Michael L. Kamil

Vocabulary Assessment: What We Know and What We Need to Learn.

The authors assert that, in order to teach vocabulary more effectively and better understand its relation to comprehension, we need first to address how vocabulary knowledge and growth are assessed. They argue that “vocabularly assessment is grossly undernourished, both in its theoretical and practical aspects—that it has been driven by tradition, convenience, psychometric standards, and a quest for economy of effort rather than a clear conceptualization of its nature and relation to other aspects of reading expertise, most notably comprehension.”

Teaching and Learning Vocabulary : Bringing Research to Practice

Contents: Preface. M.L. Kamil, E.H. Hiebert, Teaching and Learning Vocabulary: Perspectives and Persistent Issues. Part I: Perspectives on How Vocabulary Is Learned. W. Nagy, Why Vocabulary Instruction Needs to Be Long-Term and Comprehensive. A.E. Cunningham, Vocabulary Growth Through Independent Reading and Reading Aloud to Children. J.A. Scott, Creating Opportunities to Acquire New World Meanings From Text. Part II: Instruction and Interventions That Enhance Vocabulary. S.A. Stahl, Four Problems With Teaching Word Meanings and What to Do to Make Vocabulary an Integral Part of Instruction. M. Calderon, D. August, R. Slavin, D. Duran, N. Madden, A. Cheung, Bringing Words to Life in Classrooms With English Language Learners. M.S. Carlo, D. August, C.E. Snow, Sustained Vocabulary-Learning Strategy Instruction for English-Language Learners. P.J. Schwanenflugel, C.E. Hamilton, B.A. Bradley, H.P. Ruston, S. Neuharth-Pritchett, M.A. Restrepo, Classroom Practices for Vocabulary Enhancement in Prekindergarten: Lessons From PAVEd for Success. J.F. Baumann, G. Font, E.C. Edwards, E. Boland, Strategies for Teaching Middle-Grade Students to Use Word-Part and Context Clues to Expand Reading Vocabulary. Part III: Perspectives on Which Words to Choose for Instruction. I.L. Beck, M.G. McKeown, L. Kucan, Choosing Words to Teach. A. Biemiller, Size and Sequence in Vocabulary Development: Implications for Choosing Words for Primary Grade Vocabulary Instruction. E.H. Hiebert, In Pursuit of an Effective, Efficient Vocabulary Curriculum for Elementary Students.

Second Language Reading

This article places second language reading into its historical context, tracing the development of the field from the 19th century to the present. Against this backdrop, it focuses on three key areas. First, it discusses the search for a model of second language reading that can accommodate a range of languages, developmental trajectories, and social/affective dimensions. Second, it provides a renewed perspective on the concept of transfer – what is transferred between languages when a literate or nonliterate first-language reader attempts to understand in a second. Third, it argues for a greater recognition of the import of the social context in comprehension.

Confusions in memory for tactile presentations of letters

This investigation explored the possibility of a tactile as well as acoustic component for short-term memory by tactilely presenting groups of letters on subjects’ backs. Letters varied in phonetic similarity and spatial location. Recall error rates were assessed according to Wickelgren’s (1965) ordered, item, and position recall criteria. Spatial location showed no effect. High phonetic similarity produced more errors than low phonetic similarity by ordered and position recall criteria. This effect was attributed to translation to acoustic representations for storage in short-term memory. The results suggest that shape coding may also function along with acoustic coding as an additional strategy for aiding recall of tactilely presented letter sequences.

More on the Quality of Educational Research: A Response to Pressley and Harris

Pressley and Harris (1994) have raised questions about the quality of research in educational intervention studies. It is suggested that Pressley and Harris have defined the problem in an overly narrow manner. Data are presented to suggest that, in part, graduate training is one cause of the problem. Other causes include a lack of theory-based work in the area and ineffective publication standards and procedures. Remedies are suggested involving the preparation of graduate students, revisions in the research process, changes in the peer review process, and stronger standards for publication.

Can Thinking Be Taught

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1987, Vol 32(6), 548–549. Reviews the book, Thinking in the Classroom: A Survey of Programs by Paul Chance (1986). This book is a description of eight programs that are commercially available for use in teaching students to think. Each program is described in terms of its assumptions, goals, methods and materials, audience, teacher qualifications, benefits claimed by the program, and special problems with the program. Most of these programs are relatively expensive to implement, either in terms of cost of materials or training that must be undergone for proficient teaching of the programs. Again, this is a critical concern for educational implementations that must usually be done on restricted budgets. There is certainly little to recommend this book to anyone outside the educational community, and it is not clear to whom this book is addressed. It provides such a brief overview that it would be difficult to imagine what sorts of benefits might be derived from reading it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

Linguistic integration during recognition testing

Current interpretations of linguistic integration assume that memory integration occurs before test sentences are presented. Using an integrated recognition paradigm like that of Bransford and Franks, subjects in one study were given acquisition sentences prior to testing. In a second study, subjects did not receive the acquisition sentences. In both studies, the subjects were tested for ability to discriminate thematically incorrect sentences from thematically correct sentences under conditions of high or low sentence imagery. Subjects in both conditions were able to locate over half of the noncases when sentences were high in imagery value. This suggests that subjects might be able to comprehend and construct ideas during recognition testing. However, low-imagery sentences produced poorer ability to detect noncase sentences in both studies, suggesting that differences in processing of abstract and concrete sentences exist.

The role of some definite references in linguistic integration

Definite reference increases thematic integration for semantically related sentences (DeVilliers, 1974). Therefore, definite reference should increase linguistic integration in the Bransford-Franks integrated recognition paradigm. Two recognition and two recall studies demonstrated that, if anything, indefinite reference increases linguistic integration effects, as measured by existing measures of integration. However, definite reference increases topical clustering in recall. Results cast doubt on the validity of existing measures of linguistic integration and indicate that the tally model of performance in integrated recognition tasks (Reitman & Bower, 1973) is not totally adequate, either. Results are compatible with the associative model of Anderson and Bower (1973). Topical clustering appears to be a better measure of integrated memory than are existing measures of linguistic integration. Retention of information about the propositional form in which semantically related sentences are presented and integrated memory are not necessarily incompatible.

How Integrated is Memory for Semantically Related Sentences

Summary Theorists currently question the interpretation of effects which Bransford and Franks claim are indicants of holistic representational structures. Background stories and/or topically blocked presentations were given to 80 male and female undergraduates whose task was to recall semantically related sentences. Stories and blocked presentation facilitated recall and topical clustering. Measures of semantic integration developed by Bransford and Franks were largely unaffected by the manipulations. Results showed that topical clustering is an appropriate measure of interconnectedness of representations, and that semantically related sentences require background schemas or topical organization to facilitate integration of representations. Results support the notion that the sentences in the Bransford and Franks linguistic integration paradigm are not as integrated as was previously believed.

Memory for repeated words and parallel structure in compound sentences

Three experiments were conducted to study the short-term memory capabilities of children for compound sentences. Experiment I showed that memory was a positive function of the number of words repeated between the clauses of compound sentences. Experiment II demonstrated that when the syntactic surface structures were the same in both clauses, recall was enhanced. The third experiment provided evidence that parallel structures, rather than particular syntactic forms, were producing the effect. Results from the three experiments were interpreted as supporting a “frame, list, and rule” strategy for remembering compound sentences. Subjects extract frames of similar words from the two clauses, store lists of different lexical items to fit in the frame blanks, and use rules to regenerate the sentence.