Illustrates and compares skills and process orientations for reading instruction. Tips for teachers of reading are provided. (RH)

Reading ability is a combination of four major skills (word identification, vocabulary, comprehension, study skills), internal influences (experiences, interests, language and cognitive abilities, health goals), and external influences (material complexity, reading environment). Teachers can enhance their students' reading capability by…

This study investigated why children reproduce and/or reconstruct text in a classroom. The focus was on social classroom variables. Results supported the prediction that students would recall text differentially according to the response interaction pattern maintained with teachers. (Author/DB)

Notes that readers do not depend solely on the visual aspects of reading, but also make use of nonvisual understanding in decoding print. Among the nonvisual components of reading discussed are desiring knowledge, understanding the nature and purpose of reading, reading for meaning, and predicting an author's message. (MKM)

Investigated (1) whether young children can extract a story's main idea, (2) how much they can recall from stories, (3) whether their recall is related to the main theme, (4) whether recall occurs in logical sequence, and (5) from which part of a story more ideas are remembered. (Author/DB)

Two experiments examined the nature of access, storage, and comprehension of idiomatic phrases, using a phrase classification task. Results support a lexical representation hypothesis for the processing of idioms. (Author/AM)

Reaction time to reading sentences which were not clearly interrelated was longer when a paragraph was titled to give it to more discourse (paragraph) level meaning. The presence of titles had no effect on reaction times for meaningful paragraphs, however. (CP)

Details an investigation into the relationships between reading attitude, reading comprehension, and mental imagery. Concludes that there are significant correlations between reading attitude and mental imagery and between reading comprehension and reading attitude, but that there is no significant relationship between reading comprehension and…

Discusses cognitive style (the degree to which perception is influenced by environmental variables) and cognitive control (which focuses on the regulation of perception by the ego). Concepts addressed include field dependence-independence, field articulation, conceptual style, cognitive tempo, intrusive information, focal attention, and…

Examines evidence supporting the view that speech recoding is necessary prior to lexical access, explores an alternative view (that speech recoding occurs in working memory), describes an experiment suggesting that meaning analyses during reading can occur without speech recoding in working memory, and discusses models of reading. (GT)

Correct speech usage and good reading skills are the most important tools an individual can ever acquire. Every child deserves a chance to gain them through thoughtful, expert teaching. (Author)

Two experiments study the effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages. The first experiment tests the effects of systematically varying the amount of structure present in to-be-learned passages. The second experiment assesses the independent contributions of structure and content variables in…

Argues that English-speaking learners of French as a second language start with a major asset in that these two languages share a sizeable vocabulary. The article describes a seven-lesson program designed to exploit the lexical similarities between the two languages with beginning university-level learners of French. (21 references) (Author/CK)

Studies have shown that adults can recognize and recall material they have learned but not understood. When the material must be understood to be applied, however, comprehenders and noncomprehenders are not equally successful. An experiment using 63 fifth-grade students found the same pattern of results for children. (Author/TD)

Emerging research evidence of an approach to learning that combines memorization and comprehension, particularly from Asia, is examined and possible explanations for it are discussed. It is proposed that this approach may explain the apparent paradox of high achievement is Asian cultures, where rote learning in stressed. (Author/MSE)