A two-part study investigated the effects of a text adjunct on poor readers' recall and comprehension. The text adjunct, a thematic organizer, was designed to define explicitly the central theme of a passage, relate the theme to students' prior knowledge, and provide cohesion among the ideas of the passage to accommodate text structure. Subjects…

More than 1,000 studies of reading research published between July 1, 1982, and June 30, 1983 are summarized in this report. The studies are arranged into six categories: (1) Summaries of Reading Research, (2) Teacher Preparation and Practice, (3) The Sociolgy of Reading, (4) Physiology and Psychology of Reading, (5) The Teaching of Reading, and…

A study investigated the role of phonemic information in young readers' silent reading comprehension. Subjects, 56 children in grades 2 and 4, from Seattle parochial schools, were blocked into groups based on their grade and skill level (skilled and less skilled). Each subject saw 48 sentences presented in a random order on an Apple II…

This report describes the development and validation of the Test of Inference Ability in Reading Comprehension: a scaled-answer, multiple-choice test intended for use in Grades 6, 7, and 8. The report discusses the need for and conceptualization of assessment of inference ability; proposes standards and principles of inference appraisal; and…

To measure the effectiveness of the computer based instructional system designed to develop the writing and reading skills of kindergarten and first grade students, Writing to Read (WTR), which was implemented by three Kettering (Ohio) Elementary Schools in l988 and three more in 1989, was examined in five areas related to the program. Results…

Undergraduate English faculty and faculty in six graduate fields were surveyed about students' academic listening needs. The objectives were (1) to obtain perceptions of the importance to academic success of various listening skills and activities, (2) to assess the degree to which both native and non-native speakers experience difficulties with…

Intended for use by curriculum specialists, administrators, resource teachers, classroom teachers, and teachers of special reading programs, this guide for language arts in grades 9 through 12 offers general suggestions and specific activities for integrating the language arts. Skill areas covered include (1) imagining, (2) describing, (3)…

Experiments reported in this document were intended to shed light on the linguistic and presentational issues surrounding the provision of a subtitling service for deaf schoolchildren. A series of formal experiments was carried out to evaluate deaf children's appreciation of subtitled television programs. (These experiments are described in detail…

Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, this book summarizes and puts into a coherent framework the research on reading processes conducted by cognitive psychologists since the early 1970s. The book focuses on the process of reading: how information is extracted from the printed page and comprehended. Part 1 provides…

A study examined acquisition of new vocabulary through oral stories in first-, third-, and fifth-grade children. Each subject heard four stories, each including four nonsense words repeated three times. These novel words represented common nouns whose meanings could be derived from propositional information associated with their occurrence. The…

Drawing on a cross-national study of children's reading, a study examined the correlates of reading success and failure in Taiwan. Subjects, 240 randomly selected Taipei fifth graders, were administered a reading test, cognitive test, and mathematics achievement test. A structured interview with each child's mother and classroom behavior…

Intended for classroom teachers, this guide contains outcomes and objectives for grades K-12 that are intended to be used for improving the teaching and learning of reading skills. The prefatory section of the document briefly presents the goals of the program, suggestions for implementation, and a definition of terms. A reading concepts chart is…

This document presents diagnostic and prescriptive techniques that will enable teachers to enhance secondary school students' learning through reading in content areas. Three terms used in the document are defined in Section I: "vocabulary skills" include word attack skills, sight word skills, and word meanings; "comprehension skills" are literal,…

Addressed to all concerned with reading assessment, including teachers, administrators, testmakers, and policymakers, this book describes some of the major problems involved in reading assessment and provides guidelines for the improved use of reading tests. The first chapter, on reading measurement in perspective, discusses the historical context…

The IBM Writing to Read program for children in kindergarten and first grade uses computers with voice output and IBM selectric typewriters to encourage writing and hence reading development. A study examined whether increased writing activity without the use of the technology would produce similar gains in reading. A classroom from the IBM…