A study tested the effects of hedges (which signal writers' tentative assessment of referential information) on readers' learning. Subjects, 145 ninth-grade students from three middle class junior high schools in a midwestern city who were ranked on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, participated in the experiment--74 were randomly assigned to an…

A study focused on the nature and effect of constraints on the hypotheses that learners make about the meanings of words. Two experiments were conducted at a large midwestern university: the first, involving 68 undergraduate students divided randomly into two groups, tested taxonomic and durative constraints on nouns, and time of day and cessation…

Articles in this yearbook contribute to a broad perspective of changing concepts of reading, each focusing attention on an area of major factors exercising current impact on reading and on the education of reading teachers. The articles and their authors are as follows: "Learning from Text" (T. Estes); "Untying the Gordian Knot" (W. Blanton and G.…

Psychometric and ethnographic frameworks were used to explore the relationships among adults' uses for reading and their demonstrated competencies with related domains of tasks. Information regarding frequently occurring reading tasks was gathered from 42 adults in both work and leisure settings by means of questionnaires, interviews, and…

Because of the difference between narrative and expository material, students in grades 4-12 require different reading skills, as well as different levels of skills to comprehend subject matter reading. This means the content area teacher has two roles: subject matter specialist and instructional leader. The following model suggests a process by…

Created by contributing teachers to provide Indiana teachers with new ideas for classroom reading activities, this set of cards (which can be kept in a resource file) may be used to motivate, challenge, and reinforce reading skills. The first card lists considerations for developing games, while the remaining cards describe approximately 40…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The seven titles deal with the following topics: (1) the teaching of reading using art as a teaching tool, (2) the effectiveness of a written cueing summary in increasing reading rate and retrieval speed in two content area subjects,…

Three studies were conducted to test the effectiveness of reciprocal teaching as a means of instructing seventh grade poor readers about activities they could use to increase comprehension and to ascertain that their comprehension was proceeding smoothly (comprehension monitoring). Reciprocal teaching involves having teacher and students take…

While listening comprehension is perhaps the most ignored area of the language arts, a review of the literature suggests that it is deserving of more classroom instructional time. Involving the simultaneous orchestration of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics, and knowledge of text structure, listening comprehension seems to be controlled by…

Basic Achievement Skills Individual Screener (BASIS) was designed by the Psychological Corporation to yield criterion-referenced information as well as normative scores. The constraints imposed by this dual purpose were increased by the requirements inherent in an individually-administered format and the short testing time consistent with test use…

This handbook was developed to help secondary school physical education teachers to encourage and promote reading in their programs. Guidelines and suggestions are offered on ways teachers can stimulate student reading by capitalizing upon interest in sport, and on ways teachers can reinforce vocabulary and comprehension skills. An introduction…

This primer was developed to help secondary school foreign language teachers to encourage and promote reading in their curricular programs. Guidelines and suggestions are offered on ways teachers can stimulate student reading by capitalizing on student interests and on ways teachers can reinforce vocabulary and comprehension skills. The manual's…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 425 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from textbooks in reading and literature, and the accompanying answer key. Each exercise carries the code letter of the section to which it…

Testwiseness (TW) and its effect on the reading comprehension scores in four ethnic populations (Black, Hispanic, Native American, and Anglo) from the Tucson Unified School District were investigated. Inservice-trained teachers presented seven classroom TW teaching and practicing sessions of 15 minutes each to students in grades 3, 5, and 7.…

The research and practical questions about the internal lexicon, the associated network of internal representation basic to word meaning, boil down to whether in reading English the phonological route is obligatory or optional. Since the English writing system is morphophonemic, not phonetic, access to the internal lexicon cannot and should not…