The purpose of this article is to investigate what factors affect the rule learning in science lesson on “dissolution” in the fifth grade children(n=66). In order to achieve this purpose, lesson plans were made on three principles: (a) the use of multiple examples, (b) the prior use of examples that show the typical features of rules, (c) linking a relationship between rules and experimental operations. The outcomes of the lessons were analyzed not only through post-tests but also through the learning and teaching processes in the lessons and the way teacher interpreted the educational materials. The results of post-tests showed that principle-a had positive effects, while principle-b and -c did not. The analysis of learning and teaching processes in the lessons suggests that the reason for the former may be that the teacher categorized multiple examples and gave the learners some questions that they could inference with these categories, whereas the reason for the latter may be that the teacher did not check quantitative data sufficiently during the experiments and did not interpret the experiments as means of hypothesis testing.

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Although multiple studies have shown that a learning method using copying is one of the effective learning methods for improving a learner’s writing ability, the studies do not show whether the learner’s literary style is changed by the learning method or not. 　In this study, a graduate student was asked to read and copy from an anthology of famous authors for ten months, after which her writing ability was assessed. The participant’s literary style was evaluated for changes regarding “The average length of a sentence” and “Position of the comma”. The results indicate that the participant’s writing ability had improved. “The average length of a sentence” was changed and “Position of the comma” was partially changed. In other words, part of her literary style had changed. Moreover, an interview showed that the participant had learned a variety of things in the process of copying and reading the famous author’s anthology. 　The results of this study show that it is effective to introduce the learning method, that is copying and reading texts by famous authors, to education.

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[in Japanese]

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