Discusses a preliminary and sketchy hypothesis of second language comprehension based on empirical investigations into strategies and processes specific to second language comprehension. (Author/CB)

A vocabulary instruction program for intermediate grades is described. The program improves comprehension through use of such features as multiple exposures to words in various contexts and engaging students in active thinking about word meanings. This method of instruction is compared with instruction that offers only definitional information.…

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)

Enumerates results of a study which asked graduate students and doctoral candidates to read in diverse content areas and to select main idea statements for text. Concludes that readers often made initial hypotheses about the main idea and used the main idea construction processes of listing, draft and revise, and topic/comment after the text had…

A modified replication of a study by R. C. Anderson and J. W. Pichert indicates that, even though the retrieval framework can operate selectively in making certain information more accessible for output, it is ultimately constrained by the accessibility of information as determined by the encoding framework. (JD)

Examines modality differences in preschoolers' ability to recognize or recall temporally related events and extends Ward and Wackman's model by evaluating whether the assumed "visual viewing style" applies to preschoolers' processing of temporal relations. Results demonstrated that temporally related events were remembered more…

Discusses the importance of improving students' visual perception as a way of improving their literary perception. Describes visual perception exercises that can be used in the English classroom. (EL)

Argues that since the successful teaching of reading does not depend on materials and schemes alone, a teacher who fails to acknowledge cultural factors that influence a pupil's ways of knowing will achieve only limited success. (EL)

Findings indicate that the comprehension of television by kindergarten and first graders, as well as their beliefs about the reality of the medium, are reliably linked with parental mediation styles regarding television and more general patterns of discipline. (PD)

Presents a direct instruction approach to reading comprehension that stresses the use of three forms of knowledge--declarative, procedural, and conditional. Offers a sample lesson demonstrating the application of this approach for teaching a comprehension skill, and concludes with a discussion of how comprehension skill instruction in commercial…

Discusses what is meant by meaningful learning, the conditions necessary for meaningful learning to occur, the importance of vocabulary instruction to comprehension, and how to insure that vocabulary instruction is meaningful. (HOD)

Discusses three principles that characterize effective vocabulary instruction (contextual and definitional information, active processing, and multiple exposures) and describes how these principles can be used to modify and improve existing methods of teaching word meanings. (HOD)

Concludes that in virtually all tests involving phonemic processing, poor readers performed significantly worse than did chronological age controls. (FL)

Investigates the hypothesis that, in the case of individual similes, bits of lexical information, or word knowledge, are predictably and absolutely essential to the resolution of similes. (HOD)

Describes two studies showing that young readers may have trouble with comprehension when text contradicts their own prior knowledge. (FL)