Thesis (Ph.D.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Counseling, and Educational Psychology [Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology] / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka om det fanns en skillnad på studentens prestation i ett läsförståelsetest (TISUS), beroende på vilket tonläge (dur eller moll) på klassisk musik de fick lyssna på. Undersökningen genomfördes som ett laboratorieexperiment i en studierum på Karlstads Universitet, utifrån en oberoende mellan-grupps-design. Urvalet var ett tillfällighetsurval av studenter (N= 26), i åldrarna 19 – 33, inom Karlstads Universitet. Oberoende variabeln var klassiskt musik komponerad av Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, vilket var uppdelat i de två olika betingelserna dur och moll. Beroende variabeln var studentens prestationsförmåga i läsförståelse. Deltagarna fick genomföra ett läsförståelsetest, bestående av tre texter med dess samtliga frågor att besvara på, samt bakgrundsfrågor och en utvärdering av experimentet. Resultatet visade att studenter som lyssnade på klassiskt musik, i tonläge dur, presterade bättre i läsförståelsetestet. Slutsatsen är att inverkan av tonlägena dur och moll skiljer sig på studentens prestationsförmåga i läsförståelse. / The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference on the students’ performance in a reading comprehension test ( TISUS ), depending on the tone (major or minor) of the classical music they were listening to.The survey was conducted as a laboratory experiment in a study-room at the University of Karlstad, based on an independent between-group design. The selection was an opportunity sample of students (N = 26), between the ages 19-33, within the University of Karlstad. The independent variable was the classical music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which was divided into the two different tones, major and minor. The dependent variable was the student's performance in reading comprehension. The participants performed a reading comprehension test, consisting of three texts with all its questions to answer on, and background questions and an evaluation of the experiment. The results showed that students who listened to classical music, with the tone of major, performed better in the reading comprehension test. The conclusion is that the impact of the tones major and minor differs on the students’ performance in reading comprehension.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purpose of this study was to explore the classroom learning research to enhance the proficiency of fifth grade students to read expository articles and self-efficacy studies. Students through the teaching of reading text, Mind Mapping, Hypertext to enhancing the ability and self-efficacy of the fifth grade primary school students in expository comprehension. The fifth grade students included 55 boys and 77 girls, a total of 128 students. The study was designed by learning study .The research carried out in three weeks, Through Mind - Mapping and Hypertext strategy to improve students reading abilities of expository articles and use interview survey progress of students abilities. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

In the domain of second language reading instruction, the teaching of inferencing to young L2 students seems to be a less explored area. The present study aims to investigate the extent to which the explicit instruction approach could enhance my ESL students' inferencing skills in English reading comprehension. It explores the relevance of teaching inferencing to my students, how they drew inferences in English before intervention and how they benefited from the intervention. I used an action research approach to study the effectiveness of my teaching of inferencing to my Primary Six ESL students in Hong Kong over a one-year period. I conducted this project following a two-cycle action research pattern within a seven-step framework. I implemented the project in three phases: Pre-intervention Phase, Intervention Phase One and Intervention Phase Two. Pre-intervention Phase involved baseline studies and think-aloud studies, whilst the intervention phases involved two cycles of teaching and a post-intervention think-aloud study. I used the data from the Pre-intervention Phase for designing the teaching content of the intervention phases. Data sources of this project included the students’ think-aloud protocols, the students’ work, lesson recordings, entries in my reflective journal, and my colleagues’ lesson observation feedback. I focused on the growth of the students’ learning and the effectiveness of the explicit instruction approach when analyzing the data. Findings from the Pre-intervention Phase suggested that the participants needed improvements in L2 inferencing and they were particularly weaker in the awareness of textual cohesion and coherence in informational texts. This had the immediate pedagogical implications that for initiating a reading programme in my school context, I should consider placing inferencing at a higher position; I should adopt different text types when teaching inferencing; and I should design and adopt higher-order thinking tasks more frequently when teaching reading to my students. Findings from Intervention Phase One and Two showed the students’ gradual growth in their inferencing abilities and their understanding of this reading skill. They became more confident in producing inferences while reading in English and showed an understanding of the importance of this skill to reading. Results from the post-intervention think-aloud study showed an increase in terms of the participants’ production of inferencing instances, the variety of inferencing applied by them, and their sense of textual cohesion and coherence. I estimated that the use of the explicit instruction approach had benefited the participants in general despite the fact that their internalization of inferencing was not evident. This study is significant in that it examines how inferencing could be explicitly taught to young ESL students to enhance their English reading competence. It also contributes to the theoretical understanding of inferencing in the teaching and learning of reading in L2. Based on the findings of this action research project, I derived and proposed a set of pedagogical principles for ESL inferencing instructions, pointing to the importance of explicitness in lessons, clarity of lesson outline, using students’ responses, text choice, and curriculum planning. I suggest that front-line L2 teachers make inferencing and other reading skills an important component in their language programmes. Future researchers should explore further on the use of the explicit instruction approach to teach other reading skills to young L2 learners and a wider range of materials to teach inferencing should be used. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Education

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In recent years, a number of empirical and conceptual studies about Project-Based Learning (PBL) have presented consistent arguments rationalizing this approach to language learning and teaching. The most common benefits attributed to project work in the second- and foreign-language settings have been located and described in recent research. However, only a few empirical studies have been conducted to evaluate the effect of project work on language learning, and even fewer on specific language skills. This dissertation presents the results of a quasi-experimental research study that investigates the effect of incorporating a semester-long reading project into a third-semester Russian classroom and reports the measured effects of this experimental treatment on students’ reading comprehension, their reading habits and beliefs, perceived reading skills, and overall language proficiency. The dissertation provides data on a semester-long project allowing students to research a topic of their interest through a set of readings (which substituted for the textbook texts) with an ultimate goal of reporting their findings in the form of a newsletter article. The project entailed interconnected sets of sequenced tasks during which students are actively engaged in information gathering, processing, and reporting, with the ultimate goal of increased content knowledge and language mastery. The context for this project was primarily text-based (extensive readings served as a base for all activities and assignments), task-driven (creating an end-product in written form), collaborative, technology-enhanced (extensive use of the Internet), and individualized (students researched topics they were interested in). The results of the study demonstrate that students’ reading comprehension increased by using an integrated methodology where reading was taught through maximizing students’ previous knowledge of a subject matter of their interest and following the procedural model for interactive reading. Additionally, the results suggest that the project implementation had a positive effect on some reading habits and beliefs regarding foreign language (FL) learning, while no significant shifts were found in students’ perceived reading skills, or their overall language proficiency. / text

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This study examined the performance of children with autism on selected measures of reading achievement and cognitive-linguistic ability. How children with autism performed on three reading achievement measures, Letter-Word Identification, PassageComprehension, and Oral Reading Fluency, and two cognitive-linguistic measures, Rapid Letter Naming and Segmenting of Words were analyzed to determine if there were anydifferences between their performance and those of both their normative and special education counterparts. Results revealed that children with autism scored significantly lower on all three measures of reading achievement and both cognitive-linguistic skillsthan their normative counterparts. Children with autism scored significantly lower on only one of the reading measures, Passage Comprehension and both cognitive-linguistic measures than their special education counterparts. Findings from this study provideadditional support for previous research which purports that children with autism demonstrate impairments in cognitive-linguistic tasks that require phonological processing, rapid automatic naming, oral language, and reading comprehension and may help practitioners in the identification of children with autism.

The purpose of this study is to show the importance of task texts for students in grades 5 when solving mathematical problems. It was conducted in a class 5 (where the children are 11 years old). The pupils were assigned two different tests with mathematical problems; one where the problems were described in text and one where the problems were presented with numbers and mathematical signs. Previously done research, done on bilingual children, (Bernardo, 2002) shows that pupils tend to do better on mathematical tests when no text is presented. My research supports that theory even though the correlation is not that strong. The big discovery laid in the fact that boys tend to perform significantly lower results compared to the girls. / Syftet med denna undersökning är att visa vilken betydelse uppgiftstexter har för elever i årskurs 5 när de ska lösa matematiska problem. Eleverna i klassen fick göra två matematiska test; en med uppgifter formulerade i text och en med uppgifter presenterade med endast siffror och matematiska tecken. Tidigare forskning, gjord på elever som läser matematik på sitt andraspråk (Bernardo, 2002), visar att eleverna presterar bättre då endast siffror, och ingen text, finns med i provet. Resultatet i den här undersökningen visar en svag trend åt det hållet medan den starka tendensen var skillnaden i resultat mellan de två könen då flickor tenderade att prestera betydligt bättre än pojkarna oavsett om uppgifterna gavs i form av text eller som rena sifferövningar.