The unique language of mathematics incorporates words, numbers, symbols and diagrams. These elements and their associated mathematical concepts introduce reading and comprehension requirements that are not experienced in other disciplines. It is the responsibility of teachers to ensure that students are educated about, and encouraged to apply mathematical language in a variety of contexts. This is essential to the development of mathematical problem solving, where word problems often feature in classroom instruction and assessment, and where mathematical language is expected within student responses. Mathematics teachers need to be mindful that the validity of test items used to assess student mathematical problem solving ability are not influenced by other variables such as vocabulary comprehension difficulty. This study discusses the vocabulary which Year 9 students identify as difficult when undertaking word problem tasks in pen and paper test situations. To challenge generalised assumptions that teachers may make, this study focused on development of an instrument to monitor and evaluate the vocabulary comprehension of individual students within the classroom, and with respect to their particular school context. Analyses of findings support the requirement of reading proficiency in mathematics, and in particular, of vocabulary comprehension to student performance on mathematical problem solving assessment comprised of word problems.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1964. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 65-67).

Finally, the present thesis develops an analytic account of word recognition and reading in Chinese. Implications are drawn for both experimental studies of normal reading and neuropsychological studies of dyslexia in Chinese.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-63).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1915. / Typescript. With this is bound: Psychological aspects of language / George C. Brandenburg. Reprinted from Journal of educational psychology, vol. IX, no. 6 (June 1918), p. 313-332. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 123).

There has been increasing interest in research on creating word lists in the past decade with more than 60 separate lists being published along with Nation’s (2016) timely Making and Using Word Lists for Language Learning and Testing. However, this focus on word lists has primarily been on creating them and has not necessarily extended to looking at how they are actually used. In order to help answer the question of how these lists are utilized in practice, this exploratory, interpretive study based on interviews with teachers and assessment/curriculum developers looks at how word lists are used at five tertiary English foundation programs in the United Arab Emirates. The main findings include the following. Insufficient vocabulary knowledge was deemed one of the most significant problems that students faced. Additionally, word lists played a role in all five of the institutions represented in the study, and the Common European Framework (CEFR) was used in conjunction with vocabulary frequency lists to help set expected vocabulary learning in some programs. Furthermore, teacher intuition was used to modify lists in three of the five programs and online applications were used in all five programs. The thesis explores a number of areas in depth including: how vocabulary lists are being used in the programs, the use of the AWL in this context and potential problems related to this, the role of teacher intuition in the customization of lists, the role of CEFR related frameworks in these programs, the use of computer applications to assist with list vocabulary acquisition, what the selected vocabulary acquisition activities tell us about beliefs about vocabulary teaching and learning, and some final comments about utilizing a list. One of the key findings was the development of a novel framework for categorizing the use of word lists into four general areas: course planning, teaching and learning, assessment and materials development with sub-categories for each. This framework and the related examples could be utilized to evaluate the suitability of specific lists and to help set developmental targets for the process of adopting a new list and transforming it into something that could be used to direct and support vocabulary teaching and learning. It could also be developed further as more examples of practice emerge in different contexts and hopefully set the stage for more development about how vocabulary lists are used.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T19:33:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lilian Pinho Botelho.pdf: 3905629 bytes, checksum: 8a34aac7c1265dee147ca7d3a32067fd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-10 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / Dissertation is linked to the Portuguese Language Reading, Writing and Teaching research line and in an interface with the Portuguese Language History and Description research line focuses on the reading of the written text as a complex process, explained by the integration of different linguistic and non-linguistic skills. Therefore, its theme is the textual production processes in written language and, although they are deemed as inseparable, the significant reading of written records is preferred, as basis for the writing of the same readings. The general goal is aimed at the extent of the comprehension level of the textualspeech production of the researcher himself who, on the one hand, aim at contributing with the planning of institutional didactic proposals aimed at the education of the proficient reader: that who becomes capable of incorporating knowledge that qualifies the culture of the written civilization into his daily social practices. The same knowledge, on the other hand, shall contribute so that the researcher, playing the social role of teacher, can extend the previous knowledge of his students through a teaching practice contextualized by the modern scientific speech frames that focus on the language in the performance of his social, interactive and speech functions so that they also become proficient readers of different and varied written texts. The specific goals: 1) to understand, through a historical perspective, the different ways of reading and writing that guided the teaching and the learning of the written language, in the teaching space, contributing to finding out which models of reading practices needed to be contextualized by the teacher s teaching practices: intensive reading inseparable from the extensive reading; 2) understanding, organizing and ordering theoretical grounds of the Textual Linguistics of the interactive, cognitive and social branch that enabled an approach of the textual-speech production processes through an integrated perspective of the micro and macro processes that respond for meanings production skills; 3) verifying through linguistic and non-linguistic categories ordering these processes how they: a) guide analytical reading processes of a history narrative, differentiating it from a report narrative; b) enable the reader to dislocate himself from the linguistic knowledge to the non-linguistic knowledge, through authorized inferences; c) build the semantic basis of the text analyzed by the production of micro and macro positions and, thus proceeding, attribute meanings to the texts he reads and, through the results obtained, suggest the complementation of institutional didactic proposals, to contribute to their planning, through the significant reading that presupposes the intensive and the extensive, at the same time / A Dissertação está vinculada à linha de pesquisa Leitura, Escrita e Ensino da Língua Portuguesa e - numa interface com a linha de Pesquisa História e Descrição da Língua Portuguesa - focaliza a leitura do texto escrito como um processo complexo, explicado pela integração de diferentes habilidades linguísticas e não linguísticas. Tematiza, portanto,os processos de produção textual em língua escrita e, embora eles sejam compreendidos como indissociáveis, privilegia-se a leitura significativa de registros escritos, como ancoragem para a escrita dessas mesmas leituras. O objetivo geral está voltado para extensividade do grau de compreensão da produção textual-discursiva do próprio pesquisador que, por um lado, visam a contribuir: com a planificação de propostas didáticas institucionais voltadas para a formação do leitor proficiente: aquele que se torna capaz de incorporar às suas práticas sociais cotidianas saberes que qualificam a cultura da civilização da escrita. Esses mesmos saberes, por outro lado, deverão contribuir para que o pesquisador, no exercício do papel social de professor, possa contribuir estender os conhecimentos prévios de seus alunos - por uma prática de docência recontextualizada pelos quadros do discurso científico moderno que focaliza a língua no exercício de suas funções sócio-interativo-discursivas. para que eles também se façam leitores proficientes de diferentes e variados textos escritos. Os objetivos específicos: 1) compreender, por uma perspectiva historiográfica, os diferentes modos de ler e de escrever que orientaram o ensino e a aprendizagem da língua escrita, no espaço escolar, contribuiu para descobrir quais modelos de práticas de leitura precisariam ser recontextualizados pelas práticas de docência do professor: leitura intensiva indissociável da leitura extensiva; 2) compreender, organizar e ordenar fundamentos teóricos da Lingüística Textual da vertente sócio-cognitivo-interativa que facultassem uma abordagem dos processos de produção textual-discursiva por uma perspectiva integrada dos micro e macroprocessos que respondem por habilidades de produção de sentidos; 3) verificar por meio de categorias linguísticas e não linguísticas ordenadoras desses processos, como elas: a) orientam procedimentos de leitura analítica de uma narrativa de história, diferenciando-a de uma narrativa de relato; b) facultam o leitor se deslocar dos conhecimentos linguísticos para os não linguísticos, por meio de inferências autorizadas; c) construir a base semântica do texto analisado pela produção de micro e macroposições e, assim procedendo, atribuir sentidos aos textos que lê e, por meio dos resultados obtidos, propor a complementação de propostas didáticas institucionais, para contribuir com a planificação das mesmas, por meio da leitura significativa que pressupõe a intensiva e a extensiva, em concomitância

This study examines an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) teacher's speech throughout one curricular unit of an intermediate grammar and writing course in order to better understand which high-value vocabulary students might acquire through attending to the teacher and noticing words that are used. Vocabulary acquisition is important for English for Academic Purposes students, given the vocabulary demands of academic language. The Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000) has been shown to include important vocabulary in written academic texts, and has become a standard part of English for Academic Purposes curricula and pedagogical materials. Although explicit vocabulary instruction is important, research has shown that large amounts of vocabulary may be acquired incidentally by attending to meaning. Classroom instruction provides a great deal of input, and could potentially offer a chance for students to encounter and begin to learn academic vocabulary through incidental acquisition. However, existing research on incidental vocabulary acquisition in classrooms has focused on adult instruction and English as a Foreign Language settings, resulting in a lack of evidence about English for Academic Purposes classrooms. To respond to these needs, this study analyzes the occurrence and repetition of Academic Word List items in the teacher's speech throughout two weeks of a course in an intensive academic English program in the United States. Two weeks of naturalistic class recordings from the Multimedia Adult Learner Corpus were transcribed and analyzed using the RANGE program to find the number of academic vocabulary types in the teacher's speech and how often they were repeated. Additionally, I derived categories of classroom topics and coded the transcribed speech in order to investigate the connection between topics and academic word use. Academic Word List items are present in the teacher's speech, although they do not constitute a large proportion overall, only 2.8% of the running words. Most of the AWL types relate to specific classroom topics or routines. There are 13 AWL types repeated to a high degree, and 26 AWL types repeated to a moderate degree. These items are the most likely candidates for incidental vocabulary acquisition, though there is evidence from the videos that most of the students already understand their general meanings. It is unlikely that students could learn a great deal about AWL items that they were not already familiar with. However, it is possible that the teacher's speech provides incremental gains in AWL word knowledge. These findings show that there may be a substantial number of AWL items that students learn about even before explicitly studying academic vocabulary. Teachers should try to draw out students' familiarity with these forms when explicitly teaching AWL vocabulary in order to connect familiar words with their academic meanings and uses.