This report deals with a 2-week reading and study program developed for socially disadvantaged incoming freshmen at Rutgers University. Of the group studied, 84 percent were black, and the rest were white boys. Of the blacks, 53 percent were female. The organization of the skills acquisition program is described. Also given are informal and formal…

A voluntary remedial reading and study skills class for students whose ability in these areas is insufficient to meet college demands is described. After the initial diagnostic pretesting is complete, each student works with a tutor or instructor to design a learning program suited to his individual needs, with six or seven half-hour units per…

The relationship between learning style (impulsivity-constriction and stability-anxiety), reading scores, and scanning performance was investigated. Twenty high school students enrolled in a precollege reading and study skills program participated in an 80-trial (10-session) scanning experiment. The task involved searching for a target sentence…

Using string-manipulation algorithms, FORTRAN computer programs were designed for analysis of written material. The programs measure length of a text and its complexity in terms of the average length of words and sentences, map the occurrences of keywords or phrases, calculate word frequency distribution and certain indicators of style. Trials of…

The speed and accuracy of skilled and less skilled first-grade readers were assessed in the fall and spring. Children read random lists of words and coherent paragraphs. Poor decoding skills, rather than an inability to use content to facilitate word recognition, caused the poor performance of less skilled readers. (Author/BS)

Elementary school children's understanding was assessed after they read or listened to brief texts that described a scene, explained a sequence of events, or told a story. Results indicated that effectiveness in understanding depends on the fluency with which component processes of perceptual recognition, comprehension, and memory are coordinated.…

Verbal coding and listening comprehension ability differed among skilled and less skilled readers in second, third, and fifth grades. As verbal coding speed increased, comprehension skill became the more important predictor of reading skill. Apparently, verbal coding processes, which are slow, inhibit other reading processes. (Author/CP)

A study investigated effects of regular instruction and practice with prescription reading glasses with three adolescents with low vision. Two students demonstrated no advantage in reading large print and one student experienced a decreased reading rate using standard print and reading glasses. Students preferred reading standard print with…

Reports five experiments; the first two assessed the effect of the selectional restriction requirements of verbs and the animacy of nouns on sentence comprehension, the third determined the cause of the interaction found in the first set of studies, and the fourth and fifth were self-paced reading experiments. (52 references) (Author/CK)

The paper outlines the rationale and development of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) and its empirical support; summarizes two reading models (Chall's stages of reading development and LaBerge and Samuels' model of automaticity); and discusses how CBM, with its use of oral reading rate measures, and the reading models may validate each other.…

Examines whether the characteristic reading speed impairment of German dyslexic children resulted from a general skill-automatization deficit or a phonological deficit. Tests a dyslexic and nondyslexic group of boys in grade 2. Concludes that difficulties in learning to read are due phonological deficit and not a general skill-automatization…

Reading comprehension scores from the Wechsler Individual Achievement Tests, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, and the Gray Oral Reading Test were examined in relation to measures of reading, language, and other cognitive skills that have been hypothesized to contribute to comprehension and account for comprehension differences. In a sample of 97…

Lexical-decision studies with experienced English and French readers have shown that visual-word identification is not only affected by pronunciation inconsistency of a word (i.e., multiple ways to pronounce a spelling body), but also by spelling inconsistency (i.e., multiple ways to spell a pronunciation rime). The aim of this study was to…

A study examined the effects of different teacher styles on one variable related to classroom learning production. Subjects, 34 first grade middle- and lower-middle income students in a Catholic school matched by ability and randomly assigned to either an authoritarian, systematic, ordered, and controlling teacher or to a "laissez faire"…

Scores from the Stanford Achievement Tests administered to 50,000 students in Palm Beach County, Florida, were studied in order to determine whether the speeded nature of the reading comprehension subtest was related to inconsistencies in the score profiles. Specifically, the probable effect of random guessing was examined. Reading scores were…