This paper is based on a transactional viewpoint (involving writer, reader, and text) in which the text is no longer external but is constructed and reconstructed by the reader during reading. Using a database developed for a previous study (Goodman and Goodman, 1978), this research examined pronoun usage in three basal texts by evaluating the…

A study examined the efficacy of the repeated readings method in improving the oral reading rate, decreasing the number of oral reading errors, and improving the oral reading comprehension accuracy of educationally handicapped students. The oral reading skills of eight students from an urban northeastern United States community identified as…

This document reviews studies that investigated certain inadequacies of English as a Second Language (ESL) reading comprehension tests. The first study examined whether three ESL reading comprehension tests required information principally from the text or from background knowledge. Results indicated that background knowledge differentially…

Using the Pizza Hut "Book It" Program which encouraged students to read a certain number of books per month, a study examined the effect of this program on standardized test scores. Subjects, 98 fifth grade students, were placed in high, middle, or low reading groups according to teacher assessment. Half of the students from each group…

Literacy education for children, youth, and adults in America is in critical need of reconstruction. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) keeps pace with research findings on the basic skills of these groups, yet in literacy education, these findings have not always been used to examine the effects of instructional variables on…

This annotated bibliography lists research on current practices and selected new practices in the teaching of reading comprehension. The introduction states the problem, the purpose of the study, its organization and limitations, and includes a glossary of terms. The 29 annotations are in two broad categories: research dealing with classroom…

This study investigated the use readers make of visual and verbal illustration to understand and remember what they have read. Specific focus was placed on readers' use of pictures and analogies to understand and remember written directions for a spatial manipulation task. The independent variables measured were type of text, mode of illustration,…

A study was conducted to determine how a reader identifies and represents the major topics in a text and their interrelationships. Subjects, 56 college students, read two texts one sentence at a time. Each text contained 12 paragraphs that discussed six attributes of two major topics. The paragraphs on one text were organized by attribute, while…

Working on the assumption that when reading comprehension is viewed from a constructivist framework, where meaning grows and changes as the text progresses, categorization into comprehension levels such as literal and inferential will be misleading, two third grade standardized multiple choice test items were selected from a larger body of test…

A study investigated at what point during eye fixations visual information is used in furthering the reading process. The study identified two aspects of information processing: registration, in which a light pattern on the retina triggers a pattern of neural activity in the visula cortex; and utilization, in which the registered pattern has an…

A study investigated the effectiveness of teaching children how to take reading comprehension tests. Twenty-eight fifth grade students were pretested using the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey D, Form I. The students were tested on speed and accuracy, vocabulary, and comprehension. Students were given 30 minutes of daily instruction and…

A study examined the influence of preschool reading readiness skills instruction on first graders' reading achievement. The subjects were 52 first grade students who had attended preschool, and their parents. The parents received questionnaires containing 40 reading readiness questions and the children took the California Achievement Test (CAT) in…

Contributing to the study of historical aspects of the reading profession, this 33-item annotated bibliography of books and articles on William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) and his "McGuffey Eclectic Readers" (more than half the schoolchildren of America from 1836 to about 1920 learned to read from the "McGuffey Readers") is…

A study examined the effects of training in a self-generated learning strategy on students' ability to comprehend text and self-monitor their understanding while engaging in strategic text processing. The study also explored the extent to which grade level and passage difficulty interacted with training to produce treatment effects. Subjects, 36…

Divided into sections on the reading process, positive effects of literature in a reading program, and basic instructional elements of a literature-based reading program, this 39-item annotated bibliography of journal articles and monographs dating back to 1968 presents research concerning the use of literature in the reading curriculum. An…