Reading teachers vary in their teaching methods for reading instruction, usually emphasizing either the meaningful functions (meaning) or the technical features (coding) of written language. This paper reviews literature on the meaning/coding dichotomy and focuses on a "cognitive clarity theory" that stresses linguistic awareness and…

This paper reports the outcomes of a correlational study that examined the relationships between visual and auditory perceptual skills, on the one hand, and comprehension that is independent of decoding, on the other. Five sets of test scores--a visual perceptual test (Coloured Progressive Matrices), an auditory perceptual test (Auditory Motor…

The beginning reading method explained in this book combines a phonics approach with a sight word/basal reader approach, a method which the author used during her many years in the classroom. The author has found that children can become independent readers in two to four months and may read from 10 to 200 books independently in the first year.…

This paper describes a methodological approach to the reading processes, involving the use of measures of speed of response or reaction time (RT) obtained from subjects while performing reading related tasks. Following a review of the literature on measures of RT, two experiments currently being done at the University of Minnesota are described…

A 30 hour remedial reading workshop, designed for all secondary language arts teachers and for selected secondary teachers in all subject areas, is described in this report. The workshop was designed for teachers in the Pamlico County (North Carolina) Schools by members of that school system and the General Assistance Center at East Carolina…

Previous research used a picture-word interference task to show that skilled and less skilled comprehenders in the third and fifth grades could retrieve the meaning of primer-level words equally well. With a similar task and comparable groups of children this study assessed the relationship between word difficulty and semantic access by using both…

In this investigation, the differences in psycholinguistic processing of written and spoken language and the psycholinguistic deficiencies of poor readers were studied by giving meaningful, anomalous, and random word strings to 18 good readers and 18 poor readers who were reading at the fourth grade level. It was found that in both spoken and…

Stella Center's belief in the basic importance of grammatical structure as a factor in reading comprehension substantiated the author's theory that the ability to comprehend syntactic structure is positively correlated with the ability to comprehend meaning. Original instruments devised to test this hypothesis included a test which utilized…

Chapters of this book on diagnostic-prescriptive reading instruction examine such topics as defining reading, language and reading, reading comprehension, assessing student progress and needs, visual and auditory discrimination and perception, visual memory of words, decoding word symbols, primary reading, creating interest in reading, critical…

A new kind of reading-language processing system, which has been in use at the Patterson Road School (Orcutt, California) since December 1972, is described in this document. The program consists of two ungraded reading chains of twelve groups each (determined by reading comprehension) which meet for 45 minutes daily, read material above the…

This paper proposes prognosis testing through teaching-learning situations as an effective alternative to modality testing. In modality testing the severely disabled learner's poor self-concept and short attention span adversely influence test results, and the child's preferred learning style is not determined. Prognosis testing is based on the…

Auditory conceptualization as an important factor in literacy development is investigated in this study. Earlier research with the Lindamood Auditory Conceptualization (LAC) Test identified this factor at each grade level, kindergarten through grade twelve, and delineated a LAC Test breakpoint score which was sharply discriminative of reading…

To be used in the development of reading curricula in the local school setting, this list of generic objectives is part of a set produced by the System for Pupil Program Evaluation and Development (SPPED) which includes criterion objectives and content lists for the specification of generic objectives. In addition to the objectives, this…

Paired-associate (PA) learning of children was investigated as a function of age, stimulus-type, and mode of elaboration. Sixty nursery school children (average age 53 months) and 60 first graders (average age 84 months) were selected as subjects. Each child studied nine pairs of objects, photographs, or drawings for two trials of PA learning by…

Suggestions for various activities, games, and materials for teaching phonics are presented in this handbook for teachers and teachers in training. The chapters and materials covered include: (1) "Why Phonics," which presents the rationale for teaching phonics; (2) "A Suggested Order for Teaching Phonics," which discusses the order of difficulty…