Thirty-one first grade students from four schools participated in an investigation of the attitudes toward beginning reading held by children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Two of the schools were in inner-city, predominantly low-income, minority areas; one was in a middle-income area with approximately 27% minority enrollment, and one…

This document, prepared by the Evaluation System of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia, is the technical report of the results of analyses of factors affecting reading achievement for elementary students for the year 1976-77. The chapters include a discussion of the purpose and scope of the study; the methodology used; characteristics…

To examine the effect on comprehension of mistakes made while reading, a three-experiment study was conducted. A secondary aim was to determine whether the unskilled reader would make hypotheses about what words in the text should be. In the first test, 80 nine-year-old students with average or above average reading abilities read narrative…

A Missouri study was conducted to investigate the reading abilities of the average vocational technical student to determine if this reading ability was commensurate with the material the student was assigned to read, and to compare the effectiveness of the reading ability to success in completing a vocational course of study. In order to secure…

In arguing that language as speech is to be contrasted with language as writing, this paper examines some facts about the evolution of writing systems, draws upon some experimental studies, discusses the difference between speech and writing as being one of status within human cognitive structure, and notes that the difference may help explain why…

A total of 19 good and 19 poor readers participated in an examination of the extent to which first grade children who were successful beginning readers would exhibit better syntactic skills in auditory and reading tasks than would less successful readers. To isolate differences specifically related to sentence processing skills, the two groups…

A review of the literature and an examination of the state of the technology is presented in this discussion of text analysis with computers. The computer capabilities of several available text analysis programs are reviewed, including those that examine vocabulary, word strings, sentence and syntactic complexity, and readability. (AEA)

In discussing word recognition, Kenneth Goodman argues that preoccupation with words, leters, and sounds cuts off children from the meaning-seeking function of reading; that oral and written language are parallel modes of obtaining meaning from language; and that reading is a selective rather than a precise process of word perception. A review of…

The relationship of student locus of control (SLOC) to six achievement measures and a number of student characteristics measured in a study of student performance in a reading tutorial program was examined. Subjects were 121 elementary and junior high students, individually tutored two hours daily by high school and college students and adults.…

The amount of print that 42 college students apprehended in 40 millisecond tachistoscopic flash presentations was monitored for strings of random letters, unrelated words, and words in context (sentences). The results indicated that mean apprehension spans per flash were 3.7 letters for random letters, 9.3 letters (2.0 words) for unrelated words,…

An instrument for measuring teacher attitudes toward reading and the teaching of reading and for relating reading attitudes and achievement within teachers was constructed with 15 concepts measured on ten scales. In 1974, the instrument and a reading achievement test were administered to 317 final-year elementary school student teachers in five…

Items from a widely used standardized reading achievement test were rated by trained judges according to the degree to which they required an understanding of hierarchical classification. Two subtests were constructed from subsets of items that were identified by their extreme ratings. Subtest A was judged to require classification operations from…

The six tables in this report rank the combinations of reading materials used in the classrooms of 34 elementary schools of Washington, D.C., during the 1976-77 academic year. The data are based on teacher reports about first through sixth grade students for whom there were both pretest and posttest scores. The tables indicate that a wide variety…

Research shows that effectively used writing plans (models of text organization) promote understanding of messages and that students can learn to use these plans. Writing plans include overall plans (antecedent/consequent, comparison, description, and response), emphasis plans that highlight certain subtopics, and cohesion plans that refer to the…

Reviews of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (N-D) for college students indicate that the test may not be appropriate for all college students. Although the N-D is easy to administer and score, some of its traits make it questionable for use in evaluating open admissions students: it is timed; it measures vocabulary, rate, and comprehension in a mere…