The passage comprehensibility of three diagnostic reading tests--the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test, the Spache Diagnostic Reading Scales, and the Durrell Analysis of Reading Difficulty--was evaluated using the following text variables: content familiarity, vocabulary, the number of idea units in the text, the number of text-based inferences…

An action research project focused on how a child's academic achievement is affected by his or her chronological age. The population consisted of kindergarten and third-grade students in a growing middle class community within a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Evidence for the existence of this problem was gathered from teacher surveys,…

A study was conceived to develop, implement, and evaluate the Structural-Response Instructional Model for increasing reading/thinking skills through written responses to a text's macrostructure. The study sought to determine: (1) if writing activities increased students' reading comprehension, (2) if the model effectively increased reading…

A practicum study was conducted to raise the reading comprehension level of students at least one grade level by using Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI), and to determine the kind of student who would most benefit by the use of CAI. A control group of 35 students and three experimental groups of 19 computer students, all in fourth or fifth…

A study tested a teacher training intervention designed to provide experimental teachers with peer support as well as specific principles and techniques for fostering active reading strategies in severely reading disabled adolescents. The study investigated whether and how changes in teaching result in changes in students' reading performance. The…

This study examined the effectiveness of a program with three basic features--high interest plays, oral reading, and high readability level--designed to aid middle school students scoring two or more years below grade level in reading comprehension. Subjects, 13 boys and two girls enrolled in a basic English class in a suburban middle school…

This paper discusses an investigation that compared college students' reading gains when using general or specific diagnosis. It reports that significant gains were made on many subskills of the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test by the group that had the prescriptions developed as a result of a differential (specific) diagnosis and that there were…

A study was conducted to measure the effect and compare the results of developmental reading instruction for college students as prescribed from the specific results of a diagnostic reading test and a general, more traditionally used, survey reading test. The sample consisted of 226 students enrolled in different sections of a reading course…