This article discusses the first draft of three objective tests given to students of English as a foreign language in a high school in Rome, Italy. Students' answers on the tests (Listening Comprehension, Reading Comprehension, Grammatical Structures) are analyzed. The tests will be rewritten, based on these observations. (Text is in Italian.)…

This article examines teaching methods for developing foreign language comprehension in students, with attention to methods of testing comprehension. Reading materials should include journals, newspapers, and items concerning teenage culture. The English summary of a French text is recommended for testing comprehension; examples of this exercise…

Discusses informal reading inventories and suggests that teachers adjust the inventories to their own teaching practices to assure reflection of students' ability to perform in the classrooms. (MB)

Discusses a study which compared informal reading inventory formats and which found that the most accurate measurement involved silent reading followed by oral reading. (MB)

Reports three studies indicating that context has little effect on high school students' ability to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words. (HTH)

Summarizes good reading research published in journals during 1986, focusing on studies that deal with reading comprehension, prior learning, and word recognition. (SRT)

Discusses a preliminary and sketchy hypothesis of second language comprehension based on empirical investigations into strategies and processes specific to second language comprehension. (Author/CB)

Indicates that each instructional unit was composed of several mini-lessons rather than representing an integrated and related unit organized around a central purpose. Finds that lesson parts failed to make logical connections to previous or following parts. Concludes that the nature of reading lessons could be a contributing factor to the…

Measures the effects of infusing writing components into a university reading laboratory. Reports that reading improvement was significant with writing infusions but that results are inconclusive due to lack of true experimental design. (AEW)

Examination of two "simplified" adaptations of literary texts for less advanced learners of English as a second language found that attempts for lexical and linguistic simplification and linguistic standardization sometimes rendered the texts more difficult to comprehend and resulted in loss of narrative interest. (Author/CB)

Examines parents' level of education as a factor in readability of communications sent to parents. Concludes that a significant number of parents are unable to read these communications, and that readability and layout of materials should be prime considerations. (RS)

Discussion of ways in which second-language learners' processing of and interaction with narrative and expository texts affects their performance on cloze tests suggests that researchers and teachers interpreting these tests should not assume that such tests only assess language ability. (CB)

Reports on a study that examined the relationship between understanding of specific cohesive items and general reading comprehension ability, as well as differences in performance of girls and boys. Makes suggestions for the classroom based on the findings. (ARH)

States American schools are not producing critical readers. Discusses factors involved in critical reading failure, including lack of instruction and a school environment that stresses information recall. Asserts (1) critical reading skills are best taught directly; (2) content area teachers should emphasize critical reading; and (3) speaking,…

Investigates the effect of reading ability on graphically and contextually constrained oral reading errors of fourth grade readers at differing degrees of reading difficulty. Indicates that, at both low and high levels of difficulty, better readers relied on contextual information and poor readers relied more on graphic cues. (MS)