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)

Focuses on five human information processing abilities which cognitive psychologists anticipate must be accounted for in order to develop good computer courseware--memory and attention; language or text characteristics; graphics and visual processing; cognitive characteristics of user; feedback to users. A 31-item bibliography is included. (EJS)

This paper discusses the parameters of discourse topic management in terms of a multidimensional model of topic coherence; interaction between these parameters and linguistic and cognitive knowledge; effects of discourse, linguistic, and cognitive level difficulties on topic parameters; a method of assessment across all parameters and knowledge…

A review of research concerning the nature of text organization skills that contribute to reading comprehension ability reveals two distinct categories of studies: (1) those in which texts have been manipulated so as to facilitate spontaneous syntactic-semantic organization by the reader, and (2) those in which readers have received training or…

This paper suggests that a change in mode of expression --narrative, descriptive, or expository--can influence the syntactic complexity of children's writing. The implications of the research studies reviewed here may offer direction for education in general. Instructional strategies which make use of variation in writing mode to encourage gains…

The papers in this volume were initially presented at a seminar on the development of reading comprehension, which explored basic research and the teaching of reading comprehenison. Researchers in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics and experts in curriculum design in reading gave presentations and reacted to one another's ideas. Each…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The nine titles deal with the following topics: (1) the effects of syntactic differences between oral and written discourse on the reading comprehension of second and fifth grade students; (2) the effects of a sentence combining…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) syntax in the writing of learning disabled and normal children; (2) tropes, invention, and the composing process; (3) speaking and writing relationships in…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) reasoning strategies used by gifted and average fifth grade children in written discourse; (2) the effect of mode of discourse on the syntactic complexity of…

Language Assessment Scales, Level 2 (LAS II) are used to assess the linguistic proficiency of limited-English-speaking or non-English-speaking adolescents. LAS II, like its predecessor, LAS I, provides a picture of oral linguistic proficiency based on a student's performance across four linguistic subsystems: phonemic, lexical, syntactic and…