Background/purpose: Academic reading presents significant challenges for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners, especially when processing structurally dense expository texts in STEM disciplines. This study aims to assess the impact of text-structure-aligned goals on students' reading comprehension and written summarization, while exploring…

Research indicates the benefits of collaborative learning for supporting academic literacy in content classrooms, especially for diverse and exceptional students such as students with learning disabilities or English learners (ELs) who can become disengaged in content classrooms if they struggle to access complex, content-related texts. Drawing…

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers' visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read…

Rising expectations for middle grade students to independently read and comprehend complex, discipline-specific texts have also raised expectations for the ways teachers will teach. Helping all students, despite assessed reading levels, to access grade level texts calls for instructional approaches that not only meet readers where they are, but…

The aim of the current study was to investigate students' mind wandering while reading different types of textual narrations (macroscopic and submicroscopic) in chemistry. Another goal was to determine the relationship between mind wandering and students' reading comprehension. The participants were 65 female ninth grade students in Oman. Using a…

This study explored 6th grade students reading of science text on the iPad to better understand how students with varying strengths of comprehending text and current academic abilities interpret text on their iPads. Our study sample compared three students with strong reading scores based on informal reading inventories, standardized tests, and…

The authors outline results of 3 studies conducted to examine the structure of disciplinary knowledge from reading measured through proximity data. In Study 1, 168 third-grade students were asked to read a science text and rate the relationships of keywords from the passage. From these ratings, comprehension scores were calculated that related…

Recent scholarship on secondary reading calls for a shift from teaching generic literacy strategies to teaching discipline-specific language and literacy practices (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008; Moje, 2008; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012). This call for disciplinary literacy instruction (DLI) reflects the growing recognition that literacy…

The authors examined the role of an intervention designed to increase reading comprehension, reading self-efficacy beliefs, and engagement in social studies for middle school students of varying language backgrounds. Thirteen sixth- and seventh-grade teachers implemented the United States History for Engaged Reading (USHER) program with their…

Readers' beliefs about their understanding and test performance as a function of the reading purpose was examined. Participants read a series of expository texts for entertainment or study purposes, answered questions about the texts, and their beliefs about future and past test performance were assessed. The results showed that students believed…

Experiments were done for comprehension and recall using short English texts with a controlled number of words and propositions but differing in the number of word concepts in the text base. Reading time was longer and recall less for texts with more word concepts. (SC)

One hundred and fifty psychology students, assigned to five groups, used different learning strategies (repetition, paraphrasing, linking, grouping, and hierarchy) to study three structurally different chemistry texts. The strategies that demanded recognition of linked relationships as well as retention of this information increased students'…

Examines comprehension strategies experienced readers use to deal with very difficult text. (HOD)

Discusses the advantages and disadvantages of four methods of teaching reading in the content areas: (1) presenting isolated skills, (2) "aiming" toward content, (3) "guiding" toward content, and (4) presenting skills and content concurrently. (FL)

Proposes that rather than "water down" children's reading materials, educators should help students deal with the complexities of connected discourse so that they can learn to appreciate the richness of the language. Offers a number of teaching ideas for achieving this goal. (FL)