This study was an investigation into the relationships between reading interests and reading comprehension as demonstrated by a group of fifth-graders who rated reading passages for interest and then were checked for comprehension of these same passages. A seven-point rating inventory, ranging from a "liked very, very much" rating to a "disliked…

This study investigated the use of samples of students' writing as a means of assessing their reading achievement. Writing samples were collected from 338 students in grades seven through fourteen. Reading ability for these students ranged from below third-grade level to above fourteenth-grade level. Writing samples were categorized according to…

The cloze procedure, a technique for determining the difficulty level of written material, involves the systematic deletion of words from a prose selection and the supplying of the missing words by a student or a group of students. The students' ability to supply these words is a significant indicator of how well they comprehend the written…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether cloze procedure could be used in adult literacy programs serving those students reading from about fourth grade reading equivalent level through high school equivalency level. This research investigated three questions: (1) Is cloze procedure acceptable for this group? (2) Can cloze procedure be…

This study was designed to develop and evaluate new methods of helping college students increase their academic reading efficiency. Three new one-unit courses--identical in reading content, tasks, and skills development, but differing in format, amount of structure, and delivery mode--were developed. The teaching methods in these courses were…

The reading strategies of twenty-four tenth grade subjects were analyzed to obtain information about the reading process. Subjects were assigned to one of eight conditions formed by the combination of two levels of three factors, a 2x2x2 modified factorial design. The three factors were: proficient and non-proficient readers, readers with high and…

Various eye problems and the effects they can have on children's reading abilities are explored in this pamphlet, which is one of a series designed to answer parents' questions about their children's reading development. Topics discussed are the demands on vision made by reading, problems that affect visual acuity (nearsightedness, farsightedness,…

This study was designed to confirm the hypothesis that objectives which focused on items of information best facilitated reading retention among a population of elementary school children while controlling for the children's reading level rather than for the "density" of the reading passage. Two 550-word reading passages taken from "Life in the…

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in word recognition strategies used by good and poor readers. Twenty good readers and twenty poor readers were randomly selected from a fourth grade class and randomly assigned to levels of a five by five repeated-measures Latin Square design. All of the subjects were given two tasks to…

Good and poor sixth grade readers served as subjects. Experiment 1 tested for immediate spatial order memory of letters by giving children four or six consonants and having them place the letters in the order in which they had appeared in a just-viewed stimulus. The consonants composing the strings were either positionally redundant (R) or…

This study investigated the effects of three different word-decoding instructional procedures: a single-letter (SL) approach, a letter-combination (LC) approach, and a procedure in which children receive several weeks' instruction in the SL method and then switch to the LC approach. Grade 1 pupils were assigned at random to the three treatment…

Fifty-eight students enrolled in basic electronics courses from three state colleges in Missouri, were involved in comparing the cloze readability technique with the Flesch Reading Ease Formula to ascertain the effectiveness of each in assessing the readability of selected college level electronics textbooks. Pearson product-moment correlations…

This paper presents data describing large differences between the reading difficulty levels of printed materials used in certain military occupational specialties (MOSs) and the relatively lower reading ability levels of men assigned to these MOSs. Initial data explore the relationship between reading ability and utilization of printed materials…

The relationships between Southern Negro dialect exposure, age, reading ability, and auditory discrimination were studied. The subjects were 112 students randomly selected from grades 2 and 4 from two elementary schools in Richmond and Martinez, California. The predominant speech pattern at one school was Southern Negro dialect; at the other…

In a country beset with confrontation and division--some of it over the quality of education--educators should consider as a basic need, the right of every student to read. With taxpapers concerned about the cost of education, educators need to make certain that present allotments go to priority needs, which surely include alleviating the tragic…