Focuses on the underlying elements in the reading comprehension process that better distinguish its developmental phases. Offers suggestions for the acquisition of strategies pertaining to textual organization that, together with proposed activities for comprehension, contribute to the formation and consolidation of reading habits. Includes…

Presents the results of a study on how adult illiterates process text, which showed that adults engaged in a greater degree of meaning-related processing and more graphemic and graphophonic processing in expository text. Adults were more successful with narrative text. (JC)

Describes two experiments that examined word recognition processes of second, fourth, and sixth graders. Shows that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (HOD)

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)

Finds support for the concurrent validity of miscue analysis as a measure of the silent reading processes of elementary school students with respect to the dimensions of syntactic and semantic strength. (FL)

Mirror-image animal and nonanimal words of three to six letters were presented to subjects in a reaction time categorization task. A significant interaction of Word Length X Block was found for words presented over all four blocks. A shift from component to holistic processing was found for the repeated words. (Author/RD)

This article examines the problems of the intermediate-level foreign-language course as well as student attitudes and goals derived from survey data. (33 references) (CK)

These are findings of theoretical interest from: (i) follow-up of a case study of a precocious reader; and (ii) normally developing readers who served as comparison groups. The precocious reader was first reported when 2-3 years of age (Cognition 74 (2000) 177). From 3 to 7 years of age her precocious reading development continued, her word…

Semitic writing systems such as that used to write Arabic are unique among st alphabetic writing systems in that in Semitic systems short vowels are represented as diacritics on consonant letters, and not represented at Allin text intended for skilled readers. Arabic is unique here in that the letter used to represent a consonant differs in shape…

The construct of emotional intelligence provides a framework for understanding emotional processes in students with reading disabilities. The components of emotional intelligence include the perception of emotions, emotional facilitation of thinking, emotional knowledge, and emotional regulation. This article examines underlying affective…

To better understand the nature of students' approaches to literary understanding, a study compared the meaning-making approaches of traditionally judged above and below average readers. In all, 144 protocols were analyzed from 24 students (12 seventh graders and 12 eleventh graders, half in each class judged as above and half as below average…

Two studies explored the nature of fourth- and fifth-grade students' abilities to synthesize information from multiple sources of text. The studies examined the ways in which elementary students approached a synthesis activity that involved reading two well-organized and related nonfiction articles, and then drawing upon that information as they…

Basic theoretical assumptions support the contention that writing has an important role to play in the teaching of reading and learning processes. E. M. Forster focused on the product of writing as an embodiment of either finished or evolving thought, and Ann E. Berthoff emphasizes the capacity of language to generate itself and, in so doing,…

Prompted by current theories in reading suggesting that variation in word knowledge affects the processing of not only individual words but also clauses and sentences, this report explores some different ways in which children's comprehension processes may be affected by variation in word knowledge. The report first examines whether the effects of…

A study investigated the relationship between sixth grade students' reading attitudes and awareness of certain parameters of reading and their performance on a reading comprehension test. Subjects, 100 students scoring between the 5th and the 95th percentiles on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) comprehension section, completed a reading…