A study explored the effects of bimodal (concurrent auditory and visual stimulus modes) versus unimodal reading on 8 poor readers between the ages of 9 and 12 years. An alternating treatments design was used to compare student performance on 12 passages, 45 in each of 3 presentations modes: bimodal, visual, and auditory. Session measures included…

Phonological awareness has little, if anything, to do with reading or the acquisition of literacy. Learned opinion has been divided as to the relationship of phonological awareness and reading. Some scholars hold that the ability to analyze speech into discrete phonic segments is a precursor to, even a cause of, successful reading acquisition,…

This report evaluates the conduct, validity, and uses of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Trial State Assessment (TSA). The report addresses such pressing problems as how participation in NAEP can be maintained and appropriate samples can be achieved; how errors can be minimized in the complex process of scaling and analyzing…

A study investigated the effect of phonemic awareness and cognitive flexibility training on the phonemic awareness, cognitive flexibility, reading, and spelling ability of kindergarten and first-grade students. Subjects were 280 students from 12 classrooms in 3 urban elementary schools. Four pre- and posttest measures were administered. Students…

A study extended the investigation of readers' imaginative processes (spontaneous imagery and emotional response) to a new genre of texts: newspaper articles. A sample of 25 articles was randomly selected from a well-defined population of naturally occurring texts (articles with one or more subheadings and three to five paragraphs before the first…

Making the case that the human achievement of reading has few if any equals, this book uses protocol analysis data related to reading to develop a rich description and understanding of cognitive and affective processes during reading. The book concludes that reading is "constructively responsive"--that is, good readers are always…

A study determined if pairing children for reading in first grade would have an effect on their reading achievement. The subjects in this study came from one first grade class in a suburban school district. For 6 weeks, one group of emergent readers was paired with more able readers, while another group of emergent readers in the same class was…

Questions about gifted readers and how best to teach them have been posed for years and continue to be posed by educators today. A review of current research helps to clarify how to identify gifted readers and what they need in the way of classroom instruction. The general consensus is that reading programs for the gifted should be specialized and…

A study determined if there would be any significant difference in comprehension from expository text between students instructed to use context clues and prior knowledge and those students not instructed in their use. It was hypothesized that students who only used a dictionary to understand words, not exploring context or prior knowledge, will…

The concept of autonomy can help secondary reading teachers help their students to become better readers and users of text. Research indicates that many students in content areas do not know how metacognitive strategies can be implemented so that students can become autonomous. Practical suggestions for helping readers become autonomous include…

This paper challenges the assumption that meaning is in some way magically encoded within texts and argues that questions, when they are used simply as tools to lead readers to a single meaning, are inadequate as a means of reading comprehension assessment. The paper then goes on to describe one of a series of micro case studies that explored…

A study used a clinical interview procedure to investigate second graders' self-knowledge of pronunciation miscues during oral reading and the relationship of this knowledge to oral instructional reading level. Immediately after reading each sentence, subjects, a representative sample of 41 second-grade students from two suburban Louisiana…

A study examined the effectiveness of a Reading Recovery program. Subjects, 14 first-grade students who received the Reading Recovery program and 20 first-grade students who did not receive the program, were administered the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in the spring of 1994. The subject population was comprised of 100% minority students attending…

A study investigated the nature of reading difficulties from the perspective of sixth graders in a low-income school district on the border of New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. R. C. Bogdan and S. K. Biklin (1992) describe this style of research as an attempt to gain entry into the conceptual world of subjects to understand what meaning they…

A study examined what factors made content area literacy learners have positive or negative attitudes toward reading at various stages and what sociocultural dimensions influenced positive or negative attitudes toward reading. Subjects, 35 Hawaii students and 18 mainland students, completed an autobiography assignment as part of a required content…