Reading and writing

The term "academic literacies" refers to the diverse and multiple literacies found in academic contexts such as disciplinary and subject matter courses. Although originally developed with regard to the study of literacies in higher education and the university, the concept of academic literacies also applies to K-12 education.. An academic literacies perspective treats reading and writing as social practices, that vary with context, culture and genre . The literacy practices of academic disciplines can be viewed as varied social practices associated with different communities. In addition, an academic literacies perspective also takes account of literacies which are not directly associated with subjects and disciplines but with broader institutional discourses and genres. An academic literacies perspective views student writing and learning as issues of epistemology and identities rather than of skill acquisition or academic socialisation alone, although the perspectives are not mutually exclusive and individuals may move between them according to context and pourpose. From the student point of view a dominant feature of academic literacy practices is the requirement to switch their writing styles and genres between one setting and another, to deploy a repertoire of literacy practices appropriate to each setting, and to handle the social meanings and identities that each evokes.

Anyone in the world of language learning and teaching who has not heard the name of I.S.P. Nation has not read much about vocabulary for quite a while. These books demonstrate that Nation is not only a consummate scholar and a ground-breaking lexicologist, but also a clear-headed and skilful teacher educator. Nation and his colleague, Jonathan Newton, have written this set of two short books for teachers who are either following a professional qualification course or seeking independently to develop their teaching knowledge and skills. The books can be used separately, but taken together they deal with all four language skills in a clear, evidence-based and thorough fashion.

This paper reports on the effect of using an interactive and child-initiated microcomputer program (Alpha) when teaching three groups of children fN = 30) reading and communications skills: (a) 11 children with autism fM chronological age, CA = 9:4 years), (b) 9 children with mixed handicaps (M CA = 13:1), and (c) 10 normal preschool children (M CA = 6:4 years). Their mental age varied from 5:8 years to 6:9 years and all children received computer instruction supplementary to their regular reading and writing '

For many pupils the greatest barrier to learning science is the language barrier. This article suggests practical ways in which this barrier can be lowered and language can be used to promote the learner's development in science. The language of both learners ...

The study aimed to investigate the associations between different levels of depression with different aspects of school performance. The target population included 2516 7th-9th grade pupils (13-17 years) of whom 90% completed the questionnaire anonymously in the classroom. Of the girls 18.4% and of the boys 11.1% were classified as being depressed (R-Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Finnish version of the 13-item BDI). The lower the self-reported grade point average (GPA) or the more the GPA had declined from the previous term, the more commonly the adolescents were depressed. Depression was associated with difficulties in concentration, social relationships, self-reliant school performance and reading and writing as well as perceiving schoolwork as highly loading. The school performance variables had similar associations with depression among both sexes when a wide range of depression was studied but gender ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/jado 0140-1971/$30.(S.A. Fro¨jd).

This study examined teaching phonemic awareness by embedding sound talk within meaningful literacy experiences of shared reading and writing. Small groups of 5 and 6-year-old children were seen three times a week for seven weeks. Four phonemic awareness tasks -first and last sound identification, sound segmentation and deletion -were targeted in each session, with scaffolding fitting task difficulty and individual child ability. Results showed that such naturalistic instruction lead to gains in phonemic awareness compared to a no-treatment control group for both the treatment group as a whole and for a subgroup of children with lower literacy levels. Treatment-specific improvement was evident in three of the four phonemic awareness tasks: first sound identification, last sound identification, and sound segmentation. Additional observations of language and literacy benefits for this emergent literacy approach were also identified.

This study explores the ways teachers in “literature-based” language arts programs keep track of and make sense of children's literate development and of their own professional effectiveness in teaching children to read and write. Extensive interviews were conducted with 25 teachers in elementary schools with high levels of poverty. Transcripts were analyzed inductively. Most of the teachers in this study were caught in conflicts among belief systems, and institutional structures, agendas, and values. The point of friction among these conflicts was assessment, which was associated with very powerful feelings of being overwhelmed, and of insecurity, guilt, frustration, and anger. These teachers expressed difficulty in keeping track of and having the language to talk about children's literate development. They also described pressure from external accountability testing. They differed in their assessment strategies and in the language they used to describe students' literacy development. Those who worked in highly controlling situations were inclined to use blaming language and tended to provide global, negative descriptive assessments in impersonal language. Their assessments were likely to be based on a simple, linear notion of literacy. The less controlling the situation the less this was likely to occur. This study suggests that assessment, as it occurs in schools, is far from a merely technical problem. Rather, it is deeply social and personal.

Progressive improvement in reading and writing skills, through school and beyond, is something that many of us take for granted. However, for people suffering from dyslexia, these skills are not acquired in the usual manner. For many years it has been thought that brain differences in the cortical areas related to language are the likely source of the problems. However, it has recently been established that the problems associated with this syndrome go beyond reading-related problems: balance, motor skills and sensory processes can also be affected. An explanation for this multitude of seemingly disparate problems has proved elusive. Roderick Nicolson, Angela Fawcett and Paul Dean believe that a deficit in cerebellar performance might provide a complete explanation, and it is this argument, presented in the first article below, that forms the focus of this debate. But can cerebellar deficit explain all deficits experienced by dyslexics? Are those that experience cerebellar damage later in life similarly affected? Is the cerebellum the sole contributor to dyslexia?

This review focuses on phonological awareness (PA) skills and their key role both in literacy acquisition and development and in explaining reading and writing difficulties; in particular, we focus on phonemic awareness, which implies awareness of the smallest speech units. Several questions about PA are addressed; we discuss major research findings over the past few decades both in typically developing

We can all agree that reading is one of the principal tools for understanding our humanity, for making sense of our world, for advancing the democratic ideal, and for generating personal and national prosperity. We can agree that ability to read allows us to achieve three important goals: building knowledge (e.g., learning about the physical world); acquiring information for accomplishing

This study explored the development of children's early understanding of visual and orthographic aspects of print and how this is related to early reading acquisition. A total of 474 children, ages 48 to 83 months, completed standardized measures of phonological awareness and early reading skills. They also completed experimental tasks that tapped their understanding of what constitutes "readable" print. The parents of participants completed a questionnaire regarding their children's home literacy experiences. The data showed systematic development in children's understanding of print conventions and English orthography and spelling. Regression analyses indicated that print knowledge was related to early reading skill, even after accounting for variance due to age and phonological awareness. Furthermore, parents' ratings of the extent of their children's involvement in activities that led to practice in reading and writing most consistently predicted the development of emerging literacy skills, including understanding of the conventions of the English writing system. Little relation between print knowledge and the frequency of storybook reading by adults was observed. 

The study aimed to investigate the associations between different levels of depression with different aspects of school performance. The target population included 2516 7th-9th grade pupils (13-17 years) of whom 90% completed the questionnaire anonymously in the classroom. Of the girls 18.4% and of the boys 11.1% were classified as being depressed (R-Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Finnish version of the 13-item BDI). The lower the self-reported grade point average (GPA) or the more the GPA had declined from the previous term, the more commonly the adolescents were depressed. Depression was associated with difficulties in concentration, social relationships, self-reliant school performance and reading and writing as well as perceiving schoolwork as highly loading. The school performance variables had similar associations with depression among both sexes when a wide range of depression was studied but gender differences appeared when studying the severe end of the depression scale. Our study indicates that pupils reporting difficulties in academic performance should be screened for depression.

The study aimed to investigate the associations between different levels of depression with different aspects of school performance. The target population included 2516 7th-9th grade pupils (13-17 years) of whom 90% completed the questionnaire anonymously in the classroom. Of the girls 18.4% and of the boys 11.1% were classified as being depressed (R-Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), the Finnish version of the 13-item BDI). The lower the self-reported grade point average (GPA) or the more the GPA had declined from the previous term, the more commonly the adolescents were depressed. Depression was associated with difficulties in concentration, social relationships, self-reliant school performance and reading and writing as well as perceiving schoolwork as highly loading. The school performance variables had similar associations with depression among both sexes when a wide range of depression was studied but gender ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/jado 0140-1971/$30.(S.A. Fro¨jd).

The research reported here employed a multiple-case study methodology to assess the online cognitive and metacognitive activities of 15-year-old secondary students as they read informational texts and wrote a new text in order to learn, and the relation of these activities to the written products they were asked to generate. To investigate the influence of the task, students were required to perform two different tasks which differed in complexity and familiarity. The first task was reading a single text and making a written summary of it, while the second consisted in reading two texts and making a written synthesis of them. To gather information about how students construct meaning from informational texts, we asked students to think aloud as they read and wrote in order to provide us with information about their comprehension and composition processes. We also examined their reading and writing activities during the tasks. The results show that to a large extent secondary school students lack the cognitive and metacognitive processes that would enable them to make strategic use of reading and writing. They also show that, although there are no major differences in the way secondary school students tackle these different tasks, those who create the most elaborate products evidence a more recursive and flexible use of reading and writing. The most obvious conclusion as far as the repercussions of these findings are concerned is that there is an urgent need for work on tasks of this kind in the classroom.

In this review, we examined the role of phonological awareness in literacy development for Spanish-speaking students. There appears to be a close relationship between Spanish-language phonological awareness and literacy development. In particular, Spanish phonological awareness appears to develop in stages. Not only is the development of phonemic awareness skills probably supported by reading instruction, but it likely contributes to reading development as well. Sensitivity to syllables in Spanish may be particularly important for later reading success, and the ability to segment words into their phonemes may play a critical role in reading acquisition. Training students in spelling, blending, and segmenting syllables and phonemes may be especially valuable because these skills are closely related to those which students use when actually reading and writing words. Finally, there is evidence of cross-language transfer of phonological awareness skills between Spanish and English. Suggestions for Spanish phonological awareness instruction are given, and an agenda for further research is included. Based on this review, many different experimental procedures have been used to evaluate students' Spanish-language phonological awareness, but there is a need for measures that are psychometrically sound and that have documented validity and reliability to assess phonological awareness in Spanish. In addition, although training in Spanish phonemic awareness seems to have a positive effect on the development of spelling ability, we found little direct evidence that this type of training increases Spanish reading performance. Further research in this area is needed.

Educators of the deaf and hard-of-hearing have long viewed this population as being Hearing people without the auditory sense and used instructional approaches, especially in reading, that conformed to or paralleled approaches taken with hearing children. In this article, it is argued that a paradigmatic shift must be undertaken that views deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to be biologically, and therefore linguistically, different, yet uses visually based strategies for reading analogous or equivalent to those for hearing individuals. If these strategies are actively pursued and promoted by educators of the deaf and hard-of-hearing within the ASL/English bilingual/bicultural philosophy, it is suggested that the reconception of deaf and hard-of-hearing people as active, successful readers will be more easily attainable. These strategies, along with models of the reading process, are explored here to provide implications for instruction and areas of future research.

The present study investigated the kinds of motivational patterns primary school students show in terms of the value they place on math, reading and writing, respectively, and the extent to which these patterns are prospectively associated with academic performance, and related to self-concept of ability. Two-hundred and eleven 6- to 7-year-old children were examined twice during Grade 1, and twice during Grade 2. On each measurement occasion, they were assessed on their performance in reading and math, and on their self-concept of ability and task-motivation in those skills. The clustering-by-states analysis for longitudinal data identified four groups of children: those who placed a high value on all three school subjects, i.e. math, writing and reading; those who valued math; those who showed low interest in math; and, those who showed a low interest in reading and writing. The results showed further that a decrease in math ability self-concept was associated with moving into a low math motivation group. Moreover, a decrease in reading ability self-concept was related to a move into a ‘High math motivation’ group. Children who were in the ‘Low math motivation’ group at Time 2 showed less progress in math performance than those in the other groups. The implications of the results for the development and modification of motivation in the school context is discussed.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the cooccurrence of problems in activity level, attention, reading, writing and psychosocial adjustment of children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD). A parent-report questionnaire, the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire -Chinese version (DCDQ-C), was used to screen first to third graders from 13 mainstream schools in Taipei. Two standardized motor tests were then administered to those who scored below 10% on the DCDQ-C. Tests of activity level, attention, reading, writing and psychosocial adjustment were then administered to this sample. Thirty-eight children identified as DCD, 32 as suspect for DCD and 82 as normal comparison were included in the final sample. Multivariate analysis of variance comparing the three groups (DCD, suspect DCD, and comparison) revealed that both children with DCD and suspect for DCD obtained significantly poorer scores on measures of attention and reading, and were more hyperactive than comparison children. Children with DCD and suspect for DCD were also reported to have more internalizing and social problems than children without motor problems. No significant differences, however, were noted between children with different degree of motor coordination problems (categorized as DCD and suspect for DCD) on any measure. Furthermore, a high percentage of children in both the DCD and suspect groups fell in the clinical range of attention, activity level and psychosocial adjustment problems. The results revealed a high risk for these problems in nonreferred children with motor coordination problems. The high percentage of clinical range behavioral problems warrants attention of clinicians who work with children with motor coordination difficulties to the need to promote early identification and referral.

This study explores if extensive practice in reading or writing is related to high creative performance. In total, 196 university students participated in the study by filling out a questionnaire and completing a creativity test. The questionnaire inquires the total courses taken in the school year, total hours spent on reading, total hours on writing, and background information. The results indicated that students who spent more time on reading/writing performed significantly better on the creativity test. This study concludes that creativity scores, especially scores of elaboration, are significantly correlated with attitudes toward reading/writing, and the amount of time spent on reading/writing.

This study explores the ways teachers in "literature-based" language arts programs keep track of and make sense of children's literate development and of their own professional effectiveness in teaching children to read and write. Extensive interviews were conducted with 25 teachers in elementary schools with high levels of poverty. Transcripts were analyzed inductively. Most of the teachers in this study were caught in conflicts among belief systems, and institutional structures, agendas, and values. The point of friction among these conflicts was assessment, which was associated with very powerful feelings of being overwhelmed, and of insecurity, guilt, frustration, and anger. These teachers expressed difficulty in keeping track of and having the language to talk about children's literate development. They also described pressure from external accountability testing. They differed in their assessment strategies and in the language they used to describe students' literacy development. Those who worked in highly controlling situations were inclined to use blaming language and tended to provide global, negative descriptive assessments in impersonal language. Their assessments were likely to be based on a simple, linear notion of literacy. The less controlling the situation the less this was likely to occur. This study suggests that assessment, as it occurs in schools, is far from a merely technical problem. Rather, it is deeply social and personal.

This paper reports on a national study that explored primary pupils' attitudes towards and experiences of school science in the Republic of Ireland. The study focussed on collecting data from children and in doing so recognises the importance of children's views as an essential part of reviewing curriculum implementation. The findings of this large-scale study are based on an analysis of data gathered from observations of 15 primary classrooms, 1,149 children's questionnaires and 11 group interviews. In this paper the findings regarding the extent to which the children appear to be engaging in 'deductive' (didactic) and 'inductive' (inquiry-based) approaches in their science classes, and their attitudes towards school science are presented. Encouragingly, evidence from all parts of the study revealed that in general Irish children are very positive towards learning science in school and are being provided with some opportunities to engage in hands-on inquiry in science, commonly via group work. However, there were also indications that, for some pupils, hands-on science experiences were infrequent, and for a few did not appear to be happening at all. It was not especially evident that pupils were being afforded opportunities to lead their own scientific investigations. Teacher explanation, teacher demonstration, reading and writing featured frequently in pupils' responses and while the pupils expressed mixed feelings about these methodologies, one thing was apparent: hands-on inquiry based approaches to science had far greater appeal to the children. The significance of the findings of this study are considered in light of the findings and recommendations from recent national and international reports on inquiry-based approaches in science education.

Orthographic languages have not been a major focus for second language learning strategy researchers. Much of the strategy research has focussed on English as a second language or English as a foreign language. This is despite the many structural differences, particularly in relation to reading and writing, which might significantly influence patterns of strategy use. Japanese is one orthographic language, which has gained significant popularity as a course of study amongst both university students and high school students, particularly in Australia. Reliable strategy measurement surveys like the Strategy Inventory For Language Learning (SILL, Oxford, S.L. 1990. Language Learning Strategies: What Every teacher Should Know. Newbury House, Harper and Row, New York) have been used extensively throughout the world for over a decade. However, published studies involving the SILL and learners of Japanese are relatively scarce, and many have involved adaptations to the SILL, to account for structural differences. As a result, a gap exists because of the lack of studies regarding the viability of SILL and orthographic languages. A major aim of this study is to test the relevance of the SILL with a small group of undergraduate learners of English speaking background, learning Japanese in a foreign language learning environment. Utilizing the SILL as a basis, it identifies strategy items related to reading and writing, and analyses the mean scores for these 0346-251X/$ -see front matter Ó System 33 (2005) 327-339 SYSTEM literacy related strategies. The result reveals how these beginning learners of Japanese scored highly on most literacy related strategy items contained in the SILL.

The production of written syntheses, which requires reading various sources and integrating information from these sources into one’s own text, has been characterised as a potentially useful task for promoting constructive learning. This article describes research aimed at examining and characterising written syntheses and the processes involved in producing them. A case study was carried out of 45 students from four different educational levels (ranging from secondary school to university) performing synthesis tasks set by their teachers. An analysis was made of the synthesis tasks set and the syntheses produced, the prototypical procedures carried out at each educational level, and the quality of the written products. The results corroborate the view that producing syntheses is difficult even for university students with a high degree of reading and writing competence. They also show that the difficulty level of the texts and tasks set by the teachers is generally high and that this difficulty increases as students go up the educational ladder. It was found that the younger students adopted more sequential procedures, whereas more experienced students employed more recursive approaches. It was concluded that there is a need to teach students the epistemic uses of reading and writing. L’élaboration d’un texte de synthèse, qui exige de lire et d’intégrer l’information provenant de diverses sources dans un texte propre, a été caractérisée comme étant une tache potentiellement adéquate pour promouvoir l’apprentissage constructif. Cet article est la description d’une recherche dont les objectifs prétendaient découvrir et caractériser les productions écrites ainsi que les processus impliqués dans l’élaboration de la synthèse. Pour cette recherche, une étude de cas a été menée sur 45 étudiants de quatre niveaux d’enseignement différents (depuis l’enseignement secondaire jusqu’à l’Université) qui réalisaient des taches de synthèse proposées par leur professeur. On a analysé les textes ainsi que les taches de synthèse proposés, les procédures de réalisation prototypiques de chaque niveau d’enseignement, et la qualité des productions écrites. Les résultats corroborent l’idée de la difficulté de la synthèse, y compris pour des étudiants d’université et lorsque la compétence en lecture et en écriture est élevée. Ils montrent parallèlement que la difficulté des taches et des textes proposés par les professeurs est en général élevée, et que cette difficulté augmente avec le niveau d’enseignement. On observe que les élèves les plus jeunes adoptent des procédures plus séquentielles, alors que les plus expérimentés sont plus récursifs. On conclut par la nécessité d’enseigner aux élèves et étudiants les usages épistémiques de la lecture et de l’écriture.

With English-language readers in an experiment requiring pairwise comparative judgments of the sizes of animals, the nature of the association between the magnitudes of the animal pairs and the left or right sides of response (i.e., the SNARC effect) was reversed depending on whether the participants had to choose either the smaller or the larger member of the pair. In contrast, such a dependence of the direction of the SNARC effect on the form of the comparative instructions was not evident for pairwise comparisons of numerical magnitude made by a similar group of participants. Furthermore, exactly the same configuration of findings was obtained for a single group of Israeli-Palestinian right-to-left reading and writing participants, except that the spatial direction of the SNARC effects for both the animal-size and number comparisons were completely reversed. In a final experiment with English readers, SNARC effects paralleling those for the animal-size comparisons were obtained for pairwise comparative judgments involving the just-learned height relations between 6 imaginary individuals. As will be discussed, such results serve to extend the generality of the SNARC effect far beyond the current modal view that it simply reflects culturally influenced, long-term learned associations between numerical magnitudes and the locations on a fixed mental number line. The implications that these results have for both the Proctor and Cho polarity correspondence view and the Gevers, Verguts, computational model of the SNARC effect will also discussed.

En este artículo se analizan los efectos a largo plazo de la enseñanza de habilidades de análisis fonológico en Educación Infantil a través de la evaluación de los niveles alcanzados en lectura y escritura en los primeros cursos de Educación Primaria. En un estudio anterior , 48 niños de Educación Infantil, divididos en tres grupos experimentales y uno de control, recibieron este tipo de enseñanza. Al comienzo del segundo curso de Educación Primaria (estudio 2), se evaluó el rendimiento en lectura y escritura de 39 de los 48 niños. Los resultados del primer estudio mostraron que es posible el desarrollo de habilidades de análisis fonológico en Educación Infantil, siendo necesario para ello una enseñanza explícita. También se demostró que la enseñanza de habilidades de análisis fonológico puede facilitar el aprendizaje de la lectura y de la escritura. Los resultados del estudio 2, ponen de manifiesto que el efecto positivo sobre el aprendizaje de la lectura y de la escritura persiste hasta el comienzo del segundo curso de Educación Primaria. Asimismo, se analizan las implicaciones de estos resultados para la práctica educativa.

The mother tongue of the absolute majority of native Arabic speakers is Spoken Arabic (SA), which is a local dialect that does not have a written form. For reading and writing, as well as for formal communication Literary Arabic (LA) is used. For the literate Arabs, these two languages are extensively inter-twined in every day life. Consequently, it is possible that, despite the difference between them, LA is not processed like a regular second language by the cognitive system of the native Arabic speakers but rather as an enhancement of the spoken lexicon. In the present study we examined this possibility comparing semantic priming effects in auditory lexical decision within SA (L1), with the effects found across languages with LA or in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew is doubtlessly a second language for native Arabic speakers. In this study we have manipulated semantic priming. In Experiment 1 the targets were in Spoken Arabic and the primes in any of the three languages. The semantic priming effect was twice as large within L1 as between languages and there was no difference between Hebrew and LA. In Experiment 2, all primes were in SA whereas the targets were in any of the three languages. The priming effects in that experiment were doubled relative to the previous experiment, but the inter-language relationships were the same. For both language pairings, the semantic priming was larger when the primes were presented in SA (and the targets in either Hebrew or LA) than when the primes were presented in one of the second languages and the targets in SA. The conclusion is that, despite the intensive daily use adult native Arabic speakers make of SA and LA, and despite their shared origin, the two languages retain their status as first and second languages in the cognitive system.

The MLJ reviews books, monographs, computer software, and materials that (a) present results of research in-and methods of-foreign and second language teaching and learning; (b) are devoted to matters of general interest to members of the profession; (c) are intended primarily for use as textbooks or instructional aids in classrooms where foreign and second languages, literatures, and cultures are taught; and (d) convey information from other disciplines that relates directly to foreign and second language teaching and learning. Reviews not solicited by the MLJ can neither be accepted nor returned. Books and materials that are not reviewed in the MLJ cannot be returned to the publisher. Responses should be typed with double spacing and submitted electronically online at our Manuscript Central address: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mlj

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of applying the writing letter activity of writing to learn strategies on the English Language Academic Achievement and Attitude level of 11 th grade students. The research was carried out with 84 students (43 male, 41 female) at one of the state schools in Black Sea Region of Turkey. Mixed method was used in the research. A non-equivalent control group model which is one of the quasi-experimental methods was used in the quantitative part of the research. Simple Past Tense Achievement Test (SPTAT) developed by the researcher and Attitude to English Lesson Questionnaire (AELQ) developed by Erdem (2007) were used to obtain the quantitative data. Structured interview questions were asked to the six students chosen from the experimental groups using the maximum variety technique. At the end of the research, it is detected that using writing to learn strategies in English classes makes statistically significant difference for the benefit of experiment groups on the level of academic success and attitude to lesson.

The purpose of the present study was to assess the effectiveness of a phonological awareness training program in the specific context of the Luxembourgish educational system. The intervention was run by the kindergarten teachers in their classes with minimal external supervision. Forty-one classes of the area around Luxembourg City participated in the study. One hundred and fifty children from 20 kindergarten classes were part of the training group and 157 children from 21 classes formed the control group. At the end of kindergarten, clear training effects were observed for all phonological awareness tasks, except for the highly demanding phoneme deletion task. After 6 months of reading and writing instruction in first grade, no training effects were found in a pseudoword spelling task for the entire training group. Only at-risk children, which had the lowest performance on preschool phonological awareness measures, showed significant training effects. We conclude that early phonological awareness training may be profitably incorporated in kindergarten classroom activities, particularly for at-risk pupils, even when the language characteristics and teaching methods already concur in facilitating the understanding of the alphabetic principle.

This paper proposes an enhancement for the ADRW algorithm to achieve dynamic fragmentation and object allocation in distributed databases. The algorithm adapts to the changing patterns of object requests with the objective to dynamically adjust the allocation schemes of objects in order to minimize the total servicing cost of all requests. Objects may be replicated or fragmented depending on patterns of reads and writes. Qualitative analysis was used to characterize the performance of the enhanced algorithm.

The MLJ reviews books, monographs, computer software, and materials that (a) present results of research in-and methods of-foreign and second language teaching and learning; (b) are devoted to matters of general interest to members of the profession; (c) are intended primarily for use as textbooks or instructional aids in classrooms where foreign and second languages, literatures, and cultures are taught; and (d) convey information from other disciplines that relates directly to foreign and second language teaching and learning. Reviews not solicited by the MLJ can neither be accepted nor returned. Books and materials that are not reviewed in the MLJ cannot be returned to the publisher. Responses should be typed with double spacing and submitted electronically online at our Manuscript Central address: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mlj

How do teachers define literacy, and how do their perceptions influence their approach to the teaching and learning of literacy? These and other questions relating to literacy generally formed the focus of this ethnographic case study in two urban public primary schools in Ghana. The paper also considers teachers' views on mother tongue literacy. Teachers tend to perceive literacy as the ability to read and write English or an international language like French, etc. and scarcely consider mother tongue literacy as relevant. Teachers' perceptions tend to be reflected in their pedagogical approach, which generally involves error correction and grammar-based language teaching, as well as in their assessment of literacy. Although teachers and society at large tend to have unfavourable attitudes to mother tongue/bilingual education, in the real classroom situation teachers tend to code switch between English and the local language on the grounds that pupils' understanding of English is inadequate.

The MLJ reviews books, monographs, computer software, and materials that (a) present results of research in-and methods of-foreign and second language teaching and learning; (b) are devoted to matters of general interest to members of the profession; (c) are intended primarily for use as textbooks or instructional aids in classrooms where foreign and second languages, literatures, and cultures are taught; and (d) convey information from other disciplines that relates directly to foreign and second language teaching and learning. Reviews not solicited by the MLJ can neither be accepted nor returned. Books and materials that are not reviewed in the MLJ cannot be returned to the publisher. Responses should be typed with double spacing and submitted electronically online at our Manuscript Central address: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/mlj

In this paper we survey, consolidate, and present the state of the art in distributed database concurrency control. The heart of our analysts is a decomposition of the concurrency control problem into two major subproblems: read-write and write-write synchronization. We describe a series of synchromzation techniques for solving each subproblem and show how to combine these techniques into algorithms for solving the entire concurrency control problem. Such algorithms are called "concurrency control methods." We describe 48 principal methods, including all practical algorithms that have appeared m the literature plus several new ones. We concentrate on the structure and correctness of concurrency control algorithms. Issues of performance are given only secondary treatment.

In this final article, we briefly review and synthesize the science and language research and practice that arose from the current literature and presentations at an international conference, referred to as the first "Island Conference". We add to the synthesis of the articles the conference deliberations and on-going discussions of the field and also offer our views as to how such contributions can take place. These central issues-the definition of science literacy; the models of learning, discourse, reading, and writing and their underlying pedagogical assumptions; the roles of discourse in doing, teaching, and learning science; and the demands on teacher education and professional development in the current reforms in language and science education-provide points of departure for discussion of four possible new considerations to research in this field of endeavour that could contribute to a broader and productive scholarship and deeper and enriched understanding of both teaching and learning. These considerations, each from well-established fields of research literature, are the need to develop support for a contemporary view of science literacy, the role of metacognition in science learning generally, the role of multiple representations in knowledge building and science literacy, and the need for more focused teacher education and professional development programmes.

As a field, we know considerably less about effectively remediating older students with significant reading disabilities than we do about preventing reading difficulties with younger students. Most older students with reading disabilities either have had inadequate instruction, have not attended school consistently, and/or require more intensive reading instruction than they are currently receiving. Further-

While considerable research has focused on second language development and academic success, the debate continues on how the development of the first language benefits the acquisition of the second. The intent of the present study was to examine the strength of the relation among proficiency in English and Spanish and academic success. Relations among oral language, literacy, and academic achievement were examined. A significant connection was found between proficiency in English and standardized achievement scores, as well as grade point averages. Similarly, the results reveal significant correlations between reading and writing in Spanish and achievement scores, as well as grade point average. The strongest relations were found between Written Language and academic success.