Readers cannot profitably be studied without some assessment of the texts they read. Analyses of texts, however, are of doubtful value unless tested against readers' behavior. Despite the relative neglect of text in research on reading, numerous approaches to the analysis of text have been proposed. The developments within linguistics and the…

An empirical examination was undertaken to determine the relationship between reading problems diagnosed by experienced reading clinicians and the initial treatment plans proposed by them for a case. Twenty-four diagnosis/treatment protocols for eight experienced reading clinicians were analyzed in terms of clinician agreement on treatment…

Two experiments were conducted to establish the psychological validity of the text type distinction. In the first, 20 college students sorted 12 texts on the basis of their similarities. The resultant sortings were subjected to a clustering analysis. Despite the fact that other bases for grouping texts existed--a number of pairs of semantically…

Psychological research concerning several aspects of the relationship between existing knowledge schemata and the processing of text is summarized in this report. The first section is concerned with dynamic processes of story understanding, with emphasis on the integration of information. The role of prior knowledge in accommodating parts of…

A sentence "pragmatically implies" another sentence when information in the first sentence leads the hearer to expect something that is neither explicitly stated nor necessarily implied by the original sentence. Thus, the sentence "The safe-cracker put the match to the fuse" pragmatically implies that "the safe-cracker lit…

The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test and the Culture Fair Intelligence Test were administered to all pupils ages eight to eleven in the Windsor (Connecticut) Public Schools as part of an evaluation of the Individually Guided Education (I. G. E.) program. In this seven-month evaluation, all age groups achieved reading scores significantly higher than…

This report analyzes seven standardized reading tests which were part of a data bank of information on 6,753 first-grade through sixth-grade students from 36 communities. The data bank was assembled to allow for secondary analyses of the relationships between achievement and specific characteristics of programs or schools. Differences between…

A study was conducted to ascertain what influence transferring from one school to another had on students from four ethnic groups and on the overall reading achievement scores in ten selected Title I disadvantaged schools over a five-year period. The approximately 700 sixth grade students involved in the study represented Hispanic, Causasian,…

A study was conducted to determine if it was possible to identify and distinguish between poor readers who had a knowledge deficit and those who were somehow different (dialect speakers trying to read material in Standard English, for instance). A group of 20 fourth and fifth grade students were tested with normal prose, words in isolation, and…

This report presents results of analyses of factors affecting reading achievement of students in grades one through sex in District of Columbia schools as measured by the percentage of objectives mastered on the Prescriptive Reading Test (PRT) and by students' interest in reading for the year 1977-78. It also contains descriptive information about…

This report reviews what is known about the role of vocabulary knowledge or knowledge of word meanings in reading comprehension. It states that while an assessment of the number of meanings a reader knows enables a remarkably accurate prediction of an individual's ability to comprehend discourse, the reasons why word knowledge correlates with…

Attempts have been made to develop a model of the process of reading comprehension as a whole that would indicate under what conditions and for what reasons a long sentence might be more effective than several short ones, when repetition is helpful and when distracting, when content is better left implicit in a text, and how overexplicitness might…

This report surveys the significance and implications of the question of how the knowledge of past reading instruction might engender a better understanding of contemporary practices and help to resolve current problems. The report advocates the necessity of educator/historians and outlines the requirements for their dual training and experience.…

Research and practical ideas on inservice reading programs are the subject of this report from the National Right to Read Effort. The report deals with the following topics: producing an effective inservice program, constructive changes, planning, "do-it-yourself" teachers' centers, research on effective inservice education, and…

A brief review of reading research studies is presented, and the need for unifying reading theories is discussed. It is noted that speed training, comprehension skills, and vocabulary development compose the main areas of reading research and that most of the studies are taxonomic and do not give accurate explanations or allow for predictions and…