Considerable attention and legislation are currently focused on developmental dyslexia. A major challenge to these efforts is how to define and operationalize dyslexia. In this article, we argue that rather than defining dyslexia on the basis of an underlying condition, dyslexia is best viewed as a label for an unexpected reading disability. This…

The purpose of this article is to describe the current research base and identify research needs related to response to intervention (RTI) frameworks in primary-grade reading. Research is reviewed on early reading instruction and intervention, the implementation of multitiered reading interventions, and the determination of intervention…

This article focuses on some of the linguistic components that underlie letter-sound decoding skills and reading comprehension: specifically phonology, morphology, and syntax. Many children who have reading difficulties had language deficits that were detectable before they began reading. Early identification of language difficulties will…

In 2007, the New Zealand Ministry of Education formally recognized the condition of dyslexia for the first time and has subsequently developed a working definition of the condition. The aim of this article is to draw on contemporary theory and research on reading development, reading difficulties, and reading intervention to describe what the…

Teacher knowledge and instructional expertise have been found in correlational and pre- and post-test studies to be related to student reading achievement. This article summarizes data presented in this special issue and additional research to address four questions: (a) What do expert reading teachers know? (b) Why do teachers need to acquire…

Low literacy levels in adult learners pose an educational and public health challenge to practitioners and the scientific community. Increasing demands placed on literacy can limit opportunities in the workplace and access to health-related resources, negatively affecting public health. Current estimates from the National Center for Education…

The RAVE-O (Retrieval, Automaticity, Vocabulary Elaboration, Orthography) program is an experimental, fluency-based approach to reading intervention that is designed to accompany a phonological analysis program for children with developmental reading disabilities. The goals, theoretical principles, and applied activities of the RAVE-O curriculum…

This article describes PHAST (for Phonological and Strategy Training), a research-based remedial reading program that focuses on the primary obstacles to word identification learning and independent decoding that most students with reading disabilities face and the steps necessary to help these children achieve independent reading skills.…

The article reviews research on the use of multiple oral rereading (MOR) with reading disabled students. MOR uses daily practice on a selection of little difficulty. Its effectiveness in increasing fluency (accuracy and speed) is examined, and the role of redundancy in three types of reading models is analyzed. (CL)

The Psychology of Reading Department and the Reading Clinic at Temple University provide a Diagnostic Division and a Laboratory School. They serve two main functions: training of graduate students in education and meeting the needs of children with reading problems through evaluation and remediation. (Author)

The Glass-Analysis Method focuses the learner's attention on a stimulus: distinctive clusters of graphic features related to particular sounds. The end result is perceptual learning, an increase of visual and auditory memory through association of redundant letter clusters of sounds-symbols. (Author)

This article describes a theoretical model of reading disability that integrates research findings in cognitive psychology, reading, and education. The model identifies four patterns of reading disability: (1) nonalphabetic readers, (2) compensatory readers, (3) nonautomatic readers, and (4) readers delayed in the acquisition of word recognition…

A program for 148 bright 6-14 year olds who were poor readers featured use of mentors to supplement four facets of a metacognitive/cognitive training program: (1) factors affecting thinking, (2) reasons for using strategies, (3) methods of self-direction, and (4) cognitive strategies. (CL)

The longitudinal study of 70 children with reading disabilities (followed over four years) and 35 reading disabled children (followed for eight-point-six years) found that rate of improvement in reading and spatial reasoning in disabled and normal children was similar but that reading disability tended to persist into young adulthood. (DB)

A major focus in reading difficulty is lack of automaticity in decoding, which overloads the attentional system, leads to the use of small, meaningless visual processing units such as the individual letter, places heavy demands on short-term memory, and interferes with comprehension. Techniques for diagnosis and remediation are noted. (Author/JW)