A study was conducted in Cuyahoga Community College's (Ohio) Principles of Economics classes to determine: (1) whether microcomputer-assisted instruction using tutorial/drill programs would significantly increase students' learning of economic concepts as measured by pre- and post-tests; (2) the relationship between demographic variables and pre-…

A 3-phase project to adapt, develop, and evaluate computer-aided instructional materials in elementary education basics (specifically word recognition, reading comprehension, and mathematics) for Alaska Native and American Indian students included in its design and planning phase a conference with project staff and six nationally recognized…

All first, second, and third grade teachers in one rural southwestern school district were observed to find out (1) what they were doing while their reading groups read stories, (2) whether they changed their teaching strategies when they changed reading groups, and (3) whether their strategies during story reading changed from grade to grade.…

A study investigated whether reading comprehension would improve if children were made aware of story grammar and were asked schema-related questions. Subjects were 33 fifth grade students, half scoring on or above grade level and half scoring below grade level on the reading section of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests. During 11 sessions, 45…

To compare both the effect of and the student attitude toward instruction in outlining and graphic organization, 72 grade 10 world history students were divided into three treatment groups. Two groups, one of which had previously received 14 weeks of summarization training, were instructed in a three-step procedure for creating a graphic organizer…

Three sets of experiments compared skilled and unskilled college and school age (sixth through eighth grade) readers' processing of spoken and printed sentences in isolation and in story context. The two types of readers differed in their processing of the structural, thematic, and schematic properties of sentences in both reading and listening.…

A series of experiments were conducted to determine what information readers use when they read to understand a story. The experiments examined both skilled adult readers and children beginning to read. Oral reading was used both because elementary school teachers frequently ask children to read aloud and because oral reading provides an…

As both draw upon language and experience, and both deal with meaning, writing and reading can be learned concurrently. Writing activities having a positive effect on reading skills include notetaking and sentence combining exercises. A more productive way of improving reading comprehension through writing is to have students base their writing on…

The "levels effect," the finding that the more central to the meaning of a passage an idea is the more likely that idea is to be retained, does not seem to hold for immediate recognition. Therefore, a study was conducted to test a model of information storage that predicted that when surface structure information was preserved in its…

Intended for use by volunteer tutors who work one-on-one with individuals, this handbook offers information related to successful volunteer programs. The first chapter of the handbook provides a foundation for training volunteer tutors by discussing important qualities for successful reading programs and topics to be considered for instructional…

A study was conducted to verify the findings of previous research showing that a difference in recall of superordinate and subordinate level concepts existed among various reading ability groups within the same grade of elementary school children. Instead of especially constructed passages used in the previous studies, the study used actual…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: (1) the effectiveness of a linguistically based and a nonlinguistically based spelling program on the spelling competency of elementary pupils; (2) the effectiveness of spelling…

This article addresses the role of perceived self-efficacy during self-regulated learning--learning that occurs from students' self-generated behaviors systematically oriented toward the attainment of learning goals. Self-efficacy refers to personal beliefs about one's capabilities to behave in ways necessary to attain desired performances. A…

A study hypothesized that if prediction, clarification, question-generation, and summarization strategies were taught using scaffolded instruction, then poor comprehenders might be able to learn the strategies so that they could apply them to text on their own and thereby improve their performance on standardized comprehension measures. Subjects…

In an effort to predict whether field dependent readers would be adversely affected by postreading tasks involving high memory demands and requiring restructuring skills, a study assessed how the field dependent-independent cognitive style may be related to performance on reading comprehension question tasks for school-age learners. Subjects, 55…