaviors among Chinese elementary school students, and relationships between mobile learning behaviors and personal characteristics in mobile learning environment. The current study designed and developed a game-based educational mobile environment and conducted an experimental research. Eighty-three elementary students participated in this study. The results revealed the features of elementary school students’ mobile learning behavior including: 1) the students had reasonable login frequencies and learning time duration with appropriate guidance from the teachers, and satisfying learning performance by self-learning; 2) higher grade, learning style with active information processing and higher test scores in the conventional Chinese subject course had positive impacts on the mobile learning behaviors, but no gender difference was found. Regrettably, students showed more digital consuming than digital creating in the current study. The results could provide necessary suggestions on mobile learning for young learners.     

从中英思维方式的差异看中国学生的英语写作

本文从跨文化的角度分析了中英思维方式的差异,结合中国学生写作中的错误阐述了该差异对其英语写作的影响,从而避免学生再犯类似的错误。     

小学低年级学生诚信知行冲突特征及教育建议

诚信是中华民族的一项传统美德.学生诚信知行冲突的解决不仅是诚信教育的一个重要组成部分,更是诚信教育中最重要的一个环节.小学低年级学生的诚信知行冲突特征是:父、母亲学历对小学低年级学生各个维度的诚信知行冲突没有显著影响;男、女生在各个维度的诚信知行冲突水平基本一致;大部分小学低年级学生的诚信知行冲突均属于低度冲突,高诚信知行冲突均集中于对象维度;在诚实知行冲突方面,各个维度的冲突度由小到大依次是频率维度、情境约束维度、利益预期维度和对象维度;在守信知行冲突方面,各个维度的冲突度由小到大依次是情境约束维度、利益预期维度、频率维度和对象维度.在此基础上,笔者提出了提高学生认知水平,提升学生诚信能力品质,建立良好的诚信交往环境等教育建议.     

浅析如何在综合英语教学过程中提高学生的写作能力

在外语学习中,学习者需要掌握听、说、读、写四种能力才能够较为灵活的运用外语来进行交流。这四种能力中,写作能力较之其他能力更能反映出外语者对语言运用的综合素质。本文就从综合英语课堂中的词汇教学、语言篇章教学和各种形式的写作练习等几个方面来探讨如何提高英语专业学生的写作能力,以供英语教育者参考。     

Understanding the growth of ESL paragraph writing skills and its relationships with linguistic features

This study sought to examine the development of paragraph writing skills of 116 English as a second language university students over the course of 12 weeks and the relationship between the linguistic features of students’ written texts as measured by Coh-Metrix – a computational system for estimating textual features such as cohesion and coherence – and the scores assigned by human raters. The raters’ reliability was investigated using many-facet Rasch measurement (MFRM); the growth of students’ paragraph writing skills was explored using a factor-of-curves latent growth model (LGM); and the relationships between changes in linguistic features and writing scores across time were examined by path modelling. MFRM analysis indicates that despite several misfits, students’ and raters’ performances and scale’s functionality conformed to the expectations of MFRM, thus providing evidence of psychometric validity for the assessments. LGM shows that students’ paragraph writing skills develop steadily during the course. The Coh-Metrix indices have more predictive power before and after the course than during it, suggesting that Coh-Metrix may struggle to discriminate between some ability levels. Whether a Coh-Metrix index gains or loses predictive power over time is argued to be partly a function of whether raters maintain or lose sensitivity to the linguistic feature measured by that index in their own assessment as the course progresses.     

Using balanced and interactive writing instruction to improve the higher order and lower order writing skills of deaf students

This article reports the findings of balanced and interactive writing instruction used with 16 deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Although the instruction has been used previously, this was the first time it had been modified to suit the specific needs of deaf children and the first time it had been implemented with this subpopulation of students. The intervention took place in two elementary classrooms (N = 8) and one middle school classroom (N = 8) for a total of 21 days. A comparison of pre- and posttest scores on both writing and reading measures evidenced that students made significant gains with use of genre-specific traits, use of contextual language, editing/revising skills, and word identification. Students showed neither gains nor losses with conventions and total word count. In addition, a one-way multiple analysis of variance was used to detect any school-level effects. Elementary students made significantly greater gains with respect to conventions and word identification, and middle school students made significantly greater gains with editing and revising tasks.     

小学语文低段识字教学浅议

小学低段识字教学是小学语文教学中的重点和难点。本文作者根据素质教育理念，在多年的教学实践中大胆探索，运用多种教学手段，让学生在轻松愉快的气氛中掌握汉字的读音，熟记字形，理解字义，收到了很好的教学效果。     

Effectiveness of the multidimensional curriculum model in developing higher-order thinking skills in elementary and secondary students

The study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the multidimensional curriculum model (MdCM) in the development of higher-order thinking skills in a sample of 394 elementary and secondary school students in Israel. The study employed a quantitative quasi-experimental pre-post design, using a study module based on MdCM, comparing intervention group to control group. Thinking skills were measured using a thinking questionnaire comprising three dimensions: Scientific thinking – focusing on inquiry skills; creative thinking – relating to problem finding and problem-solving; and future thinking – concerning personal and time perspectives. Findings indicate improvement in measured thinking skills in the intervention group by 40% compared to 4% in control group. Most improved skills were future thinking and creative thinking. Differences were detected according to the type of school. It is suggested that when used regularly the MdCM incorporating innovative teaching–learning strategies and embedded thinking tools could improve thinking skills among students from different age groups. General implications for curriculum design are discussed.