Noting that children must be provided with the opportunity to read various types of text as early as possible if they are to develop into strategic and self-directed readers, this paper presents research evidence to show that every text type makes unique demands on readers. The first section of the paper discusses reading in the school context,…

The 23 articles chosen for this anthology of Yetta M. Goodman's writings were chosen based on historical importance, centrality to her body of work, availability, and/or ongoing relevance to teachers. The articles in the anthology are grouped to reflect major themes (culture and community; miscue analysis, reading strategies, and comprehension;…

A study examined how beliefs and attitudes influence the processing of information: people tend to distort contradictory information to make it consistent with their pre-existing beliefs and attitudes and to use it to bolster their initially held convictions. The study addressed the degree to which people believed that HIV causes AIDS. Subjects,…

Repeated readings, story retellings, and dramatic reentactments allow students to become more aware of stories and more familiar with the structure of the stories. Another comprehension strategy is a cloze procedure called the story frame. A story frame uses phrases such as: "This story begins when"; "and then";…

A study tested whether an intervention involving collaboration and the integration of reading and writing would build sixth-grade students' schemata for comparison/contrast and cause/effect text. Subjects were 76 students in 7 sixth-grade classes in 2 urban middle schools. Four of the classes were randomly chosen as the treatment group. For the…

A study determined the effect of shared writing activities on reading comprehension. The subjects, 40 second- and third-grade students from a suburban school in Mercer County, West Virginia, completed the Reading Comprehension Subtest of the Comprehension Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) for grade 2 as a pretest. A control group of 20 students were…

This final report details the results of a federally funded project designed to investigate reading comprehension in students with learning disabilities and their ability to identify themes. The first part of the report discusses reading instruction and students with learning disabilities, and provides an overview of the research. The second…

A study examined the literacy practices in community colleges, comparing literacy practices in occupational/technical classrooms with those in academic/liberal arts classrooms. "Literacy" is taken to mean both reading and writing and to include texts that are non-verbal--graphic or symbolic. The study was carried out by 8 researchers…

A study examined children's theme comprehension of non-religious moral children's stories. The study used 3 tasks of ascending difficulty: (1) selecting the moral theme when it is found in a multiple-choice context; (2) identifying the story-with-the-same-message when the message is found in a new context; and (3) moral message construction (a…

This book suggests that learning to read should be a right for all children. From this viewpoint, the book constructs a bridge between current knowledge of reading processes and educational practice by incorporating a comprehensive range of theory, practice, and research, and a solid foundation in education and psychological science. Topics…

There is continuous debate about which word recognition techniques should be taught, especially to early primary grade pupils. All learning activities provided in reading instruction should: (1) be meaningful; (2) have perceived purpose; (3) be interesting; (4) stress understandings, skills, and affective goals; (5) provide for individual…

This paper presents a series of reading and writing activities centered around a 19-item word list suitable for use in tutoring adults. The activities in the paper involve short stories, writing exercises, and take-home exercises. Included with the activities is a guide that presents, in addition to the word list and the exercises, instructions…

A study investigated whether lowering the reading level of a health education pamphlet would increase comprehension by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) readers. The reading level of a general pharmacy education handout was lowered by changing vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization, by highlighting the main idea of each point, and…

This paper focuses on ways to include collaborative learning experiences in reading/writing courses as a method of addressing the demands for improving the communication skills of college students. It includes suggestions drawn from methods used in a college developmental reading class (which can, however, be modified for other types of classes),…

A study determined if regular listening to oral reading by the teacher affected fourth-grade students' level of comprehension. Subjects were 47 students from an elementary school in central New Jersey. Twenty-five students were read to for 30 minutes daily for 8 weeks in addition to their regular classroom reading instruction. The remaining 22…