Many instruments designed to assess reading comprehension reflect instructional tasks that have not clearly been shown to be a part of the process of comprehension. If the measurement instruments are to have construct validity, however, they must be created to reflect what we know about cognitive processing. Recent work in cognitive psychology has…

The minimal comprehension principle asserts that the act of comprehension must entail an interaction between an incoming linguistic message and the reader's world knowledge. An analysis of current tests of reading comprehension indicates that test passages are likely to draw broadly from knowledge of the world, so that some of the variability in…

The cloze test requires a student to fill gaps in a text with appropriate words where every nth word is deleted. The cloze procedure forms a test of a reader's ability to predict, on the basis of context, what word will occur. Test marking may be narrow, in which only the exact word omitted is counted as correct, or broad, where any acceptable…

This study was designed to discover the answers to two general questions concerning the instrucitonal level of reading: (1) What is the percentage of word recognition that is necessary for second and fifth graders to maintain in order to achieve a certain percentage of comprehension? (2) Are those word recognition percentages the same for both…

The problem under investigation was to determine the differential effects of three types of treatment on students' test-taking skills. The study also investigated whether test-taking instruction would result in significant mean test score gains on a standardized reading test for white and black, high and low socioeconomic status (SES) third-grade…

The Second Year Communication Skills Program (SYCSP) consists of instructional materials and procedures designed to improve the reading skills of first-grade children. The reading achievement of students was measured in 10 classrooms using the SYCSP. The Second Year Program Test, used to judge the effectiveness of the program, was administered to…

Under contract with the Oregon State Department of Education, Educational Testing Service (ETS) assisted in the preparation of a fourth grade reading assessment test based on, or modified from, Instructional Objectives Exchange materials. ETS produced test books, answer sheets, and all required ancillary materials necessary for test distribution…

This study determines whether an abbreviated test battery, administered in September, could predict achievement ratings at the end of kindergarten in June of a group of kindergarten children in an elementary school. An additional purpose was to institute a prevention program on a random sample of predicted high-risk children in this group and to…

This yearbook includes a summary of the research in reading that has been conducted in recent years, and also contains many ideas that have practical implications for the teacher in the classroom. The essays are divided into six major sections: research review, college and adult programs, teacher education, programs and practices, test materials,…

The purpose of this bulletin is to provide the American educator or sponsor with a set of reading passages in Khmer (the language spoken in Cambodia), so that he will have some means of determining whether or not his Cambodian students can read Khmer. Three short passages have been selected, each given in the Khmer alphabet and in its romanized…

A review of literature related to rate of reading and auding, primarily in non-remedial high school and adult readers, is provided in this paper. After offering a definition of reading, a discussion of those studies which examine rates of reading and auding separately is provided with a summary of studies which directly relate rates of reading and…

Word-deletion items to be used as measures of comprehension were constructed by deleting a content word from an ambiguous target sentence constrained by an accompanying context sentence. One hundred twenty, third-grade students and 120 sixth-grade students each completed all of the items as one of three degrees of contextual constraint. Analysis…

This study attempted to answer the following questions: Are all the concepts that reading tests are attempting to measure being taught in school? What are the characteristics of effective reading programs in school (e.g., amount of time, methods, materials, assistance, and support)? and What community-based variables are related to reading…

Test management systems are suggested for individualizing the teaching of reading in the elementary classroom. Test management systems start with a list of objectives or specific goals which cover all or some major areas of the learning to read process. They then develop a large number of criterion referenced tests which match the skill areas at…

In order to assess the effectiveness of the Survey of Reading Achievement Examination in placing freshmen into various levels of freshman English and in predicting scholastic achievement as measured by English grades and total grade point average (GPA), a study was made of 301 Los Angeles City College students chosen at random from the total…