Whereas an earlier report summarized six phases of the Learning from Text Project, including expansion and organization, this final report consists of five parts: (1) explanation of a model for learning from text in a classroom situation, (2) application of the learning from text model to analysis of data for eight California campuses, (3)…

To provide a test of the notion that criterial task knowledge facilitates learning and, consequently, performance in studying, a study examined the effects of an explicit prereading task directive and an explicit postreading criterion on the studying behaviors of 40 college undergraduates. After presentation of a prereading task directive prepared…

As individuals read, they construct meaning at various levels, including literal, interpretive, and critical. One part of this comprehension act is creative reading, which may be promoted by self-questioning so that students become personally involved in the material they read. To guide students' self-questioning strategies, teachers can both pose…

A description is given of a writing lab in which teacher education students from a content area reading class helped English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners improve their writing. The activity employed an instructional technique called "reformulation." First, each ESL student wrote a relatively short essay (300-400 words) on a selected topic.…

The elimination of adult functional illiteracy has been declared a national priority. More than the ability to decipher a given text, functional literacy means the practical application of literacy skills to life in a particular society or group. But this in turn demands that the individual have enough prior knowledge of the surrounding culture…

Noting that research examining the SQ3R study strategy has raised more questions than it has answered, this paper presents a review of such research, taken from the ERIC database, "Psych Abstracts," and "Dissertation Abstracts." The paper divides the studies by educational level: elementary, junior and senior high school, and…

The seven articles in this issue are concerned with the various uses of literature and literature study in the English curriculum, specifically to enhance thinking, teach composition, educate the emotions, develop reading comprehension and critical reading skills, explore and develop morals, and evoke a common culture. The titles of the articles…

One portion of a course in English for Science and Technology (EST) designed for foreign nuclear engineers studying at Oregon State University dealt with the conceptual paragraph, considered a basic unit of discourse in EST. The conceptual paragraph is defined as a group of rhetorically related concepts developing a generalization to form a…

The ways in which students in grades five and six solve problems is the focus of this paper, which provides background for the staff of the Skills Essential to Learning Television Project, (a multi-level series of video and print resources for classroom use). It considers the problem-solving process categories of understanding, transformation, and…

Data-based studies comparing effectiveness of middle schools to traditional or other schools are almost nonexistent. The middle school movement may have gained acceptance as a reaction to the failures of junior high schools and as a response to improved understanding of the nature of the learner. The state of Pennsylvania bases the organization of…

This annotated bibliography contains listings of 7 publications on literacy, 16 on reading, and 14 on writing. These professional materials include books, collections of articles, research reports, proposals, program descriptions, descriptions of teaching methods, dictionaries, teacher guides, and exercises/strategies for the learner. Materials in…

Readability formulas can be useful tools in accomplishing their primary purpose--to give very general estimates of difficulty. Unfortunately, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding regarding their use, which has resulted in misuse and abuse. The formulas were designed to be applied post hoc to existing materials. They were not intended to…

Twenty randomly selected subjects in inner city schools at grades 2, 5, 8, and 11 participated in a study that examined whether (1) the number of cohesive units produced in writing will be greater for older students than for younger subjects; (2) the use of cohesive ties in consecutive sentences (a measure of awareness of audience) will increase…

Because of the limitations of two recent major reviews of the research on studying another review of the literature was conducted. Articles chosen for this review supplied adequate information about levels of processing and encoding specificity, investigated the effects of student-generated as opposed to teacher-provided study aids on…

By examining the full range of uses of the cloze procedure, this book intends to help teachers use the procedure to better understand the reading behavior of their students and to assist their students in making reading progress. Chapter 1 defines the cloze procedure and discusses the similarities and differences in reading processes when using…