An understanding of an author's structure of ideas assists readers in comprehending a text. Three kinds of writing activities relate to a reading comprehension subskill. (1) sequencing--the logical presentation of events, times, places, ideas or steps in a procedure to accomplish a task or to comprehend an event--for which a teaching progression…

Describes an English as a second language course designed to build the students' reading abilities in order to develop their oral and writing skills. The course consists of group and individual projects on the topic of American Indians and culminates with a simulation of a court hearing involving an Indian land claim. (SED)

A study explored the group mapping activity, a process that encourages each reader to construct a visual schema or map following the reading of a story. It also sought to determine if there is a developmental sequence in eighth grade and college students' mapping and if these representations provided new insights into how readers process language.…

This newsletter contains five articles. The first, "Discourse Structure in Reading," by Ron Shook, suggests that reading materials for the beginning ESL (English as a second language) reader often have three defects: (1) profusion of detail as question fodder; (2) an oversimplified syntax; and (3) an artificial construction that violates…