The International Adult Literacy Survey, IALS, is the first international comparative study of reading ability and reading habits among adults. The IALS was carried out in seven countries in Europe and North America during 1994 and 1995. Swedish participation in the study consisted of a representative sample of the population, 16 years of age and…

This literature review examines the relationship between phonemic awareness and the ability to read. It addresses four main issues: (1) if phonemic awareness is a prerequisite for or a consequence of learning to read; (2) what is needed to teach phonemic awareness; (3) tasks or activities and assessment tools to develop phonemic awareness; and (4)…

The human cognitive system may have a developmental property that makes acquisition of fluent reading skills difficult after a certain age. This problem may be seen to affect two different populations: participants in adult literacy programs who lacked access to schools as children and educated adults fluent in languages with non-Latin scripts.…

Presents words which appear in common signs in various geographical locations organized into "Words of Travel, "Words of Work and "Words of General Significance. (MB)

Argues that a conventional "back-to-basics" classroom structure (with emphasis on drill, recitation, and ability grouping; a narrow view of curriculum; and reliance on comparative marking and grading as the sole method of evaluation) will reinforce racist beliefs about intellectual incompetence of minority children. (RH)

First-, second-, and third-grade readers were asked to pick items that differed in terms of a rule-governed description of orthographic structure. Task performance improved with school experience. Reading ability was positively correlated with knowledge of orthographic structure for young readers. (Author/PN)

A principal suggests strategies that will help elementary social studies teachers provide students with the optimum educational experience. Discussed are assessment of information possessed by students, reading levels and material readability, potential biases or special interests, high interest projects, and motivational level. (RM)

One hundred and two third graders were tested on match-to-sample, cognitive style tasks in the visual and auditory modalities as well as a visual-auditory cross-modal task. The results lend support to the relationship between cognitive style and reading performance. (Author/NQA)

Reveals that Puerto Rican students recently arrived in the United States who participated in a bilingual reading program in Spanish and English performed significantly better than did similar students who did not participate in the program. (FL)

Describes the origin and evolution of a course to meet the needs of gifted independent readers. (JL)

Explains that reading English among Scientists is almost universal, however, there are enormous problems with spoken English. Advocates the use of Esperanto as a viable alternative, and as a language requirement for graduate work. (GA)

A review of the literature on the relationship between reading ability and mathematical ability shows the process of reading mathematics to be very different from the process of reading English prose. (AEA)

A study conducted with 20 good and 20 poor first-grade readers suggested that the ability to induce grapheme-phoneme relationships was much more strongly related to reading ability than was receptive vocabulary. Good readers appeared to apply a principled solution to a word-learning task, while poor readers used an associative solution. (Author/GT)