A study investigated the use of reading proficiency scales developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), Educational Testing Service (ETS), and Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) for meaningful rank-ordering and assigning levels of second language competence to reading passages. In a proficiency test writing…

A case study addressed (1) the relationship between language ability and the use of top-level organizational strategies that focus on the macrostructure of written text, and (2) the comparative use of these strategies when reading expository texts in native language (L1) and second language (L2). Subjects were five Hispanic English as a second…

A study investigated the effect of properties of words and texts on the incidental learning of word meanings during normal reading. Subjects--352 students in third, fifth, and seventh grades--read either expository or narrative passages selected from grade-level textbooks, and after six days were tested on their knowledge of difficult words from…

Cognitive research of the 1970s has shown that both content factors (topical world knowledge and knowledge about textual organization) and process factors (attention, encoding, inference, retrieval, and executive monitoring) influence comprehension. Classroom research during the same decade has shown that the greater the proportion of time…

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 teacher's guide to an English as a second language (ESL) and geography module on changing modes of transportation in Canada is presented. The guide contains suggestions for use of module components, a transcription of the audiocassette, the answer key to student worksheets, and a list of resources. The module is designed primarily for secondary…

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…

A study was conducted to determine if interest in a basal reader story could be heightened and reading comprehension improved by (1) having the children predict the story content from the title prior to reading the story and (2) having them predict the outcome of the story at a salient midpoint. Subjects, 45 children in 2 fifth grade classes, were…

For the purpose of investigating instructional techniques that facilitate children's acquisition of reading comprehension skills in the middle and upper elementary grades, a 2-year inquiry into classroom instruction in reading comprehension was begun at the beginning of 1980. The initial focus of the study was on methods of assessment. Analytic…

Reading guides designed to take a reader through three levels of comprehension--literal, interpretive, applied--can be useful to the shop teacher. The actual teacher-led, hands-on activity at the third level helps students develop a sense of independence in the comprehension process. Organizational pattern guides also help students comprehend…

A three-part experiment was designed to determine the differential effects of using audio, print, or a combined form, together with an inserted organizational and attentional aid (mathemagenic device), or lack thereof, in a syllable lesson on the test scores of six types of community college students: those who were internally or externally…

A study was conducted to determine whether word length and sentence position influence the likelihood that a child will acknowledge that a word has disrupted comprehension of a reading passage. In the first task, third and fifth grade skilled and less-skilled readers read 16 short paragraphs containing nonsense words and reported whether the…

Since the time of E. B. Huey (1908), there have been clear indicators that oral language as a reflection of a child's linguistic ability has been clearly related to his or her reading achievement or comprehension. P. McKee (1937) and W. S. Gray (1937) both speculated that reading difficulties might parallel language deficiencies. G. Hildreth…

As part of the interdisciplinary Turko-Danish Fairytale Project, both an introspection and an essay study were conducted with Turkish university prep-school students and junior college students to determine their responses to three fairytales: "The Snake, the Fox, and the Man,""The Gold Apple," and "Per Smed's Whip."…

Intended for students taking the Grade 3 Language Arts Achievement Test in Alberta Canada, this booklet contains the reading portion of the test, which consists of 36 multiple choice questions related to the 10 stories, reports, poems, or short paragraphs provided in the booklet. The machine-readable answer sheet is included in the booklet. (EL)