Measures the relationship between developmental maturity of kindergartners and their performance on a reading readiness test. Finds no significant differences in reading readiness based on age or sex. (RS)

Reviews research on the effects of world knowledge and text structure variables on reading comprehension. Concludes that text structure variables exert influence only when the subject matter is moderately unfamiliar and are redundant in reading familiar or very difficult material. Suggests knowledge and structure variables should be manipulated…

Argues that the original Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) test scores indicated large mismatches between the average difficulty of the textbooks used in each grade and the average ability of students in that grade. Presents a rescaling procedure to provide new, valid DRP test scores and grade equivalent scores for selecting instructional materials.…

Discusses teachers who question the happenings in their classrooms and answer their questions through classroom research. Argues that these teachers will continue to learn about their students and the teaching/learning that occurs within their classrooms, schools, and profession. Offers suggestions on how to initiate a teacher/researcher effort.…

Examines whether text-material presented in "chunks" or phrases significantly improves the reading comprehension of 50 eighth grade students composed of 2 reading ability groups. Finds that "chunking" sentences into meaningful units of thought aids low-ability readers more than high-ability readers. (MG)

Describes development and possible uses of a list of 593 bibliographic entries for college reading and learning assistance professionals. Notes the list and targets the work of (1) researchers oriented primarily to the present and those concerned with the historical roots of the profession; (2) curriculum design specialists; and (3) graduate…

Uses an error detection paradigm to examine the ability of college students of different reading proficiency levels to evaluate their understanding of texts. Finds that good readers were more likely than poor readers to detect inconsistent sentences. Finds that students rated passage understanding high regardless of whether they detected…

Measures the effects of training students to make annotations vs. training them in journal writing, as preparation for objective and essay tests on novels. Finds annotations more effective for objective test items but not for essays. Finds that writing inferential annotations appeared to be correlated with answering inferential questions…

Examines the effect of metadiscourse characteristics (attitudinal, voice, and informational) and level of test anxiety on students' learning from social studies textbooks. Finds high anxious students perform best with first person voice and no attitudinal metadiscourse while low anxious students showed the opposite effect. (RS)

Tests hypotheses that reading styles of good spellers and dysgraphic spellers differs. Concludes that an underlying source of difficulty for dysgraphic spellers, one that may be related to the reading style they exhibit, is a more limited working memory capacity. (MS)

Investigates whether orthographic processing ability in adults accounts for variance in individual word recognition and spelling skills. Finds that some individual differences in reading and spelling are caused by variation in orthographic processing skills linked to print exposure. (RS)

Adult second language acquirers were asked to read the first two chapters of "A Clockwork Orange," a novel containing a number of slang words of Russian origin. Subsequent testing revealed modest but significant incidental acquisition of nadsat words. (Author/VWL)

Compares time allocated for basal and other reading in grades one through six between 1961 and 1985 in eight geographic regions of the United States. Finds the greatest increase in the Upper Midwest and Southwest and a significant increase in time allocated for content and free reading in the Middle Atlantic. (NH)

Reports two experiments evaluating the effect of map feature content on text recall by subjects of varying reading skill levels. Finds that both experiments support the conjoint retention hypothesis, in which dual-coding of spatial and verbal information and their interaction in memory enhance recall. (MM)

Investigates the effect of word frequency on reading comprehension. Finds that comprehension is improved using high frequency words, independent of age or socioeconomic class of the student. Concludes that knowledge of vocabulary facilitates comprehension, but does not explain group differences. (RS)