A study was conducted to determine the relationship between processing load and ability to locate text segments containing intersentence contradictions. It was hypothesized that less able readers fail to exhibit comprehension monitoring skills because most tasks overload their processing capacity. Subjects were 87 fourth and sixth grade students…

A study examined secondary teachers' present knowledge of the reading skills needed by their students. Subjects, 76 teachers of 15 different high school subjects, were asked (1) what specific reading skills they considered most necessary for their students to be able to read subject area materials, (2) what reading skills their students are best…

Punctuation serves as a system of visual markers that contradict previously generated false grammatical expectations. Word order conditions define the redundant or critical aspect of punctuation cues to visual display. Parsing (grouping) sentences into meaningful phrases and clauses aids language comprehension, and children who have reading…

A collection of papers on teaching English listening comprehension includes: "The Use of Authentic Sound Materials for Beginners" (Anuska Nakic); "Empathetic Listening" (Mario Rinvolucri); "The Pedagogic Authenticity of a Text" (Henri Besse); "A Team-Teaching Approach to Lecture Comprehension for Overseas Students" (A. Dudley-Evans, T. F. Johns);…

Online practice tests and quizzes are commonly available to higher education students. The extent of student use of such study tools and the relationship of use to achievement, however, have not been fully investigated. One hundred twelve college students were encouraged to use optional online quizzes in preparation for proctored examinations.…

In order to investigate the development of word-formation abilities, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-olds were asked to act out with toys, judge, and make up sentences containing instances of class extension. Some sample sentences are "Can you upside-down the clown?" and "Broom the spoon." Children dealt with such sentences in much the same…

This paper discusses the central theoretical aspects of the "Languaging in the Content Areas" (LICA) thesis, intended to provide postelementary reading with a sense of definition and purpose compatible with contemporary needs and conditions. The objective of the LICA thesis is not merely to teach students how to read critically what has been…

Children's well-developed oral language skills obviously facilitate their reading and learning to read. In contrast to a traditional position which contends that reading comprehension equals oral comprehension skills plus decoding, this paper claims that a child must learn (and, perhaps, unlearn) many more skills in the transition from oral…

Translating legal and bureaucratic language into plain, comprehensible English is not amenable to simple rules and procedures. Rewriting comprehensibly requires specialized knowledge about language and an awareness of a number of misconceptions and pitfalls. This paper discusses what not to do in rewriting, based upon rewritten documents presently…

The purpose of this teaching unit is to improve the reading skills of fifth grade students, particularly reading comprehension, by increasing their knowledge about how language works. The three sections of the unit introduce the students to the concepts of context clues and paraphrasing (words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories) and give the…

The construct validity of measures of reading comprehension was discussed. A word deletion procedure was proposed consistent with a model of comprehension which emphasizes the importance of context. The procedure assures sensitivity to context by allowing only highly constrained words to be deleted and by increasing the information value of…

The effectiveness of an eight week college course for reading/study skills improvement was evaluated by pretesting and posttesting 152 students with the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and the Optimum Reading Achievement Test and running simple correlations between reading rate, comprehension, vocabulary, and 18 variables that included ACT scores, grade…

Discusses using key words as carriers of meaning for sentences, offering sample sentences in the fields of (1) dictation and guided narration, (2) structural pattern drills, (3) spoken dialog, and (4) silent reading. Here key words are important in deducing the meaning of new words. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A study was designed to determine whether scores for general knowledge, specific knowledge, and general interest on a topic could be used as predictors of children's listening comprehension. Baseball and dolls were chosen as the topics because their stereotypic nature would allow the data to be generalized across the subject population. Data were…

The Enrichment Triad Model proposed by Joseph Renzulli offers guidelines for planning instruction for gifted students that can foster wide reading for specific purposes. The model is based on three different types of enrichment. The first type includes general exploratory activities designed to expose learners to areas in which they may be…