This paper describes an ongoing project to create an online version of a reading programme, a custom-designed English language proficiency course at a university in Japan. Following an interactionist view of second language acquisition, it was hypothesised that comprehension of a reading passage could be enhanced by online materials promoting…

This article summarizes the findings of research studies designed to improve the comprehension of expository text for students with learning disabilities. Twenty-nine studies were located that met the inclusion criteria. Interventions gleaned from the review were categorized as content enhancement (i.e., advance and graphic organizers, visual…

This article discusses walk-throughs as a valuable source of instructional data for teachers and administrators. Data gathering and analysis can be a dynamic and exciting process when walk-throughs are incorporated into a school's improvement plan as an instructional snapshot. At Norris High School in Firth, Nebraska, the principal uses…

The ultimate goal of reading is to construct text meaning based on visually encoded information. Essentially, it entails converting print into language and then to the message intended by the author. It is hardly accidental, therefore, that, in all languages, reading builds on oral language competence and that learning to read uniformly requires…

This report presents preliminary findings from the Reading First Impact Study, a congressionally mandated evaluation of the federal government initiative to help all children read at or above grade level by the end of third grade. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) established Reading First and mandated its evaluation. This document is…

This study reports on our design of a computer system which supports the understanding of how students construct their mental representation of references and how the construction failures impede their reading comprehension. Three modules, "User interface", "Recording", and "Feedback" were implemented. The…

In examining reading comprehension in a second language (L2), I have demonstrated that the prevailing metaphor of transfer of skills is misleading, and that what happens is access to an already existing general cognitive skill. There is evidence in first language (L1) and in L2 that accessing this skill when reading in an alphabetic language…

A series of five experiments tested the importance of four types of skill development (single-word decoding, vocabulary knowledge, knowledge of text schemas, and question-answering skills) for reading comprehension improvement. In two of three experiments involving undergraduates with no known reading problems, results indicated that teaching text…

Reading science text is not simply a process of translating printed symbols into meaning; it involves the interaction of the reader's prior knowledge, beliefs, concurrent experience, and the text in a sociocultural context to construct new meaning and understanding. The purposes of this study were to: explore the associations between metacognition…

Anticipating a possible future method of newspaper design (including multimedia content) and delivery, a study examined the interface among people, modality (paper, computer, multimedia), and three types of news story (news, sports, entertainment). The "primacy of print" theory (which predicts that information will be recalled better…

This study investigates whether or not the factor structure of reading comprehension is invariant across large, nationally representative samples of 14-year-old students from four different countries. The data from French-speaking Belgium, Hungary, Italy, and the United States were collected as part of the Reading Literacy Study of 1990-91,…

A study was conducted which addressed the following questions: (1) Do elementary school children infer word meanings from context?; (2) Are older students more successful in using context to infer the meanings of new words than younger students?; and (3) Is a longer context more facilitating to word meaning inference than a shorter context?; and…

A study examined the training of students to use context clues more effectively. Subjects were five fifth and sixth grade remedial students identified as low verbal students. The subjects were met with individually for 9 sessions of approximately 30 minutes each, prior to or following the school day. Two sessions were devoted to testing and seven…

A study investigated the effectiveness of training students in think-aloud procedure to improve reading comprehension. Subjects were two groups of Taiwanese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). In the first week, a think-aloud training session was given to one group. Then both groups were asked to read an English passage and…

Possible population differences in speed versus level of Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) reading comprehension scores were explored. The study used operational measures computed post hoc from item-level data in GRE files for a pre-October 1977 version of the verbal test in which 40 GRE reading comprehension (RC) items were included as a…