Argues for the use of poetry reading in second language classrooms. Reviews literary and linguistic theories of poetry and synthesizes these theories within a psycholinguistic model of poetry reading, according to which the central aspect of poetry reading is the conscious negotiation of the formal structures of language for comprehension…

Challenges the assumption that female students enter college possessing greater verbal abilities than male students. The results of reading comprehension exercises conducted in introductory macroeconomics courses over a four-year period reveal little dichotomy in gender-specific performance. These findings are generally supported by SAT scores.…

Specific difficulties for the secondary student with reading difficulties are described, followed by a literature review of most promising practices, including peer tutoring that incorporates comprehension strategy instruction and elaborative strategies in history and science classes. Research using "Inspiration" software to generate spatially…

Investigated the effects of readers' gender, topic familiarity, enjoyment, and interest on second language reading. University students of Spanish completed a reading passage each day, a written recall comprehension task, and a questionnaire. Findings suggest that in addition to linguistic factors, other variables such as gender, passage content,…

The article describes an instructional intervention appropriate to improving student attitudes and achievement through attributional retraining and instruction in learning strategies, particularly mnemonic strategies. Application of the approach with learning-disabled students in reading comprehension and mathematics is reported. (DB)

Children's ability to adopt perspectives and then apply schematic information on-line while listening to stories was investigated in 2 experiments with 59 second graders and 60 fourth graders. Although both subject groups had the knowledge to identify errors, fourth graders were more likely to apply such knowledge on-line during comprehension.…

Investigates the effects of verbal and pictorial advance organizers on science text comprehension of children with high or low prior knowledge. Finds that verbal advance organizers assist text comprehension of children with strong prior knowledge, while the addition of a pictorial component aids comprehension of children with weak prior knowledge.…

Shares a curriculum framework based on six aspects of literacy: ownership, reading comprehension, writing process, word identification, language and vocabulary knowledge, and voluntary reading. Notes that this framework is consistent with a whole literacy approach, and includes an assessment system and provisions for accountability. (MG)

Reports results of the administration of a battery of tests of oral language skills to blind braille readers (N=15). Three skills were tested: phoneme deletion, sentence completion, and morphological analysis. Participants were congenitally blind high school students. Subjects differed from sighted readers only in the ability to perform…

Efficacious features claimed by experts who had rewritten texts were evaluated in 3 experiments involving 700 undergraduates and 52 instructional texts about Army job tasks. Some experts evidently had effective knowledge about improving text, but it was primarily procedural. (SLD)

Examines the effects on comprehension of instructing native English speakers in the organization of a scientific journal article written in French. Finds a significant main effect for instruction in text structure when the text was in canonical experimental report order and no significant difference when the text order was scrambled. (RS)

This review of 20 studies examines 3 predictions concerning the effects of conceptual models on students' understanding of scientific prose: (1) that models improve recall of conceptual information; (2) that they decrease verbatim retention; and (3) that they increase creative solutions on transfer problems. (SLD)

Examines the role of the teacher in enhancing students' reading comprehension. Finds that the teacher is a more significant factor in the comprehension of lengthy natural texts than is the ease of the text itself. (MG)

Suggests the following small group activities for improving reading comprehension: (1) introductory activities; (2) studying symbolic episodes; (3) synthesizing ideas within a literary unit; and (4) weaning students from teacher dependence. (JAD)

Results of an experimental study involving 49 sixth-grade science students suggest that teacher-constructed graphic organizers, regardless of position (before or after textual reading), are no more effective than traditional instruction in increasing comprehension and retention of science content-area information. (IAH)