Discusses the use of the Study Skills Questionnaire to help college freshmen increase their knowledge of their own study strategies, including the ability to think on different levels, their task completion strategies, and the use of study aids. Suggests college faculty use results of the questionnaire to adjust teaching methods to student needs.…

This study explored the nature of dictionary instruction in several basal reading series. Three basal reading series from major academic publishers (Scott Foresman, Ginn, and Holt) with 1989 copyrights, were selected for detailed analysis. Results indicated that even where the professed aim of the basal reading series was to incorporate dictionary…

Knowledge of morphology--the ability to gain information about the meaning, pronunciation, and part of speech of new words from their prefixes, roots, and suffixes--is an important component of skilled reading. As part of a larger program of research on morphology, a study explored the development of students' knowledge of common English suffixes.…

Intended for elementary school reading teachers, this booklet offers insight into the nature of comprehension and suggestions for enhancing children's comprehension skills. The first chapter discusses trends in comprehension research, and several specific points about the nature of comprehension and how it can best be taught. The second chapter…

Because analogical reasoning plays a major role in content area reading comprehension, teachers should learn to teach analogy-solving skills and to identify the kinds of difficulties some elementary students will have in solving them. Analogies are statements of relationships wherein one term is similar to another term. Relationships in analogy…

"Inquiry Training," a teaching technique promoted during the 1960s, involves students gathering information about a discrepant event or puzzling situation, and formulating theories to explain the event. Continuing the work of two studies into the efficacy of Inquiry Training (subsequently renamed Cognition Enhancement), a more refined…

A study explored whether instruction involving an emphasis on study skills could help seventh grade students retain material encountered in science classes. Subjects were 32 students from two intact science classes in a predominately white, middle class school in New Jersey. The experimental group received an advance organizer as an overall…

Reading educators stress the importance of teaching reading study skills in college content area classes. Thus, a freshman level reading education course offered the opportunity simultaneously to model effective practices for preservice teachers and to conduct a study of the gains in both content knowledge and reading study skills for students who…

To determine whether students have study strategies that they can transfer to future learning tasks, a research study used a content-based model--the Supportive Seminar--a voluntary content review session held by a leader enrolled in a targeted college course for freshmen. The leader acts as a role model for the students by attending all lectures,…

In three experiments investigating both the features of cooperative learning in pairs that lead to improved mastery and retention of information and transfer of learning strategies to individual situations and the individual characteristics that contribute to cooperative learning outcomes, 126 college students studied excerpts from expository…

Discusses the Supplemental Instruction (SI) approach to teaching study skills using course content. Summarizes the methods used in SI review sessions and reviews data measuring the success of students involved in SI with implications for improving student performance in other difficult courses at the community college level. (SKC)

A study investigated the ability of university undergraduates in introductory classes to study effectively. Subjects, 64 students in a western civilization class and 68 students in a sociology class at a moderately sized comprehensive university in a northern plains state, were administered a cloze passage constructed from the textbook being used,…

Investigates the effectiveness of a hierarchical summary procedure used after reading social studies material. Concludes that the procedure enhanced students' recall for relatively unfamiliar, but not relatively familiar, social studies text and had a positive effect on the quality of their expository writing. (FL)

A study evaluated the effectiveness of a series of print materials and interactive computer-guided study programs designed to lead undergraduate students to apply basic textbook reading and concept mapping strategies to the study of science and social science textbooks. Following field testing with 25 learning skills students, 50 freshman biology…

Presents results of a survey of 37 university-level content reading specialists in which the specialists listed teaching practices that content teachers could incorporate into their teaching to help students learn from texts. Recommends: (1) using multiple texts; (2) using study guides; (3) teaching metacognitive strategies; and (4) direct…