Readers often struggle to identify the main ideas in expository texts. Existing research and instruction provide some guidance on how to encourage readers to identify main ideas. However, there is substantial variability in how main ideas are operationalized and how readers are prompted to identify main ideas. This variability hinders…

Readers often struggle to identify the main ideas in expository texts. Existing research and instruction provide some guidance on how to encourage readers to identify main ideas. However, there is substantial variability in how main ideas are operationalized and how readers are prompted to identify main ideas. This variability hinders…

A teacher's ability to read effectively is critical to that individual's ability to teach reading skills. Correspondingly, most state departments of education require that prospective teachers earn a passing score on a standardized reading comprehension test before they can enter university-based teacher education programs or otherwise get a…

This research compared the contributions of lexical inferencing, decoding, and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in Chinese-speaking learners of English as a second language (ESL) enrolled in university bridging programs in the U.S. and Chinese-speaking university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in mainland China.…

Reading skill plays a pivotal role in the process of acquiring information. An appropriate teaching technique should be implemented in order to improve the students' reading skill. This research aimed at revealing whether or not: (1) Herringbone technique (HT) is more effective than Tri Focus Steve Snyder technique (TFSST) to teach reading…

Some individuals with developmental dyslexia are able to acquire age-appropriate reading comprehension abilities by the time they reach postsecondary education. This study explored the role that study strategies have with secondary students with dyslexia in achieving age-appropriate reading comprehension skills. The findings of this study…

Appendix A of the Common Core State Standards (hereafter CCSS) contains a review of the research stressing the importance of being able to read complex text for success in college and career. The research shows that while the complexity of reading demands for college, career, and citizenship have held steady or risen over the past half century,…

Teaching students to enjoy reading is important in middle level education; however, middle school students with emotional behavioral disabilities (EBD) frequently struggle with reading skills and frequently display motivational deficits during reading instruction. The purpose of this study was to examine if the presence/absence of a classroom pet…

What is meant by text complexity is a measurement of how challenging a particular text is to read. There are a myriad of different ways of explaining what makes text challenging to read, from the sophistication of the vocabulary employed to the length of its sentences to even measurements of how the text as a whole coheres. Research shows that no…

Background: Readability tests are indicators that measure how easy a document can be read and understood. Simple, but very often ignored, readability statistics cannot only provide information about the level of difficulty of the readability of particular documents but also can increase an evaluator's credibility. Purpose: The purpose of this…

Developmental differences in summaries of expository texts were examined for fourth and sixth grade students in two experiments. Experiment 1 used texts that had a description content structure whereas Experiment 2 texts had a thesis/evidence content structure. Manipulation of the presence or absence of the topic sentence allowed the examination…

Investigates the degree to which potential users of language reading proficiency scales acquire the standard for accurately grading reading passages of foreign-language learners. A five-day workshop helped users of the guidelines rank reading passages for levels of difficulty and rate them accurate according to the ACTFL scales. (Author/CB)

In spite of their limitations, readability formulas can help teachers determine whether there are differences between students' reading abilities and the difficulty levels of the textbooks they are required to use. A study was conducted to assess the reading levels of students and the readability levels of textbooks at five selected junior…

Drawn from a symposium presented at the 1979 National Reading Conference, the four papers in this collection describe a notion of conceptual readability, an approach contrasting with traditional readability computations (number of words per sentence and degree of familiarity of individual words) and focusing on the concepts communicated by the…

This report was prepared to assist the United States Army in evaluating the usefulness of readability formulas in identifying material that will be comprehended by readers at a given reading skill level. Existing readability methods and research findings were reviewed against three major criterion questions and the findings are discussed. The…