Discusses changes in higher education that are resulting from the use of hypermedia. Topics addressed include the structure of traditional texts; a distributed model for academic communication; independent learning as a model for higher education; skills for hypermedia literacy; database searching; information retrieval; authoring skills; design…

This article summarizes the literature on effective textbook instruction and offers suggestions for special educators and content instructors to work together to maximize effective instruction with students who have reading difficulties. Specific techniques for activating prior knowledge, helping students become more active thinkers, and…

Interviews with 16 deaf high school students and 9 teachers found that teachers underestimated the extent of students' independent comprehension of 3 types of text. The text perceived to be most difficult by both teachers and students was the most interesting to students (but not teachers) and fostered use of a greater variety of metacognitive…

The "Year 2000" document, a comprehensive statement of policies and objectives for education in British Columbia issued by the Ministry of Education, is reviewed. This analysis reveals a subtext that contradicts the stated objectives of the document itself. The agenda of the subtext would maintain social stability. (SLD)

Ten eighth grade U.S. history textbooks were evaluated with respect to factors such as readability level, global coherence, local coherence, questioning techniques, and vocabulary development. Findings indicated that texts had a mean readability level of 10.9; only 30 percent provided review of previous chapters; few offered introductory…

Examines the effects of word processing on high school seniors' writing and revisions of essay assignments. Length of papers, the impact of topic on the results, the effect of handwriting papers after computer composition, comparison of writing methods over time, and effects of typing ability and computer experience are discussed. (Contains eight…

Uses a cognitive processing perspective to revise fifth grade social studies texts, to describe those revisions, and to demonstrate their effects empirically. Finds that students reading the revised text recalled more material and answered more questions correctly than did those reading the original text. Concludes that a text-processing approach…

Research into the uses of digital literacy in the classroom is still in its infancy. Despite the proliferation of theoretical literature on "new literacies", "multiliteracies", and "technoliteracies" and their impact on education there are fewer studies based on a systematic analysis of the new literacy practices that…

There has been a significant paradigm shift in foreign language pedagogy from measuring language achievement to measuring proficiency. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (1986) sought to reach consensus about describing and measuring language abilities. With the widespread recognition of these Guidelines have come far-reaching changes in our…

This research review focuses on the effects and implications of text organization, both physical presentation and text structure, and on reading comprehension, with special emphasis on the comprehension of diverse learners. The review includes students in kindergarten through college, who are high and low readers and comprehenders; low…

A study compared the comprehension abilities of readers when reading narrative and expository discourse. It was designed to investigate how middle-level high-achieving and low-achieving readers comprehend the two discourse genres, testing the readers' comprehension of main ideas in the text under both conditions. Also examined was whether…

A study investigated children's natural learning of word meanings while reading. Subjects, 447 American and Chinese children in third and fifth grades, read one of two cross-translated stories and then completed a test on the difficult words in both stories. Results indicated: (1) significant incidental learning of word meanings in both grades in…

A practicum was conducted to improve reading comprehension in classroom performance with the basal reading series and on norm-referenced tests. Subjects included a fifth-grade class of 28 students who were paired with another fifth-grade class as peer teachers. New skills were taught and practiced with the target population early in the week. On…

A study compared student performance on language-usage test items embedded in a passage when the location of the answer was varied. American College Testing (ACT) Assessment experimental units were constructed that presented 35 items whose sequence of foils was varied so that each foil appeared once as the "no change" option embedded in…

Five deaf students, aged 11-12, participated in an instructional program using metacognitive strategies to teach summarization skills based on a knowledge of story structure. During intervention, the subjects' performance rose noticeably, and the level of performance was maintained in three subjects. (Author/JDD)