Presents an example of one five-year-old child's efforts to learn to read. Concludes that teachers can make learning to read easier by knowing the interests of their students and by providing them with books and other materials that stimulate those interests. (FL)

Discusses the readability of some selected school physics textbooks and examination papers. It also presents three factors that affect readability: (1) Interest and motivation; (2) Legibility of print; and (3) Complexity of words and sentences. (HM)

Sex-oriented reading materials were found to have a differential effect on the recall scores of boys and girls ages 9-10. A similar, nonsignificant trend was found for the comprehension scores based on the cloze procedure. The sex of the tester had no significant effect on performance. (Author/SJL)

Indicates that reading the campus daily newspaper is a habit and that readership of selected items tends to be consistent. Shows why student editors should consider conducting research on readership to optimize the news and editorial potential of the campus newspaper. (RL)

Third through ninth-grade students were asked to write an essay on the subject, "Why I like to read," to determine children's language in describing their purposes for reading, to gain some impressions of what functions and purposes might emerge, and to analyze whether particular functions appear at various developmental levels. (HOD)

Describes a recreational reading program implemented at the Diagnostic Learning Center in Houston to increase home involvement and improve reading attitudes and habits of disabled readers. (MKM)

Suggests ways that popular literature in science can help to motivate students in a way that textbooks cannot. (MKM)

Fifth- and sixth-grade students were given reading passages of higher and lower interest and tested on their comprehension of these passages. Results revealed that higher interest materials significantly facilitated the reading comprehension of high ability students but had little effect on lower and middle ability students. (JD)

Reports on trends in the reading of popular scientific literature among students in Poland. (MKM)

A stratified sample of library books in an English junior school were analyzed in comparison to students' reading ages and interests. Findings indicated that the readability level of most books was too high and that a negative correlation existed between children's professed interests and the subject matter of library nonfiction. (Author/SJL)

Discusses two research questions that literature teachers must continually answer--their students' reading interests and how well their students read a text. Shows how research has both complicated and clarified these questions. (RL)

A survey of 500 children aged 8 to 14 pointed to an enormous gap between children's stated attitudes toward poetry and their actual interest in poetry, as measured by their recall of lines of poetry. (GT)

Reports findings of a study to determine whether significant differences existed in the word recognition and comprehension instructional levels of male and female fifth- and sixth-grade students in below average, average, and above average reading groups when presented with low and high interest content in informal reading inventories. (FL)

Discusses three obstacles to reading: the overproduction and cheap production of books, the extensive use of computer technology which hampers the development of reading habits, and the general decline of good writing and of the teaching of good writing skills. (JMF)

Describes how to involve nonreading students in the printed word. (DD)