Intended to gain information about students who have difficulty organizing text when they write, a study probed students' ability to recognize and understand varying degrees of text organization while reading. Ninety ninth-grade students, divided equally into groups of good readers/good writers, good readers/poor writers, and poor readers/poor…

This technical report covers almost every aspect of the United States component of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement's (IEA) International Reading Literacy Study, from the inception of the project to the production of the reports. The report notes that since much has already been learned from studies such…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress' (NAEP) 1992 reading assessment was administered to nationally representative samples of 4th-, 8th- and 12-grade students attending public and private schools, and to state representative public-school samples of 4th graders in 43 jurisdictions. In Colorado, 2,897 fourth-grade students in 122 public…

A study investigated where preservice teachers are in their own ability to construct meaning from complex texts and how this is influenced by their views of knowledge. Subjects were 65 elementary education majors, 82 secondary education majors, and 23 physical education majors enrolled in five sections of a reading in the content areas course and…

A practicum designed and implemented a program to address the related problems of negative attitudes toward reading, low reading abiility, and poor student working vocabulary. Intervention strategies and critical thinking activities were used to raise students'"Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) scores and to improve students' attitudes toward…

As part of an ongoing effort to understand the nature of student performance and persistence at Southwestern College (SC), a study was conducted in fall 1976 to determine the effect of reading ability on student course performance. An analysis of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) scores of 4,610 students revealed that, on an average, students…

The gap between elementary and advanced reading levels is discussed, as well as probable reasons for this gap. Reading skills needed by students before embarking on the Bagrut syllabus are enumerated, and a new ninth grade reader, "English by Television -- Stage Five," intended to provide these skills, is described. (RM)

This report presents descriptive and correlational results from questionnaires administered to parents and tests administered to two groups equalling approximately 650 children from kindergarten, first, and second grade. The primary question addressed is, what is the relationship between what parents report that they do with their children in…

To determine the usefulness of the commonly taught phonics rule, "only pronounce the first vowel in words that contain adjacent vowels" (the VV rule, with the first "v" pronounced with the long vowel sound), two new studies applied it to words with adjacent vowels in several lists and dictionaries. The first study analyzed words containing…

Early reading instruction is important for all children, but especially for the disadvantaged, because the decision not to expose them to reading at an early age may result in an unrecoverable loss of intellectual potential. Reading readiness as an approach may exile children from literacy permanently because it is an abstract and alien process…

A study examined whether the female superiority in reading achievement that exists in the United States is duplicated in a population that is genetically similar but culturally different from that of the United States. A sample of 4th and 6th grade students from Bielefeld, West Germany, and a sample of 4th and 6th grade students from Rialto,…

A study examined the connection between the everyday activities of adults of different ages and their performance on a prose recall task. Subjects were 54 adults, 18 in each of three age groups (18-32, 40-54, and over 62). Written recall of two 388-word expository prose passages was used for the prose recall measure. For the activities measures,…

The effects of wait-time, the pause following a teacher question and the pause after a student response, on the length and number of student responses were analyzed at different cognitive levels. Data were obtained from 95 students in grade 4 and from 5 teachers using a wait-time of 5 seconds. Four oral discussion sessions by teachers and students…

A study examined how the text variables of organizational plan (top-level structure), emphasis plan (implemented through signalling devices), and presence of details influenced the selection of reading strategies by adults. Subjects--149 young, middle aged, and older expert readers--read and recalled in writing two expository prose passages of 388…

Knowledge of derivational morphology can aid readers in the analysis and acquisition of new vocabulary, in lexical access, and in establishing the syntactic structure of sentences. A study investigated good and poor readers' knowledge and use of derivational suffixes in establishing sentence level syntax. Subjects, 123 10th and 11th grade…