Variability is common in language sample analysis (LSA), arising from personal factors such as age or level of education, or from factors within the text such as its length and purpose. Variability can affect interpretation of results in clinical practice and research studies, as well as the ability to detect change in individuals over time. This…

One of the primary purposes of expository text in education is to teach new content. Because elementary grade children are accustomed to applying their literacy skills to reading and writing narratives, they must be taught new skills if they are to access expository content effectively. These skills and practices can be challenging because…

The inaugural issue of "Topics in Language Disorders" included articles by Roth and Perfetti and Pearson and Spiro that reflected the thinking of the time on reading comprehension instruction. In this article, the author reviews the general direction of those contributions in light of current thinking and offers a model for organizing the…

Identifying the main points of a communication is fundamental to successful reading comprehension. Discussed are difficulties in defining main idea, text structure variables in determining important information, textual hierarchy and the theory of macrostructure, text features signalling important information, summary writing, learning-disabled…

Many students from elementary school through college encounter difficulty understanding their science textbooks, regardless of whether they have language disorders. This article discusses some of the particular difficulties associated with science text comprehension and possible remedies for facilitating and enhancing comprehension of challenging…

This article discusses how text variables interact with reader, strategy, and task variables to affect readability, including text coherence, text organization, signaling, and text structure. It considers how classic readability formulas, in concert with consideration of text, text reader, and strategy variables, can be used to match texts to…

Teaching organizational strategies to language-disordered children can improve comprehension and formulation of written language. The semantic organizer approach involves activating and organizing prior knowledge, understanding text structure, and developing organizational strategies with both a verbal component and a graphic-structure component.…

This article discusses the reading fluency and comprehension problems of struggling secondary students who can read, with assistance, on a fourth-grade reading level or above. Difficulties with vocabulary and sentence construction are described, along with problems with pronoun reference and noun substitutions, metaphor, and conventions of print.…