Being able to read well is important for English language learners. Through the process of reading, the learner becomes an active participant in producing an interaction with the writer of the text through predicting, analyzing, summarizing and using other types of reading strategies. However, building such a connection between the reader and the…

A review of the literature regarding native and second language reading leads to suggestions for reading strategies to use in the foreign language classroom. These strategies involve appropriate text selection, prereading activities, and such aspects of reading as skimming, decoding, intensive reading, and comprehension. (CB)

Addresses myth that children can comprehend text simply because they can decode the words in it. Provides evidence to support claim that developing readers benefit from explicit teaching of comprehension strategies via direct explanation and modeling of strategies. (Author/JDM)

Skilled reading requires attention to many aspects of print at the same time. Some children demonstrate difficulty in attending flexibly to multiple features of print, often focusing solely on decoding or word-level information. These children often lack the insight that reading is more than decoding; they have a difficult time thinking about…

Reviews training experiments where the strategies trained had a significant effect on poor readers' comprehension of text. Describes the training procedures that enhanced poor readers' comprehension of text and offers instructional implications for each. (FL)

After reviewing previous research on the acquisition of vocabulary through contextual clues, research carried out with 429 students in the upper grades of an Italian elementary school is discussed. (12 references) (CFM)

As in processing oral speech, proficient reading involves "chunking" written texts into meaningful phrase units. Unlike oral speech, however, cues for segmenting the written text at the proper points are not clearly marked in the text. One method for helping readers identify and use phrase boundaries is to mark such boundaries in the…

Suggestions are offered for improving English-as-a-Foreign-Language literary competence through intervention at the procedural level. The suggestions are based on the data that the reading of a literary text can be seen as a form of information processing, and on a consideration of the thought processes involved in the understanding of a literary…

A survey of the training literature on phoneme awareness suggests that help for slower readers comes in the form of a focus on phonemes through stretched sounding and phoneme isolation in a careful progression that considers the number and choice of phonemes and position in syllables. Stretching and isolating phonemes allows beginners to explore…

In its report "Becoming a Nation of Readers," the Commission on Reading defines reading as the process of constructing meaning from written texts, a view of reading that makes the use of strategies seem probable. If a book is a source of partial information, and readers are supposed to use knowledge they already possess to determine the…

The article contains a review of reading comprehension research since 1980, based on an interactive model of reading, with a focus on reading disabilities/learning disabilities. Included are studies which have investigated the influence of readers' prior knowledge of a topic, the influences of text structure and task demands, and metacognitive…

Reading is a multileveled, interactive, and hypothesis-generating process in which readers construct a meaningful representation of text by using their knowledge of the world and of language. If reading involves grasping the significance of an input depending on the reader's mental cognitive-perceptual situation, then there is a form of background…

This paper reviews literature on the effectiveness of reading-for-comprehension strategies at the primary (kindergarten through second grade) and intermediate (third through fifth grade) levels. The first section of the paper examines studies that seek to examine the distinctiveness hypothesis; the effectiveness of whole language instruction…

Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) is an effective instructional procedure in which a group of readers listen to tape recordings of oral readings. A group member may stop the tape whenever a miscue is identified. The miscue is then analyzed by answering questions about the miscue. RMA can be easily adapted for use with microcomputers or for…

Analyzes the research on how readers use text patterns to understand writing and identifies five text patterns found in both school texts and work texts. (HOD)