Perceptual skills and Arabic literacy patterns for mathematically gifted children with specific learning difficulties

Phonological awareness is a key factor in the development of literacy, and frequently presents itself as an area of weakness in pupils with reading difficulties. In this article, Anies Al-Hroub of the American University of Beirut sets out to define a distinguishing pattern of characteristics that supports the identification of pupils with specific learning difficulties who are gifted in mathematics and reports the assessment of the pupils' visual and auditory perceptual skills, including phonological awareness. The assessments were designed to measure auditory and visual memory skills, auditory and visual analysis skills, speed of information processing and spoken language (receptive and expressive). Furthermore, aspects of language learning such as reading, writing, spelling and parts of listening ability were all assessed for mathematically gifted pupils with specific learning difficulties who scored above the cut-off score of 120 on the WISC-III-Jordan. The article closes with recommendations for further research.     

Reading expressively and understanding thoroughly: An examination of prosody in adults with low literacy skills

The purpose of the current study was to explore the relationship between prosody, which is the expressive quality of reading out loud, and reading comprehension in adults with low literacy skills compared to skilled readers. All participants read a passage orally, and we extracted prosodic measures from the recordings. We examined pitch changes and how long readers paused at various points while reading. Finally, for the adults with low literacy skills, we collected information on decoding, word recognition, and reading comprehension. We found several interesting results. First, adults with low literacy skills paused longer than skilled readers and paused at a substantially greater number of punctuation marks. Second, while adults with low literacy skills do mark the end of declarative sentences with a pitch declination similar to skilled readers, their readings of questions lack a change in pitch. Third, decoding and word recognition skills were related to pauses while reading; readers with lower skills made longer and more frequent and inappropriate pauses. Finally, pausing measures explained a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension among the adults with low literacy skills.     

The role of sentence recall in reading and language skills of children with learning difficulties

The present study explores the relationship between sentence recall and reading and language skills in a group of 7–11-year-old children with learning difficulties. While recent studies have found that performance on sentence recall tasks plays a role in learning, it is possible that this contribution is a reflection of shared resources with working memory. In order to investigate whether sentence recall was uniquely associated with reading and language skills, differences associated with IQ and working memory capacity were statistically controlled. A sample of 72 children was tested on measures of verbal complex memory, verbal short-term memory, sentence recall, expressive vocabulary, verbal and performance IQ, reading and language skills. Both sentence recall and verbal complex memory shared unique links with reading skill, and sentence recall was uniquely associated with language skills. This finding indicates that resources in long-term memory also play an important diagnostic role in reading and language abilities. The implications for educational practice are discussed.     

The role of motivational profiles in learning problem-solving and self-assessment skills with video modeling examples

Instructional Science - In the current study, we examine the role of situation-specific motivational profiles in the effectiveness of video modeling examples for learning problem-solving and...     

创新学习与教师角色的转变

创新学习体现了现代教育对学生学习的要求。在引导学生创新学习的过程中教师的角色将发生转变:由知识的传授者向学生学习、发展的指导者、促进者转变;由居高临下的权威向平等中的首席转变;由“教书匠”向教育教学的研究者、反思者转变;由单纯的育人者向既育人又育己的持续发展的终身学习者转变。     

培养机制对职工学习积极性的重要作用探析

企业的发展是靠竞争力来实现的,而决定企业竞争力的主要还是取决于全体职工的共同努力。因此,建立良好的职工培养机制对企业的发展有着重要的作用。     

The family and the development of literacy skills and values

This paper presents the initial findings of three years of field work with six families in which the children were considered by their parents to be successfully learning to read and write. The study represents an attempt to develop systematic ways of looking at reading and writing as activities which have consequences in and are affected by family life. In the present report, it is suggested that multigenerational family literacy patterns mediated by personal experiences of everyday life are of fundamental importance to the child's development of an individual educative style and, therefore, to learning to read and write. Consideration is given to the interplay of individual biographies and educative styles within each family. Variations are then explored in the degree to which each family specifically fostered literacy skills and values. Within this context emphasis is placed on the importance of the children's family experiences of print which are situationally diffuse, occurring at the very margins of awareness.     

Understanding oral reading fluency among adults with low literacy: dominance analysis of contributing component skills

This study extends the literature on the component skills involved in oral reading fluency. Dominance analysis was applied to assess the relative importance of seven reading-related component skills in the prediction of the oral reading fluency of 272 adult literacy learners. The best predictors of oral reading fluency when text difficulty was fixed at a single reading level was word reading efficiency. When text difficulty varied based on readers?? comprehension levels, word reading efficiency was also the best predictor with vocabulary and auditory working memory emerging as important predictors as well. Our findings suggest the merit of investigations into whether adults with low literacy may need vocabulary and auditory working memory strategy interventions to improve their reading fluency.     

浅谈声乐学习的基本素养

声乐是一门精深、博大、技术性非常强的艺术,演唱者需要有过硬的专业知识和较高的艺术造诣和修养,才能为受众奉献出如醉如痴、震撼心灵的好作品。     

Acquisition of computer literacy skills through self-organizing systems of learning among children in Bhutan and India

This article describes a study under the Reaching the Unreached component of the Chiphen Rigpel project between the governments of Bhutan and India. This initiative is an attempt to provide computer literacy to children of Bhutan through setting up “hole in the wall” (HiWEL) Playground Learning Station(s) (PLSs). The study described here involves 14 sites (the experimental group), where PLSs are installed, and another 8 sites (the control group) without PLSs, but having similar demographic and socioeconomic profiling as the experimental group. This article compares the acquisition of computer literacy of school-going children in India with those in Bhutan. Results indicate that Bhutanese children have acquired computer literacy on their own and that their level of computer skills acquisition is similar to that of Indian children when the scores are normalized. This study was done over a one-year period, with results reported for eight months. In addition to verifying the earlier Indian results, this article hints at the fact that, irrespective of ethnicity, culture, and country, an identical—and possibly universal—self-organized learning mechanism seems to work with children vis-à-vis the Internet.     

Early literacy and comprehension skills in children learning English as an additional language and monolingual children with language weaknesses

Many children learning English as an additional language (EAL) show reading comprehension difficulties despite adequate decoding. However, the relationship between early language and reading comprehension in this group is not fully understood. The language and literacy skills of 80 children learning English from diverse language backgrounds and 80 monolingual English-speaking peers with language weaknesses were assessed at school entry (mean age = 4 years, 7 months) and after 2 years of schooling in the UK (mean age = 6 years, 3 months). The EAL group showed weaker language skills and stronger word reading than the monolingual group but no difference in reading comprehension. Individual differences in reading comprehension were predicted by variations in decoding and language comprehension in both groups to a similar degree.     

Exploring the role of father development workers in supporting early years learning

This qualitative study presents findings from initial exploratory work that examined how father development workers (FDWs) supported fathers to become involved in their children's learning, within the context of father groups. The study found that there were two main purposes behind the father groups and the subsequent role of FDWs in supporting father involvement. First, its purpose was to raise confidence and responsibility amongst fathers; and second, it was to improve and influence children's learning. As part of raising confidence and responsibility, FDWs supported fathers to ‘be themselves’, to interact with the group, to develop a father–child relationship and to make decisions. FDWs used both indirect and direct learning approaches with fathers in order to improve and influence children's learning. The study calls for further research into the area of father groups and supporting father involvement in children's learning, as this is an important area that is currently under‐researched in the UK.     

The relationship between home literacy practices and developmental trajectories of emergent literacy and conventional literacy skills for Korean children

Previous studies with English-speaking families in the North American context demonstrated that home literacy practices have positive influences on children’s literacy acquisition. The present study expands previous studies by examining how home literacy practices are related to growth trajectories of emergent literacy skills (i.e., vocabulary, letter-name knowledge, and phonological awareness) and conventional literacy skills (i.e., word reading, pseudoword reading, and spelling), and by using data from Korean children and families (N = 192). The study revealed two dimensions of home literacy practices, home reading and parent teaching. Frequent reading at home was positively associated with children’s emergent literacy skills as well as conventional literacy skills in Korean. However, children whose parents reported more frequent teaching tended to have low scores in their phonological awareness, vocabulary, word reading and pseudoword reading after accounting for home reading. These results suggest a bidirectional relationship between home literacy practices, parent teaching in particular, and children’s literacy skills such that parents adjust their teaching in response to their child’s literacy acquisition. Furthermore, cultural variation in views on parent teaching may explain these results.

谈钢琴学习中的练琴技巧

对学习钢琴的人来说练琴是至关重要的,要想提高练琴的效率,收到良好的效果那么在练琴时就应注意慢速练习、分解练习、合理的利用练琴时间、学会心练做一些为了演出或考试曲目的练习。     

Orthographic skills important to Chinese literacy development: the role of radical representation and orthographic memory of radicals

A 3-year longitudinal study among 239 Chinese students in Grades 2–4 was conducted to investigate the relationships between orthographic skills (including positional and functional knowledge of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals, and orthographic memory of radicals) and Chinese literacy skills (word reading, word spelling, reading comprehension and written composition). Phonetic radical knowledge was the only significant longitudinal predictor of word reading, whereas all orthographic skills examined were significant longitudinal predictors of word spelling. Reading comprehension was uniquely predicted by semantic radical knowledge. A model showing the relationships between orthographic skills and literacy skills was postulated.     

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties.