A study examined student abilities to integrate semantically related propositions; and identified sources of comprehension difficulty for the unskilled reader. It also examined the influence of two types of relations (causal and adversative) and two types of connectives (conjunctions and verbs) on readers' comprehension, on-line integration of…

Four studies used the theoretically based understanding of comprehension developed by W. Kintsch and T. A. van Dijk to look for processes that might undergo development as a child becomes more practiced and skilled in reading so that an understanding of these processes might become the basis for reading remediation programs. The first three…

A reading instruction model that has proved to be successful with mildly handicapped students, regardless of their categorical label, is based upon three elements: curricular assessment, placement in an appropriate curriculum level, and data based instruction. For the curricular assessment, a sample passage (100 words) from each level (book) in a…

This study compared the effectiveness of intensive versus extensive courses to improve reading rate and comprehension. Subjects were 46 government employees who voluntarily enrolled in either a five-and-one-half-week course or in one of two eleven-week courses. The three courses were alike in hours of instruction, instructor, content, tests, and…

The present study employed discrete trial procedures to compare the performance of skilled and less-skilled third and sixth grade readers (N=37) on picture, letter and word naming tasks. It was assumed that if lack of proficiency in reading skill is due to a general name-retrieval deficit, then the skilled readers would be able to name each…

A study was conducted to replicate earlier findings regarding the relationships between letter, word, and text reading times and measures of reading achievement and to establish the stability of reading times measures and their relationships over a one-year period. Subjects included 150 children in eight age cohorts between grades one and six. The…

To test the assumption that conventional textbook prose contains words and word sequences unnecessary for comprehension, 210 blind children, all braille readers in grades 6, 7, 8, and 9, were divided into three groups and tested on a fictional story written in one of three different forms. Those forms included a traditional style (1620 words), a…

In a special developmental reading program designed to improve the reading skills of personnel employed by the Michigan Employment Security Commission, 40 vocational-development specialists were given six weeks of intensive reading instruction. Half of the class time was devoted to use of the PARADIGM lessons, which include activities for the…

The major purpose of this investigation was to determine the relative efficacy of two methods of teaching reading in a college learning-improvement project. Seventy students from undergraduate psychology classes were divided into two instructional groups and one control group. It was hypothesized that subjects receiving modified paperback scanning…

Concern is expressed here with college reading programs and with improvements needed to enable them to keep pace with the effects of rapid progress in the communications field on reading habits. Reading, especially critical reading, will be more necessary than ever in interpreting and evaluating all the ideas being gained or received from the…

Chapters 1 through 16 of this book offer information on how to increase reading efficiency, particulary for study material and textbooks. Chapters 17 through 24 deal with the evaluative reading skills. Individual chapters deal with skillful reading, planning an hourly schedule, reading speed, fixations in reading, skimming, concentration,…

This book, a comprehensive statement about the reading problems of adolescent students, relates the principles of learning and learning theory to the teaching of reading. Using a linguistic orientation, the author guides the teacher through the procedure for developing word recognition skills, comprehension skills, content-area reading skills, and…

The reading laboratory has been developed to supplement intensive reading work for adult foreign students developing English-as-a-second-language skills at the American Language Institute. The laboratory is designed to suggest to students that there is a variety of reading tasks and a variety of reading strategies related to the tasks, to offer…

IN A LARGE-SCALE FIELD TEST WITH FUNCTIONALLY ILLITERATE ADULTS, THIS PROJECT EVALUATED FOUR READING SYSTEMS--LEARNING TO READ AND SPELL, READING IN HIGH GEAR, MOTT BASIC LANGUAGE SKILLS PROGRAM, AND SYSTEMS FOR SUCCESS. TESTING WAS CONDUCTED IN SEVEN COMMUNITIES IN NEW YORK, THREE IN NEW JERSEY, AND FIVE IN CALIFORNIA, PROVIDING A MIXTURE OF…

Examines the word-reading strategies of a sample of second- and third-grade students in normal classrooms, focusing on the students' relative reliance on decoding versus sight-word associations. Suggests that lack of efficient decoding skills will begin to take a toll on reading comprehension by grade 3. (SR)