Interest: On the Tip of a Semantic Iceberg
This repost has bearing on the topic of interest as a core driver of reader response and comprehension. A proxy assessment for interest level in a topic—I’m speculating here—could be a score on a Semantic Feature Analysis chart. There could be a positive correlation among interest (self-reported pre measure), semantic feature analysis of topical vocabulary (pre or post or a simple “write or say a list of words familiar to you about this topic” and a post measure of comprehension. The assessments could be done orally or textually.
On the Tip of My Tongue
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For the past week I have been looking high and low for something I read thirty years ago that carried an insight to me from almost a century ago, which tilted my paradigm at the time. Where did I read that? Vygotsky and Alexander Luria, two Russian psychologists working to explain the role of history and culture in the development of cognition, wrote about a research expedition to Soviet Uzbekistan where farm workers living an ancient life on high mountains, who had little experience with school, coexisted with students studying at a teacher’s college.