In this article, the authors offer a selection of strategies that teachers can regularly use to help students tame the difficulties they often encounter with social studies texts for the middle grades. They have taken a thematic approach to the strategies, basing all of them on the topic of Civil War. Furthermore, because the authors are convinced…

Because figurative expressions have become conventional components of everyday language, we are typically unaware of the true extent of the metaphorical nature of language. Some popular idioms, proverbs, and metaphoric expressions are so deeply embedded into language that they are comprehended immediately when used in oral conversations, without…

This paper reviews recent experimental findings that inform our understanding of the development of reading comprehension. Studies investigating children who have specific difficulties with reading comprehension provide considerable information concerning the process involved in successful reading comprehension. This literature highlights aspects…

This article discusses methods for evaluating students' content-area literacy skills. Four specific factors that affect content-area literacy are described: vocabulary knowledge, topic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and textbook readability, along with methods of evaluating each of the factors. Most of these methods have not yet been…

Previous research has shown that individual differences in working memory (WM) are highly predictive of a wide range of cognitive behaviours. Until recently, research has focused on monolingual, or undifferentiated, populations. The present research compares metacognitive awareness, as measured by self-ratings of reading, writing, speaking and…

This paper examines evaluation in reading. Evaluation refers to the processes by which readers monitor their ongoing text comprehension to assess performance and task difficulties. Monitoring is assumed to explain a large proportion of individual differences in text comprehension, in that individuals need to be aware of their objectives and…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a phonologically based reading program delivered to first- through sixth-grade impaired readers (N=115) in small groups. Post-tests after program completion found the program resulted in significantly better phonological awareness, decoding, reading accuracy, comprehension, and spelling. Improved skills…

A lack of reading quantity in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classrooms has remained one of the most serious problems faced by teachers of English in Japan. Although the extensive reading (ER) approach is regarded as having significant potential in addressing this problem, it is not used in many EFL classrooms. This study investigates the…

Research and theory on second language reading has reached heightened dimensions in recent years. It is through reading that learners access much information concerning the target language and culture, and consequently reading is an important part of almost all language programs across stages of acquisition. The purpose of this article is to offer…

The vast majority of American-born adults are exposed to written language from a very early age. Most Americans live in a print-based society where letters and words are everywhere! Drive, walk, or bike down any American street and you will see numerous eye-catching billboards, signs, and storefronts. Our towns, cities, neighborhoods, and homes…

Background: Almost every aspect of modern life is affected in some way by technology. Many people utilize technology from dawn to dusk to communicate; make decisions; reflect, gain, synthesize, evaluate or distribute information, among many other functions. One would be hard pressed to find a single professional, regardless of career field,…

This study investigated the effects of linguistic simplification and content schemata on reading comprehension and recall. The participants, 240 Iranian male students of English as a foreign language (EFL), were divided into 4 homogeneous groups, each consisting of 60 participants (30 with high proficiency and 30 with low proficiency). To elicit…

This paper examines research studies, which focus on interventions commonly used with students who are learning disabled and identifies effective methods that produce substantial benefits concerning reading comprehension. This paper synthesizes previous observation studies by conducting a meta-analysis of strategies used to improve the reading…

This paper reports on an investigation about the relation between a student's conscious awareness of the structure of a sentence and the degree of his/her intonation accuracy as well as his/her reading comprehension. The research was done based on the hypothesis that: "if the students are made conscious of the infrastructure of lengthy…

This study investigated the effects of Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) on the reading skills of urban middle-school students using novels as the curriculum. Teacher-led instruction was compared with CWPT and CWPT plus a lottery contingency for appropriate on-task and tutoring behaviors. Three sixth-grade general education reading classes under the…