Examines the effect of contrived instructional texts and naturally occurring texts (content area textbooks) on students' main idea comprehension. Concludes that students taught to identify the main idea using only contrived texts, such as basal skills lessons, will have difficulty transferring their main idea skills to naturally occurring texts.…

Describes an effort to train parents to respond selectively to miscues and to pay attention to the timing of their responses, to use meaning-focused cues, and to use praise. Concludes that parents can teach and students can learn effective strategies to decrease error rate. (RS)

Findings of three experiments indicated that preschool children have a more substantial knowledge of contagion and contamination than has been estimated previously. Results are discussed in terms of children's ability to understand causal relations. (RH)

Examines how the use of self-directed training materials and limited inservice training improved the quality of teaching the Direct Reading-Thinking Activity. Concludes that teachers' verbal behavior in directing story reading can be easily modified. (MM)

Describes a method of ranking the concepts in science texts in terms of these criteria: importance to the curriculum and student interest; the development of the concept in the text; and the level of background knowledge expected of students. Argues that these ratings should guide instruction. (RS)

Research is reviewed on auditory-visual speech perception of hearing-impaired individuals. The review focuses on: the effects of competing noise, filtering, age, stimulus and noise, and hearing loss on perceptual behavior; bisensory communication evaluation procedures; and remediation of bisensory perceptual problems through consonant recognition…

Readability formulas applied to materials for hearing-impaired students do not account for important factors in reader-writer-text interaction. Factors include the reader's purpose, cultural background, and extent of background knowledge; writers' assumptions about readers; the text's structure, content, and cohesion; and the role of…

This paper discusses the reasons stock market reports of the type appearing in major newspapers in the German-speaking countries are ideal for beginning a text/unit sequence in an introductory business German course. Suggestions are offered concerning the in-class implementation of "Borsenberichte" for third-year students of German. (JL)

After a review of the literature on learning a second-language sound system, a study is reported that used only perceptual training to improve both pronunciation and perception of /r/ and /l/ among 39 Japanese university students of English. Results suggest that listening practice can improve pronunciation and perception. (Contains 32 references.)…

Describes a study conducted to investigate whether text-interactive instruction improved reading comprehension and writing performance of community college students enrolled in developmental reading courses. Students were taught to predict, infer, analyze, and evaluate while reading and to use their experiences and embedded textual cues to give…

Discussion of how visual analogies aid students' understanding of math and science focuses on new types of representations that use computers. Topics addressed include understanding and cognitive performance; the role of representations in understanding, including examples; evidence of instructional effectiveness of new representations; and…

A follow-up study of 62 children in grades 1 and 2 instructed in phonemic awareness in preschool showed that, compared with 53 controls, trained children were superior in nonword reading 2 and 3 years later and in reading comprehension at 3 years. A supplemental study supported these results. (SLD)

The effects of subtitling during transactional task practice were investigated among fifth-semester college students of French. Results support and advance the knowledge generated by language research on subtitles: subtitles help learners not only to comprehend authentic linguistic input better but also to produce comprehensible communicative…

The effectiveness of the "Laubach Way to Reading" program was examined with four adolescents with learning disabilities who were reading below the fifth-grade level. Students made significant gains on basic reading skills and comprehension. Students' success depended on being provided with supplemental lists of more challenging words…

Shows that intermediate learners of German whose first language is English experience more semantic difficulties when reading an English text and more syntactic difficulties when reading a German version of the same text. A stronger emphasis on syntactic features, such as word category, agreement relationships, tensing, and word placement in the…