Discovery learning approaches to education have recently come under scrutiny (Tobias & Duffy, 2009), with many studies indicating limitations to discovery learning practices. Therefore, 2 meta-analyses were conducted using a sample of 164 studies: The 1st examined the effects of unassisted discovery learning versus explicit instruction, and the 2nd examined the effects of enhanced and/or assist...

This study involving 60 Japanese learners of English investigated the effects of various kinds of form-focused instruction on learners’ ability to comprehend and produce polite requests in English. Each treatment group received one of the following: (a) deductive instruction; (b) inductive instruction with problem-solving tasks; or (c) inductive instruction with structured input tasks. These ta...

The goal of this thesis is to explore how foreign language learning can be facilitated through the use of intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) based on natural language processing (NLP) methods. ICALL was provided in the form of a task-based dialog system that gives corrective feedback.We investigated how different parameters of the interaction affect the learning progress. B...

Students with weak reading skills are at risk for school difficulty. Among the indicators of reading difficulty, reading fluency is a strong predictor of overall reading problems. A multiple baseline across small groups of students design was used to evaluate the effects of explicit oral reading fluency instruction. Based on universal screening data, 6 fourth grade students who scored between t...