A secondary school remedial reading instructor developed activities in an effort to turn the reading lab into a learning-how-to-learn-from-the-text lab. The objectives of the two consecutive reading lab courses were to increase writing, listening, and speaking skills, as well as reading skills. The first activity was designed to help students…

The failure of many beginning reading students to become efficient or enthusiastic readers is due to mistaken views of the reading process that cause teachers to stress isolated reading skills and error-free oral reading, rather than focusing on children's ability to read with understanding. Teachers who want to teach differently must take an…

Parsing sentences into meaningful phrases and clauses is an essential step in language comprehension, and parsing difficulty is a common reading problem. Prosody (intonation, stress, and rhythm) provides information about phrase and clause boundaries in spoken language that is not available in written language. In an experiment to test whether…

A revision of "Effective and Efficient Study," a guide to effective study for university students, is presented. Topics include: self-evaluation using a checklist of factors involved in college reading and study problems; self-evaluation regarding test anxiety; organizing work and budgeting time; remembering effectively; improving…

Reading instruction is being incorporated as a natural part of the social studies curriculum because of the emphasis which is being placed on basic skills and teacher accountability. In order for long term improvement of reading/social studies skills to occur social studies teachers must develop a systematic and deliberate approach to reading…

Based on the view that text-specific concept and vocabulary knowledge affect the processing and recall of text and that a measure of this knowledge might assist teachers in determining whether a reader possesses adequate background to successfully comprehend and recall a particular text, a study was conducted. Its purpose was to develop a measure…

This study investigated the relationship between grammatical errors and communication breakdown by examining native speakers' ability to correct grammatical errors. The assumption was that communication breakdown exists to a certain degree if a native speaker cannot correct the error or if the correction distorts the information intended to be…

The "primacy of reading" hypothesis as the explanation for the high correlation between children's competencies in literacy and numeracy is rejected in this paper. Instead, a "primacy of speech perception" hypothesis is examined. It is suggested that analysis-by-synthesis speech recognition procedures are acquired in early childhood and that the…

Five essays for reading instructors at two-year colleges are provided in this issue of "Forum for Reading." First, Kent Smith notes the increased recruitment of underprepared students and argues that colleges are responsible for assuring that admissions personnel, administrators, and faculty know the types of students they can and cannot…

A study was undertaken to document, through data gathered from surveys, interviews, and observations, the approaches fourth grade elementary school teachers were using to teach reading comprehension. The study focused on the actual teacher behaviors, methods, and materials rather than on what reading methods, texts or basal series' manuals said…

A REVIEW OF 124 ARTICLES PERTAINING TO COLLEGE AND ADULT READING WHICH APPEARED IN THE PERIODICAL LITERATURE IS PRESENTED. THE ARTICLES ARE TREATED WITHIN THE FOLLOWING AREAS--(1) PROGRAMS, INCLUDING READING AND STUDY HABITS, TRAITS, AND SKILLS, (2) THE INFLUENCE OF READING, STUDY HABITS, AND SKILLS, (3) THE FACTORS INFLUENCING READING AND OTHER…

A CONTINUATION OF A FIRST-GRADE STUDY OF THREE APPROACHES TO BEGINNING READING AND OF THEIR EFFECT ON GROWTH IN COMPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION SKILL IS REPORTED. THE BASAL, THE MODIFIED LINGUISTIC, AND THE LINGUISTIC APPROACHES WERE STUDIED. TWENTY-ONE SECOND-GRADE CLASSROOMS IN THREE CENTRAL NEW YORK SCHOOL DISTRICTS PARTICIPATED IN THE…

THIS STUDY COMPARED THE EFFECTIVENESS OF A STANDARD BASAL READING PROGRAM WITH AN INDIVIDUALIZED READING PROGRAM WHICH INCORPORATED (1) A PROGRAM OF PHONETIC SKILLS, (2) WORD RECOGNITION, (3) COMPREHENSION SKILLS, AND (4) A PROGRAM OF STORY READING. TWELVE COMBINATION FIRST- AND SECOND-GRADE INDIVIDUALIZED READING CLASSES WERE PAIRED WITH 12 BASAL…

A study investigated one aspect of the speech/reading comprehension relationship--that between the ability to select the correct standard English verbal endings (-s and -ed) and the ability to recognize the tense of a passage when time information was encoded primarily in the verbs and adverbs. Subjects were 135 third, sixth, and ninth grade…

This study attempted to determine whether systematic inclusion of cloze exercises in a sixth grade social studies unit would influence students' reading growth, long term recall, and interest in the material. During the nine-week study, 21 students in the experimental group and 21 students in the control group read the same materials; after each…