A study was conducted to compare students' recreational reading levels to their independent, instructional, and frustrational levels determinable with an informal reading inventory. Subjects, 20 second grade and 20 fifth grade students, were administered the Basic Reading Inventory. In addition, the school's librarian recorded titles of four books…

It is difficult to single out a primary factor leading to the establishment of one's attitude toward reading, but environment, particularly the home, probably provides the greatest influence. Because teachers influence students, they have the potential for influencing students' attitudes toward reading. Whether teachers are seen as readers or…

This study surveyed random samples of the junior high school, college, and adult population groups in Tucson, Arizona, for reading habits, self-perceived reading abilities, and the ability to retain information read in local newspapers. The survey data indicate that members of all three groups believe that they comprehend more than their peers,…

This study examined the influences of the home on children's attitudes toward reading, perceptions of reading, reading habits, and reading achievement. Participating in the study were 38 low-income white children (and their parents) from nine first-grade classrooms involved in the Florida Parent Education Follow Through project. Data were obtained…

This anniversary edition of "Hooked on Books" adds new materials about the general educational context necessary for the success of the approach described in earlier editions. Discussions center on the difficulties of reading instruction, caused by the decreasing importance of reading in a television era; growth in the importance of peer teaching…

This research study discusses the reading habits of the 1595 people it surveyed and the relationship of periodical mass media to individual political involvement. Focusing on popular magazines and organizational publications as periodical types, the study indicates that the amount of time available for reading periodicals and an individual's…

The purpose of this study was to determine if young children recall stories with both male and female characters as well as they recall stories with only male or only female characters. The sample included boys and girls ages 3 to 5 from lower-class through upper-middle class backgrounds. It was hypothesized that boys would better recall stories…

Results of a survey of 165 high school students' responses to 100 poems were analyzed and compared to the poetry preferences of elementary school students in a similar study conducted by Ann Terry in 1974. The results showed that humorous and narrative poems appealed to a wide age range. Four of the five most popular poems in the high school…

Faced with an evening composition class filled with students inhibited by fears of failure and writing anxieties, the teacher redesigned the course to focus on ways to make writing an activity that could be fun. The teacher's plan for getting the students interested in writing consisted of (1) having students analyze essays they agreed were…

A study was conducted to discover if the stated reading attitudes and interests of sixth grade students were relevant to their self-selected reading materials. Fifty students completed questionnaires concerning their reading attitudes and interests and used log sheets to record information about their self-selected reading materials. The results…

The selective learning hypothesis holds that individuals' learning of prose passages will be affected in varying ways by the passages' threatening or unpleasant content. To test this hypothesis, 19 college students read six prose passages--three containing threatening material and three nonthreatening--and then completed a cloze test for each…

Fifteen classes of first, second, and third grade students in five Clarke County, Georgia, schools listened to poems and rated them on a three-point scale. Five of these 15 classes also participated in the study's second phase, which measured responses to the same poems after some poetry and related extension activities. Analysis revealed that the…

A library project designed to increase the independent reading of deaf children involved the initiation of a bookmobile program in the dormitories of a school for the deaf and the adaptation and creation of books that deaf children could use independently. Because it is difficult for deaf persons to grasp abstract concepts in print, high-interest…

To assess whether black children comprehend more of high- than low-interest reading material, whether the performance discrepancy between white and black children is reduced under high-interest conditions, and to determine the degree of similarity of the interests of white and black children, a study involving 33 black and 33 white fifth graders…

There are many critical problems that are influencing the status of literature and the teaching of literature in the United States today, according to this paper. Some of the problems cited are the poor quality of recent best selling books; the smaller number of people who read books compared to the number of people who read magazines and…