A study assessed the ability of 20 eleventh grade students to recognize particular stylistic features when reading and then to use such features in their writing. Half the subjects were given a model paragraph from an Edgar Allen Poe story, without having the story identified for them, while the other half received only a verbal summary of the…

Aimed at improving the methodology used in comprehension research, this paper analyzes the designs and interpretations of intervention training studies and suggests the implications of that analysis for future research. It points out that the typical training approach, deriving data from three sources--comprehension tests administered to older…

Current research on information processing suggests that short term memory plays a central role in the sorting and manipulation of text information during reading. Because an entire text cannot be processed simultaneously, successive "chunks" or units of information enter the short term memory where they are compared to the reader's previous…

To determine what positive benefits to school learning might accrue from competence in Black English, a study explored the hypothesis that the rich and varied experience that black youth typically have with figurative language outside of school would enhance their understanding of figurative language in school texts. Subjects included 157 black…

People construct macrostructures to reduce and organize incoming semantic information. When they make a prediction on a paper's outcome based on the work's first sentence or paragraph, readers are using preliminary input to construct a macroproposition about the paper's focus. The macrostructure may be explicitly stated--either in the opening…

Providing a summary of the psychological research on children's reading comprehension, this book explores the psychology of the reading process by concentrating on the development of reading comprehension skills. The book analyzes both the skills of fluent adult readers and the development of children's language from the age of five, when most…

This inventory is designed to identify individuals' reading abilities, their attendant strengths and weaknesses, and the difficulty level of materials most appropriate for instruction. The inventory allows the user to measure reading achievement; determine the independent, instructional, and frustration reading levels; and diagnose an individual's…

A study (conducted in suburban central New Jersey using 218 second graders' California Achievement Test (CAT) scores from 1986-1988 compared the effectiveness of two well-known reading programs. Results indicated that although there was no statistically significant difference in the scores, the mean difference suggested that children who were…

A series of studies addressed basic questions about instruction in subject areas such as science and social studies at the elementary level, focusing on group discussion of textbook content and addressing the effects of instruction in terms of students' knowledge acquisition and their independent reading comprehension of new content. Subjects,…

To understand what kinds of mental processing take place during reading and how the child encodes information that is presented, a study investigated the comprehension of a story by asking the reader to take part actively in the decision-making of the protagonist. Subjects, 56 children from a fourth- and sixth-grade class at an elementary school…

This annotated bibliography, a project undertaken by graduate students enrolled in a comparative reading course at Northern Illinois University, supplements and updated E. Malmquist's annotated bibliography, "Handbook on Comparative Reading." The bibliography contains 188 annotations drawn from a range of articles, chapters, and texts…

According to Wolfgang Iser's "The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response," the meaning of a literary text is created by each individual reader in response to gaps, or indeterminacies, in the text. With the application of this theory to the two-year college classroom, teachers can show inexperienced readers how to discover the meaning of…

An investigation examined student-generated texts in terms of both traditional and more theoretically valid readability to determine what factors influence comprehension when children read their own, peer, and adult-written texts. Seventy dictated stories created in an earlier study, along with 4 first-grade level stories from the "Reader's…

Intended for administrators and reading teachers, this book deals with the issues about reading that seem to be the most common causes of concern. The topics discussed are the following: a general approach to the teaching of reading, ways to involve parents with reading, a prereading program, the organization of a reading program, the process of…

Speech communication theorists have defined certain rhetorical characteristics that may improve the use and production of written texts. In order to determine whether social studies textbooks have rhetorical characteristics--containing both content information and the author's attitudes toward it--and whether these characteristics have the desired…