How does morphosyntactic skill contribute to different genres of Chinese writing from grades 3 to 6?

This 4‐year longitudinal study examined the extent to which morphological awareness, syntactic processing, working memory (WM) and reading skills predict unique variances developmentally in three genres of Chinese writing (narration, argumentation and exposition) among 246 young Mandarin‐speaking children. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using the writing performance of three genres at the fourth year as the dependent variables. After controlling for reading skills and WM, morphological awareness was uniquely associated with all three types of writing genres longitudinally, while syntactic processing made a significant longitudinal contribution to narrative and argumentative writing during the earlier years. With the autoregressive effect of writing controlled, WM was uniquely associated with narrative writings across all four years, and with argumentative and expository writing in the later years. Reading skills were uniquely related to concurrent narrative and expository writing.     

Student teacher reflective writing: what does it reveal?

Some researchers claim that reflection helps student teachers to better understand their practice teaching. This study aims to explore how deliberate reflection by student teachers is encouraged as a way to prepare, analyse and evaluate their practice. A total of 104 student teachers in primary education participated in this study during their practicum and produced reflective accounts to identify and think about problems they encountered in their teaching practice. The written reports were analysed for precision or explicitness of statements in relation to types and levels of knowledge generated in reflection. Three main types of knowledge were produced by the student teachers through deliberate reflection (appraisals, rules and artefacts). A relationship was found between producing high levels of knowledge and precision of reflective statements. We interpret this to mean that while deliberate reflection can support the construction of professional knowledge, this only rarely occurs.     

Conceptual knowledge in talk and text: What does it take to understand a science question?

What is referred to as conceptual knowledge is one of the mostimportant deliverables of modern schooling. Following the dominance of cognitive paradigmsin psychological research, conceptual knowledge is generally construed assomething that lies behind or under performance in concrete social activities. In the presentstudy, students' responses to questions, supposedly tapping conceptual knowledge,have been studied as parts of concrete communicative practices. Our focus has been onthe differences between talk and text. The most frequent approach for generatinginsight into conceptual knowledge is by means of written tests. However, the very mannerin which people handle the demands of this particular form of mediation is seldomattended to. This problem has been studied by means of two items taken from theinternational comparison of knowledge and achievement in mathematics and science, TIMSS.The results reveal that it is highly doubtful if the items test knowledge of scienceconcepts to any significant extent. In both instances, the difficulties students have, asrevealed in the interview setting, seem to be grounded in problems in understanding somedetails in the written questions. These difficulties are generally easily resolved in aninteractive setting. It is argued that the low performance on these items can to a largeextent be accounted for by the abstract and highly demanding form of communication that iswritten language.     

M in CoMputational thinking: How long does it take to read a book?

Even at the primary level, computational thinking (CT) can support young students to prepare for participating in futures that are immersed in data. In mathematics classrooms, there are few explanations of the ways CT can support students in formulating and solving complex problems. This paper presents an example of a primary classroom investigation (8-9 year olds) over seven lessons of the problem “How long does it take to read a book?” The aim is to illustrate ways a statistical investigation can provide context for CT and demonstrate how the two complement each other to solve problems involving mathematics. The findings highlight opportunities and challenges that students face across the elements of CT—decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and modelling, and generalization and algorithmic thinking, including recommendations for teaching.     

Writing essays: does self-efficacy matter? The relationship between self-efficacy in reading and in writing and undergraduate students’ performance in essay writing

Self-efficacy beliefs have been identified as associated with students’ academic performance. The present research assessed the relationship between two new self-efficacy scales (self-efficacy in reading [SER] and self-efficacy in writing [SEW]) and students’ writing performance on a piece of assessed written coursework. Using data from first and second year undergraduate psychology students at a UK university (N?=?145), the results showed that both SER and SEW were related to actual writing performance. Overall the results support the importance of the concept of self-efficacy in relation to student performance. We discuss the relevance of self-efficacy on students’ perceptions and self-regulations.     

How does phonological awareness relate to nonword reading skill amongst poor readers?

This study examined phonological awareness at the level of phonemes and rhyme and related this to nonword naming ability. Poor readers were compared with 11 year old chronological-age controls and 8 year old reading-age controls. The poor reader group was impaired for chronological age in all tasks, and impaired for reading age at nonword naming and phoneme deletion. The poor readers' rhyming skills, however, were commensurate with reading age. Individual variation was observed together with exceptions to the group findings; most poor readers performed within the range of the reading-age controls on the phonological tasks and in nonword naming. Dissociations in phonological skills were evident, including indications that intact awareness of rhyme may not be a prerequisite for the development of phoneme awareness. Furthermore, phoneme awareness correlated significantly with poor readers' word and nonword reading ability, whereas rhyming skill did not. Therefore, phoneme awareness may be more important than rhyming skill in understanding reading disorders.     

Is oral/text reading fluency a “bridge” to reading comprehension?

In the present study we investigated developmental relations among word reading fluency, listening comprehension, and text reading fluency to reading comprehension in a relatively transparent language, Korean. A total of 98 kindergartners and 170 first graders in Korea were assessed on a series of tasks involving listening comprehension, word reading fluency, text reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Results from multigroup structural equation models showed that text reading fluency was a dissociable construct from word reading fluency for both kindergartners and first graders. In addition, a developmental pattern emerged: listening comprehension was not uniquely related to text reading fluency for first graders, but not for kindergartners, over and above word reading fluency. In addition, text reading fluency was uniquely related to reading comprehension for kindergartners, but not for first graders, after accounting for word reading fluency and listening comprehension. For first graders, listening comprehension dominated the relations. There were no differences in the pattern of relations for skilled and less skilled readers in first grade. Results are discussed from a developmental perspective for reading comprehension component skills including text reading fluency.     

How simple is reading in Arabic? A cross‐sectional investigation of reading comprehension from first to sixth grade

This study aimed to examine, from a cross‐sectional perspective, the extent to which the simple view of reading (SVR) model can be adapted to the Arabic language. This was carried out by verifying, in both beginning and more skilled readers, whether the unique orthographical and morphological characteristics of Arabic contribute to reading comprehension beyond decoding and listening comprehension abilities. Reading comprehension was evaluated in a large sample of first to sixth‐grade Arabic‐speaking children. The participants' decoding and listening comprehension abilities were investigated together with their orthographic and morphological knowledge. Path analysis indicated that reading comprehension was moderately explained by the SVR (56–38%). Orthographic and morphological knowledge explained an additional 10–22% of the variance beyond that explained by the basic SVR components. These findings demonstrate that certain linguistic aspects of Arabic impact reading processes differently when compared with other languages. The psycholinguistic implications of these findings are discussed in the light of previous findings in the literature.

What is already known about this topic?

• The ‘simple view of reading’ model explains reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension.
• This model explains between 70% and 83% of the variance in reading comprehension in English, in which the contribution of decoding and listening comprehension varies as a function of the level of the readers.
• Orthographic transparency and other unique characteristics of the languages studied might influence reading comprehension in these languages

What does this paper add?

• Arabic is a diglossic language that is characterised by relatively unique orthographic and morphological features for which the validity of the simple view of reading (SVR) has not been tested.
• The basic components of the SVR (decoding and listening comprehension) have explained between 56% and 38% of the variance in reading comprehension in children from the first to the sixth grade.
• Decoding, as one of the basic components of the SVR, failed to contribute to reading comprehension when orthography and morphology were considered.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• This large‐scale cross‐sectional study is the first of its type to assess reading comprehension in Arabic.
• The study justifies the necessity to assess the suitability of the SVR in languages with very specific linguistic characteristics such as Arabic.
• The results emphasise the necessity of considering the complex orthography and the rich morphology of Arabic for improving teaching, assessment and intervention.

     

Overeducation in developing economies: How can we test for it, and what does it mean?

A worker is said to be overeducated if he/she has acquired more education than is required to perform his/her job. In the absence of data measuring the number of years of schooling required to perform particular jobs, we propose a new approach to testing for overeducation. Overeducation is confirmed if we observe that education levels rose in jobs that offer very low returns to education and that underwent little technological change. Using labor force surveys from four developing countries, we find evidence of overeducation in unskilled jobs in the Philippines, mild evidence in Mexico, and little evidence in India and Thailand. We show that a job's mean and modal years of schooling are poor proxies for required education. We also show that overeducation sometimes increases within unskilled jobs, even while a growing share of educated workers enter skilled jobs. This may be because the quality of education segments the labor market.     

New medical technology: to what does it lead?

In this paper I first discuss the concept of medical technology. (I thank Knut Arnesen, Arvid Fennefoss, and Aslaug H?ye for many informative and educational conversations about problems pertaining to technology). Then, I review some different meanings of the term, and then discuss the relationship between ethics and the scientific method. Finally, the understanding that emerges from this account is applied to a special problem: the relationship between technology and deafness.     

Training reading fluency: is it important to practice reading aloud and is generalization possible?

Outcomes of three different types of computerized training in sub-lexical items (word-initial consonant clusters) on reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in Grades 2 and 3 were evaluated. A phonological–orthographic association group, a reading aloud group, and a combined group were compared in performance with an untrained control group. During short-term training, the intervention groups showed higher gains than the control group in reading speed of the trained sub-lexical items and of the words containing the trained segments. No differences were found between the intervention groups. In the development of pseudoword reading, the groups did not show differential improvements. The generalization effect to pseudoword reading was similar, whether the pseudowords contained the trained segment as a syllable or as a non-syllabic letter string. The gains induced by training were specific to the materials used in training and did not induce gains in general reading speed.

How to Make an Appointment?

在西方,不管是看牙医还是去拜访朋友都需要事先约定,这是非常重要的交际礼仪,也是对他人的尊重,千万不要做“不速之客(an unex-pected guest)”。那么如何“预约”呢?看看我为大家准备的“套话”吧,学会一种表达方式,你就能举一反三!1.Is May1st OK!五月一日行吗?2.How would12     

How to Develop the Students’ Interest in English Teaching

It is the key for teachers how to develop the students’ interest because interest is the best teacher.This paper discusses how to develop the students’ interest.     

How is language used to craft social presence in Facebook? A case study of an undergraduate writing course

This quantitative content analysis examines the way social presence was created through original posts and comments in a Facebook group for an undergraduate writing course. The author adapted a well-known coding template and examined how course members—one instructor, two undergraduate teaching assistants and twenty-two students--used language and image to generate social presence. Language is categorized by purpose, and each category is a social presence indicator. The results show which social presence indicators are used more frequently by course members and that social presence is higher when certain social presence indicators are utilized. Since existing research indicates that social presence is associated with increased course satisfaction and learning, these findings provide practical knowledge for faculty seeking to increase social presence in their classes. This is a case study with a small population, but these results indicate the need for additional research to further explore how language and image are used to generate social presence in Facebook.     

How do different cognitive and linguistic variables contribute to reading in Arabic? A cross-sectional study from first to sixth grade

The contribution of linguistic and cognitive variables to reading processes might vary depending on the particularities of the languages studied. This view is thought to be particularly true for Arabic which is a diglossic language and has particular orthographic and morpho-syntactic systems. This cross-sectional study examined the contribution of phonological, orthographic, morphological, semantic, syntactic, visual perception, rapid automatic naming and phonological working memory abilities to decoding and fluency (the two components of reading). The results, obtained from 1305 native Arabic-speaking children in first–sixth grade, were analyzed using path models. The analysis revealed that memory and orthographic knowledge contributed to both components of reading, while phonological awareness contributed mainly to decoding and rapid automatic naming contributed to fluency. The contribution of morphology to the two components, which appeared already in the first grade, was weak and inconsistent. Finally, the results showed that visual perception, semantics, and syntax predicted neither decoding nor fluency. The data presented here suggest that reading development in Arabic differs from other languages, a finding that might explain certain difficulties in reading acquisition in Arabic. The results are discussed in the light of previous findings in the literature and the specific features of Arabic.