An experiment was conducted to investigate methods that enable college students to learn the meaning of unknown words as they read discipline-specific academic text. Forty-one college students read specific passages aloud during three sessions. Participants were randomly assigned to three vocabulary learning interventions or a control condition.…

Effects of wide reading and repeated readings were examined on struggling college readers' silent reading rate and reading comprehension relative to a vocabulary study control condition. Randomly assigned to a condition, community college students (N = 30) completed 25-min sessions individually in class three times a week for three weeks.…

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of two instructional approaches for remedial reading courses at a community college. The instructional approaches were strategic reading and traditional, textbook-based instruction. The two research questions that guided the quantitative, quasi-experimental study were: (a) what is the effect of…

This paper reports findings from a researcher-practitioner partnership that assessed the readiness for postsecondary reading and writing demands of 211 students in developmental reading and English courses in two community colleges. An assessment battery was designed for the study, comprising two standardized tests and five projectdeveloped tasks.…

Two experiments were conducted with developmental education students to investigate the impact of a contextualized intervention focusing on written summarization and other reading and writing skills. In experiment 1 (n = 322), greater gain was found for intervention than comparison participants on three summarization measures: proportion of main…

Instructors in community college developmental education programs are constantly seeking new ways to improve outcomes for their students, but, to date, there has been a shortage of empirical studies on the effectiveness of such efforts. The current study provides evidence on the potential efficacy of an approach to helping students develop an…

A study was conducted at Florissant Valley Community College (FVCC) to compare three standardized tests--the Iowa Silent Reading Test (ISRT), the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT), and the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT)--for use in assessing student reading skills. The study population of 402 students included 216 students who agreed to…

A review of the literature indicates that the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) may be a viable instrument for screening students and predicting their academic success in particular circumstances. In 1981, a study was conducted at Schoolcraft College to determine the extent of the relationship between the reading abilities of entering students and…

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…

A study was conducted at Morton College (Illinois) to gain a better understanding of the factors which contribute to academic success in introductory nursing courses, and to investigate the relationship between the following variables: student grades in Fundamentals of Nursing I and II, Anatomy and Physiology I, and Rhetoric I; and their scores on…

This document represents one of a series of continuing reports on student flow in Hawaii community colleges. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of student scores on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) to academic performance as reflected by grade point averages (GPA). NDRT scores for 1,981 entering students at Leeward…

During the summer of 1983, 77 community college students enrolled in English composition courses were administered the Nelson Denny Test during the first week of the summer session and just prior to final examinations to: determine reading ability and grade equivalences in reading; ascertain if there were relationships between academic achievement…

Since 1985, students taking English 101, the basic composition course at Shoreline Community College (SCC) in Seattle, Washington, have been required to take the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and submit a piece of writing for holistic grading. The introduction of the testing process prompted several questions among students and faculty about what the…