In this study, the socio-cultural variation in reading comprehension development was examined in 331 fifth graders from schools in Lima, Peru. Reading comprehension was measured using an adaptation of the PIRLS Reading Literacy test. The fifth graders' reading comprehension results, measured over the course of fifth grade, were related to the…

The studies reported here are part of a research program whose purpose is to increase the effectiveness with which students acquire knowledge from written instructional materials. The studies had both a basic and an applied objective. The basic objective was to obtain evidence upon which to base a theory of the processes involved in language…

In an exploration of the comprehension process of the beginning reader, 16 first and second grade students were each asked to listen to two stories--one a narrative account and the other an expository passage-- and then immediately to retell them. Recall protocols were compared by propositional analysis for text-related superordinate and…

Rather than being viewed as a reading skill, comprehension is viewed as inferring the task of the writer or as discerning the ends and means of a discourse. Inferring the writer's task is to reason backwards from the product to the questions with which he may have started. Discerning ends and means is to view what is described, argued, or…

The purpose of this publication is to point out that reading comprehension questions frequently assess only literal comprehension, and to suggest kinds of questions that involve broader levels of comprehension. The publication first presents two reading passages; for each one it lists sample questions that involve only literal comprehension and…

Suggests ways teachers can provide students with practice in thinking (Editor)

This is a survey of techniques that have been used to test language comprehension. The study of research completed in this field points up the fact that there is no single technique that universally gives valid and reliable information. Various definitions of language comprehension are examined with special emphasis placed on implications for the…

A study of the effects of using the MRM (message unit--verb unit--message unit) instructional system on reading comprehension was studied using 69 college freshmen, 37 in an experimental group and 32 in a control group. Both groups were engaged in a variety of activities designed to promote greater reading efficiency as a regular part of their…

The measurement of a pupil's comprehension development from literal comprehension to evaluation focused on two questions: (1) How do we measure the various types of comprehension? and (2) How should we measure the various types of comprehension? Literal comprehension is presently measured by the recall or memory-type question. However, one should…

The building block theory of language structure, an information processing approach, is applied to the development of a model of the reading process. Specifically, the model is concerned with the amount of time an individual will spend reading and the amount of content he will decode which is determined by a series of cognitive processes involving…

Experimenters analyzed a prose passage into 350 idea units, then interspersed throughout the text pictures depicting main ideas, or both main ideas and nonessential details. For fourth- and sixth-grade subjects, pictures did facilitate both immediate and delayed recall, but only of main ideas. (Author/JEG)

Metacognition refers to an individual's knowledge concerning his/her own cognitive processes. Children's metacognitive strategies were examined in a study predicated upon R.J. Spiro's hypothesis that subjects tend to reproduce (literally recall) text information in formal situations and to reconstruct (inferentially recall) it in informal…

Many students assessed as being weak in reading comprehension have no reading disability, but are being asked to read material above their language and conceptual levels of competence. (DD)