In this study, we compared four expert graders with latent semantic analysis (LSA) to assess short summaries of an expository text. As is well known, there are technical difficulties for LSA to establish a good semantic representation when analyzing short texts. In order to improve the reliability of LSA relative to human graders, we analyzed three new algorithms by two holistic methods used in...

Several studies have revealed the importance of executive functioning processes for school learning. However, research examining which specific executive functions (EFs) can influence written expression is scarce. This work aimed at i) analyzing the relationship between different EF tasks and different writing tasks (writing a narrative text vs. writing an expository text) and ii) studying whic...

Several studies have revealed the importance of executive functioning processes for school learning. However, research examining which specific executive functions (EFs) can influence written expression is scarce. This work aimed at i) analyzing the relationship between different EF tasks and different writing tasks (writing a narrative text vs. writing an expository text) and ii) studying whic...

The current article was an attempt to investigate the effect of semantic mapping strategy instruction on reading comprehension performance of EFL learners. To this end, thirty homogeneous Iranian intermediate EFL learners attending a language school in Bonab, Iran, were randomly assigned to two groups, one as the experimental and the other as the control. The experimental group received instruc...

Although influences of interest on learning are well documented, mediating processes have not been clarified. The authors investigated how individual and situational interest factors contribute to topic interest and text learning. Traditional self-report measures were combined with novel interactive computerized methods of recording cognitive and affective reactions to science and popular cultu...

There has been a widespread appeal for the inclusion of more informational text in elementary reading programs and instruction. This appeal is motivated by claims that children's early reading material is dominated by narrative texts and by recognition of the importance of learning to read other types of text. Commercial reading programs provide a significant source of material used in reading ...

This article outlines a quantitative method for segmenting texts into thematically coherent units. This method relies on a network of lexical collocations to compute the thematic coherence of the different parts of a text from the lexical cohesiveness of their words. We also present the results of an experiment about locating boundaries between a series of concatened texts. 1 I n t r o d u c t ...