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)

Discusses how the learning of reading skills can be combined with the teaching of musical skills. (MM)

Provides a rationale for using television as a means of instruction and presents a model for capitalizing on television as a connection to reading. Includes a sample task sheet. (TJ)

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)

The development of cognitive processes is essential to the development of reading comprehension skills. (MKM)

To test the effectiveness of the cloze procedure for developing comprehension skills in reading at the intermediate level, 189 sixth graders were divided into small groups or asked to work independently during this reading program, which lasted five weeks. The materials were presented both as cloze materials and in unmutilated form, followed by…

A series of three experiments with suburban elementary students tested the facilitative effect of metaphors on children's ability to understand and remember what they read. In the first study, sixth grade students read two unfamiliar passages and were able to recall metaphoric structures better than literal paraphrases of the same information. In…

The applicability of a proposed category system for identifying different types of poor readers in grade 7 was investigated. Three variables were used: vocabulary level, degree of consensual response to meaning, and response to organization when it was added to the reading material. Systematically combining the three levels of response produced…

The purpose of this study was to enumerate, categorize, and compare the types of reading comprehension questions and activities included in the manuals of selected basal reading series. The Barrett Taxonomy--Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Reading Comprehension was selected as the categorization taxonomy. Basal series were classified as…

This booklet provides teachers with models for interactive reading activities that reflect an awareness of comprehension as a complex mental and linguistic process rather than as a hierarchy of mechanically applied subskills. The instructional strategies represent a combination of insights presented in recent research with those gained through…

The literature of reading theory and research suggests a number of key factors involved in the comprehension process. In simplest terms, comprehension is the process by which an individual actively generates meaning from some linguistic input. Five factors of reading comprehension have been identified through research: vocabulary knowledge, the…