The relationship of various learning approaches to students' academic achievement, abilities, and other characteristics was examined in a sample of university students in Hong Kong, mainland China, and the United States. The theoretical framework for this project was J. B. Biggs's (1987) theory of student learning approaches. The participants completed the Study Process Questionnaire (based on Biggs's theory) and provided a variety of demographic information. The participants' achievement scores and self-rated scores on analytical, creative, and practical abilities were also obtained. Results indicated that scores on certain subscales of the Study Process Questionnaire statistically predicted participants' achievement beyond their self-rated abilities. In addition, certain learning approaches were significantly related to the participants' ages, gender, parents' education levels, and their travel and work experiences. Implications of these findings are discussed as they relate to teaching and learning.
[Copyright of Journal of Psychology is the property of Heldref Publications.]

There has been a lack of research on the relationship between metacognitive language-learning strategies (MCLLSs) and language-learning motivation (LLM) among Chinese-speaking ESL learners in Hong Kong. This article reports the results of a survey of the relationships between the use of MCLLSs and LLM among Chinese-speaking ESL learners at a vocational education institute in Hong Kong. The aims of the study were to identify the patterns of the use of MCLLSs and LLM of the learners and to explore the relationships between the two variables. A survey questionnaire containing items on MCLLSs of the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) as well as items on integrative and instrumental motivation from the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMBT) were administered to 192 ESL learners at the institute. Findings indicate that 'Paying Attention', 'Finding out language learning' and 'Self-monitoring' were of the high use range, while all the other strategies including 'Self-evaluation', 'Setting goals and objectives' 'Seeking practice opportunities' and 'Organizing' were of the medium use range. Respondents' level of LLM in general was found to be moderate, and respondents were more instrumentally than integratively motivated. Results indicate that the levels of the use of MCLLSs are positively related to the levels of motivation of respondents, with integrative motivation having a stronger relationship with strategy use than instrumental motivation and total motivation. Results from stepwise regression show that integrative but not instrumental motivation predict the levels of strategy use. The conclusion of this study is that LLM is positively related to the use of MCLLSs, and integrative motivation is a predictor of the use of MCLLSs. The inadequacies of Gardner's (1985) dichotomous classification in measuring LLM are discussed, and implications for how to promote LLM in the local and other Asian contexts in order to bring about more use of MCLLSs are suggested.

The two-year longitudinal case study reported in this paper documents a Putonghuaspeaking mainland Chinese undergraduate student's language learning experiences and strategy use in an English-medium university in Hong Kong. Using a sociocultural approach, this paper focuses on three biographical episodes, which recount how the student attempted to create alternative ways of learning and seek new learning opportunities within the learning context, how she came to realise the limitations of her efforts and withdrew from her early active pursuits, and how she followed other mainland Chinese students in memorising words and attached her own meanings to her memorisation efforts. The paper highlights the social, cultural and political aspects of her strategy use and argues that learners' biographical experiences are an important avenue for us to understand learners' strategy use as a complicated phenomenon revealing the interplay between learners' agency and context.
[Copyright of Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/illt011.0]

This article reports a study to elicit junior secondary students' understandings of the nature of science (NOS) through a peer collaboration instruction based on science stories specially developed to present several aspects of NOS. The study also investigated how students reacted to the stories and whether they were able to extract the aspects of NOS presented in the stories. The results show that many students held a serendipitous empiricist view of experimentation and took scientific theories as absolute truth representing reality. Although the science stories impacted on students in substantial ways and the peer collaboration setting helped them develop shared understandings, many students changed from one set of inadequate views of NOS to another rather than to adequate views. This was attributed to students interpreting the stories in idiosyncratic ways other than those intended by the instruction and focusing their attention selectively on certain aspects of the stories that appeared to confirm and reinforce their inadequate views. The implications of the findings are discussed.
[Copyright of International Journal of Science Education is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500690210126748]

Reading comprehension can be seen as a process dependent on the interaction of 'topdown' and 'bottom-up' processes. An important, but neglected, feature of this process concerns the effects of rhetorical organization. This article describes an experiment in which four rhetorically different texts, with identical subject matter, were read by 490 Hong Kong Chinese school children (mean age 14.1), studying in English (their L2). Comprehension was measured by a cloze procedure and by recall protocols. One way ANOVA was used to investigate the effects of different texts on the test scores. The results showed a clear difference in comprehension between the text types and suggest that pedagogical support to increase awareness of rhetorical patterns would be beneficial.
[Copyright of Reading in a Foreign Language is the property of Meena Singhal & John I. Liontas.
Access via Directory of Open Access Journals: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl/]

A case study of an undergraduate Educational Psychology course that incorporated both constructivist and teacher-centred teaching was conducted. The learning processes and higher-level learning outcomes were examined through participant observation, interviews with students and analyses of student assignments. The lessons were audio recorded and transcribed, and a total of 68 interviews, each about 1.5 hours long, were conducted. In general, the constructivist teaching facilitated students' creation of their own knowledge, as they were allowed to think more over the problems together and generate original ideas. Students' performances in recalling, critiquing and generating with the knowledge gained in the constructivist teaching context were also better than those in the teacher-centred context. This could be explained by the deeper processing of the material, the activation of students' prior knowledge and the similarity between the situations of knowledge construction and knowledge application. The strengths and limitations of constructivist teaching are also discussed.
[Copyright of Innovations in Education & Teaching International is the property of Routledge. Full article may be available at the publisher's website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14703290600750861 ]