In the spring of 1985, the Oregon Department of Education conducted an assessment of eighth graders' skills in writing, reading, and mathematics. The state reading test consisted of two parts: the first designed to measure students' inferential and evaluative reading comprehension and selected study skills, the second designed to measure students'…

An exploratory study was carried out in four Los Angeles Title I elementary schools to determine what accounted for the comparatively high reading scores made by these schools' students on the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills; determine whether the schools were engaged in demonstrably effective educational practices that other Title I and…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The nine titles deal with the following topics: (1) the effects of syntactic differences between oral and written discourse on the reading comprehension of second and fifth grade students; (2) the effects of a sentence combining…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The seven titles deal with the following topics: (1) the effects of two mathemagenic activities on ninth grade good and poor readers' comprehension, retention, and attitudes; (2) the effectiveness of the cloze procedure in developing…

In order to bring about some continuity and coherence among the various English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses at the Universidad Simon Bolivar, a systematization project was undertaken. The purpose was to provide general guidelines for the production and future revision of materials while taking into account the specific characteristics of…

Information transfer techniques in the teaching of reading and listening in foreign language and English as a second language classrooms are discussed. Students may be presented with a written or spoken text and provided incomplete visual stimuli to be completed with information drawn from the text. The idea is that the learners are helped in…

A French-English guide to French diagnostic reading tests for French immersion classes, grades one through three, is presented. The "tests diagnostiques de lecture" are designed to indicate strengths and weaknesses in silent reading performance in French for early French immersion pupils in Canada and to integrate this information into…

Focusing on instruction in the English language arts by students for whom English is a second language, this yearbook contains the papers from the precongress institute, "Reading English in Asia," of the tenth International Reading Association World Congress on Reading--held in Hong Kong in 1984. Part 1 contains "Linguistic Theories and L2…

Intended to help dispel several unsupported "myths" about reading instruction, this book analyzes a selected group of teaching practices that have been supported by reading experts but not by research findings. The "myths" discussed in the first 12 chapters of the book are as follows: (1) phonics hinders comprehension; (2) unpredictable spelling…

A group of studies of children's understanding of narratives, the degree to which knowledge available in the child's first language is used in understanding second-language input, and the relationship between knowledge use in two languages as children become bilingual and acquire age-appropriate literacy skills are discussed. The subjects were…

The academic achievement in French of two cohorts of grade 9 students of a public school early immersion program in New Brunswick, which has total French-language instruction through grade 4 and includes all students in the program except transfers was compared to that of a group of native French-speaking students at a nearby French-language…

The content and utility of two models of reading comprehension tests, the basic skills assessment model and the multiple choice cloze (MCC) model, are discussed. The basic reading competency model assesses the ability to read or infer "basic" meanings from a range of written or symbolic communication, as is necessary for daily living in…

Systematic classroom observation instruments were used to study the relationship between observed classroom behaviors--specifically student coping style and teacher control--and student growth in reading. Classroom behaviors were recorded in the fall and the following spring with the use of the Coping Analysis Schedule for Educational Settings for…

These guidelines provide information about a program implementing State of Illinois legislation whereby school boards are empowered to grant one unit of foreign language credit to students exhibiting proficiency in a language other than English. The guide describes the types of students who are eligible for the program and the procedures for…

The experiment reported measured the degree to which cloze tests deliberately biased on the basis of contrastive analysis would actually be harder for Vietnamese than for speakers of other languages. The experiment tested the approach to ESL (English as a second language) for Vietnamese described in a guide for teachers of Vietnamese refugees…