This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of the single-parent family on reading comprehension and attitude toward reading; (2) the relationship between first grade children's reading…

Project READ, an alternative language arts program for low-performing elementary students (grades 1 through 8), has been underway for 2 years in the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools. Targeted students include those identified as learning disabled and those who have auditory and/or visual memory problems. This report describes the second-year…

The 1986 and 1988 Reading Objectives Assessment of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reflects a consensus of opinion about the processes of reading for grades 4, 8, and 12. The objectives are based on an interpretation of reading as an interactive process between the reader, the reader's purposes and previous experiences, the…

A study investigated the effectiveness of self-instructional strategies in enhancing the word recognition skills of learning disabled elementary school children. Subjects were 30 students in learning disabilities resource rooms whose word recognition skills were at least one year below expectancy, as measured by a standardized reading test, and…

Previous studies of unusually effective urban schools have focused on school characteristics considered influential in the schools' success, but few provide specific guidance for improving achievement in other schools. This study sought to describe organizational processes and arrangements within elementary schools implementing the Chicago Mastery…

The associations among cognitive automatization, abstract problem solving, and educational performance were studied using 127 fourth to ninth grade students. A number of measures of fast, automatic, and fluent performance (FAF measures) were used: writing the alphabet; reading from a word list; and mentally performing arithmetic operations. The…

The ability to correctly answer reading comprehension test items, without having read the accompanying reading passage, was compared for third grade learning disabled students and their peers from a regular classroom. In the first experiment, fourteen multiple choice items were selected from the Stanford Achievement Test. No reading passages were…

With traditional science textbooks still dominating the market, it is projected that the use of print material and related reading skills will persist as the prime method of science instruction. The need to research reading-science issues exists. This paper attempts to define the task or desired outcomes of research in reading-science dimensions.…

To investigate whether teachers asked questions during reading lessons in order to evaluate rather than teach comprehension, the discourse of 11 reading lessons was audiotaped in four elementary school classrooms. Transcripts of the lessons were analyzed to identify the function and source of teacher questions and the accuracy, cognitive level,…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 30 in Alberta, Canada, this test contains (1) general instructions, (2) two minor assignments consisting of literature readings about which the student must write a personal response, and (3) a major assignment requiring students to show how the authors they studied in senior…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 30 in Alberta, Canada, this test contains (1) general instructions, (2) two minor assignments consisting of literature readings about which the student must write a personal response, and (3) a major assignment requiring students to show how the authors they studied in senior…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this test on writing contains general instructions and three sections: (1) personal response to literature, which requires a response about an aspect of literature; (2) functional writing, which requires a written response within a given situation or…

Intended for students taking the Grade 12 Diploma Examination in English 33 in Alberta, Canada, this test on writing contains general instructions and three sections: (1) a personal response to literature, which requires a response about some aspect of literature; (2) functional writing, which requires a written response within a given situation…

This paper discusses the role of intelligence in language comprehension. In the study reported, an attempt is made to determine how much of the variability in English reading scores of non-native speakers of English can be predicted on the basis of intelligence alone. In the study, three measures of reading comprehension are used: a traditional…

A study investigated whether syntactic differences between oral and written discourse interfere with the comprehension of beginning readers. Subjects were 28 second grade and 28 fifth grade students who read, orally, versions of stories identical in nature except for the structure of their syntactic patterns. One version contained structures more…