Among 68 rural learning-disabled students in grades 5-7 having moderate decoding fluency and high decoding accuracy, a paraphrasing cognitive strategy increased reading comprehension of main ideas more effectively than repeated readings or control training. Paraphrasing plus repeated readings was no more effective than paraphrasing alone. Contains…

Examines the "levels effect" (the theory that more important text elements are more likely to be remembered than less important elements) in children and adults when reading expository text. Finds differences between adults and children in the extent to which they engaged in the type of processing that resulted in levels effects. (MG)

Tests a new model of the child's meaning-making process in response to literary text. Finds that the model is not disproved and serves as a valid means for adults to share information and ideas about young peoples' transactions with literary texts. (MG)

Reviews secondary school reading research in reading comprehension, vocabulary development, reading interests and habits, textbooks, teaching procedures, and reading in content areas published between 1959 and 1988 in Nigeria. Looks at Nigerian research results from a global perspective. Suggests areas for future research. (RS)

Examines the subsequent differences in academic status, "quality point averages," and persistence of students who successfully completed a reading improvement course compared to those who did not complete it, avoided it, or were exempted from the course. Finds that groups' success differs and students completing the course persisted longer in…

Surveys reading attitudes, habits, and perceptions about reading of 84 adults in a wide variety of occupations. Finds more positive attitudes toward reading, more time spent reading, and higher ratings of own reading ability among adults with more education and adults employed in higher status occupations. Finds no educational or occupational…

Examines the patterns of oral reading miscues, retelling, and fluency of mixed dominant Hispanic students (students whose English or Spanish dominance cannot be clearly determined). Finds that mixed dominant students are not easily categorized into a homogenous group. Suggests that some of their strategies and skills may have been underutilized.…

Uses videotapes of children reading stories to examine good and poor readers' comprehension evaluation and regulation while reading inconsistent stories. Finds good readers are more likely to look back at inconsistencies during reading, to give accurate verbal reports of passage inconsistency following reading, and to recall text inconsistencies.…

Discusses conflicting interpretations of results from contrasts of poor and normal readers matched either for chronological age (CA) or reading level (RL). Argues that the outcomes from RL-matched designs or from RL- and CA-matched designs in combination should be interpreted within a broad theoretical and empirical context. (RS)

Describes two subject-paced reading experiments in which word-reading times were collected using the moving-window method. Finds that reading times of content words increase more steeply than reading times for function words. Discusses results in terms of buffer models of reading, the processing of different lexical classes, and hypotheses which…

Examines patterns in college students' text markings using texts from three content areas: history, political science, and sociology. Indicates little differential marking between various text-types. Concludes that students seem to have little idea how to mark text efficiently. (MG)

Compares performance of expert non-native and non-expert native readers of an experimental report written in French. Finds that (1) the difference in number of idea units recalled by both groups was non-significant although expert non-native readers recalled more; and (2) the two types of readers responded differently to scrambling of text order.…

Examines the contexts for use of knowledge about expository text structure and the ways in which students use text structure knowledge. Finds that, following text structure instruction, students used their knowledge of text structure in a variety of contexts during reading, writing, and everyday life. (SR)

Examines the effect of sustained silent reading and writing on achievement of seventh and eighth grade students reading two or more years below grade level. Finds significant improvement in reading achievement, writing, and attitude toward reading for both seventh and eighth grade students. (RS)

An experiment involving fourth graders examined effects of syntactic context on auditory word identification and ability to detect and correct syntactic errors in speech. Severely disabled readers were inferior to good and poor readers in syntactic awareness and ability to use syntactic rules. (RH)