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This article presents the findings of an intervention study designed to examine the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction (MCSI) on learners' performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received eight sessions of MCSI and the other served as a comparison group. In weeks 1, 10 and 20, data were collected from the learners' performance in group-work discussions, from the self-report questionnaires, from the observations of learners' strategy use, and from the stimulated recall interviews. The findings indicated that the treatment class generally outperformed the comparison class in the group discussion task. In addition, there was corroborating evidence from the multi-method approach to support the view that the learners tended to deploy `problem identification' as a global planning strategy to cope with an upcoming prioritization group discussion task. The findings are discussed with respect to awareness-raising value of the MCSI, the interaction effect between strategy instruction and research method, explicit and implicit learning, and a match of task type and strategy choice. Finally, the distinct advantages of using a multi-method approach to gauging the effects of MCSI are appraised.

Stereoacuity was measured in 30 subjects with a naturally occurring visual acuity (VA) difference between the eyes. The stereoacuity was measured by a modified Howard's apparatus using the staircase method and VA was measured with log MAR charts. Stereoacuity was worse in subjects with a large VA difference between the two eyes; the correlation between stereoacuity and VA difference was significant (r = 0.76, P < 0.001). Neither the VA of the worse eye nor of the better eye contributed to the reduction in stereoacuity. The deterioration was more obvious if VA difference between the two eyes was one line or more (correlation coefficient, r= 0.88, P < 0.001). This study also reinforces the use of a > or = 70% stereothreshold when attempt stereoacuity results to compare with other studies.

This article reports findings from a strategy intervention study involving a treatment class (N=20) and a comparison class (N=20) in an ESL oral setting. Oral communication strategies were taught to the treatment class. A data-collection method comprising stimulated recall interviews that aimed to investigate respectively the learning process (i.e., strategy use) and the learning product (i.e.,task performance) was employed. The findings indicate that strategy instruction might affect low-proficiency students more than high-proficiency students in terms of both strategy use and task performance. The article concludes with pedagogic implications for communication strategy instruction.

This paper addresses a niche in studies on immersion programmes for English as second language learners. While studies on the impact of the experience of studying abroad are replete with reports about the enhancement of participants' language proficiency or intercultural skills, the present study investigates the types of language and culture strategies used by a group of student teachers on an overseas immersion programme by coding their interview responses and documenting the types of strategies reported. It also traces changes in the participants' perceptions of their strategy use before, during and after studying abroad. The findings show that while participants reported using speaking strategies and listening strategies much more than other language strategies, only a narrow range of both strategy groups are reported. Similar findings are found in their use of culture strategies. Different changes in strategy use before, during and after the immersion are reported. The paper interprets the findings. Both short-term and long-term pedagogic implications for strategy development on study-abroad programmes are proposed.