This practicum sought to improve reading vocabulary and comprehension in fourth-grade students by using comic books 30 minutes per day as a supplement to the regular basal reading program. High-interest comic books were used by a class section of 18 students in the experimental group, for a period of four months. Another class section of 20…

To investigate whether the viewing of printed words influences children's ability to produce plural forms, 120 kindergarten and first grade children were tested individually on 36 items consisting of real words and nonsense syllables that represented three categories: words that required pronouncing the "s" sound as the natural oral plural; words…

Employing a cognitive/motivational analysis, a study was undertaken to determine some specific self-perceptions that might contribute to motivational and performance deficits observed in children with reading difficulties. A total of 72 children of relatively good, average, and poor reading ability were assessed on tasks in which success and…

A study of 74 elementary classrooms in Chicago was undertaken to see how the management and organization of instruction impinge on student involvement during reading instruction. The objectives were to determine whether student attention was higher when the teacher directed instruction to the entire room than when the teacher directed instruction…

Eighteen first grade students participated in a study to determine if reading achievement would be significantly higher for children who experienced reading-while-listening to children's literature as an enrichment activity than for children who did not have a similar experience. The children were divided into two treatment groups of equal size.…

This report presents a synthesis of a day-and-a-half interactive conference on research and development in reading attended by a group of reading specialists from Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas representing their state departments of education. It includes the two presentations "A Sampling of Research Within Reach"…

United States Air Force personnel at two levels of reading ability (eighth and tenth grades) were the subjects in a study that measured the effects of three experimental variables on comprehension of two text passages developed from Air Force reading materials. The factors investigated were reading ability, "literacy gap" (the difference in the…

In a sample of more than 400 fifth grade students, the reading comprehension levels of children living with both parents and children living with only one parent were compared. Data were collected on the demographic variables of race, student sex, family organization (two parents/one parent), parent educational level, family occupational prestige,…

This dissertation reports the development of the Mikulecky Behavioral Reading Attitude Measure (MBRAM), designed to be appropriate for use with mature readers. Items were written with direct reference to the Hovland-Rosenberg tricomponent model of attitude and to the stages of Krathwohl's Taxonomy of the Affective Domain. The MBRAM was…

This study compared four approaches to improving reading flexibility of community college students advised to enroll in a remedial reading skills program. The experimental group practiced on the Educational Developmental Laboratories Controlled Reader (hardware group). Three control groups also participated: software group, core program group, and…

A model was developed to account for similarities and differences between picture and word processing in a variety of semantic and episodic memory tasks. The model contains three levels of processing: low-level processing of the physical characteristics of externally presented pictures and words; an intermediate level where the low-level processor…

Ethnographic research in reading examines process more than outcomes of instruction, considers environmental factors, and studies the behavior of individual learners. There are few descriptive studies in reading to guide researchers in ethnographic research. Some aspects of planning such a study include gaining permission from school…

Two experiments explored whether the facilitatory effect of context on lexical decisions is limited to words subjects generated when given the context as a prompt in a production task, or if the effect is wider in scope. The first experiment provided evidence of a wide scope of facilitation from single word contexts. In the second experiment, the…

Four variables--teacher personality, knowledge of reading, years of experience, and number of years since last reading course--and their relationships with pupil achievement in reading were examined in a study involving 23 fourth grade teachers. The teachers were evaluated on several instruments and their pupils were pretested and posttested with…

ON THE BASIS OF SELECTED RESEARCH FINDINGS, A DISTINCTION BETWEEN RECREATIONAL AND INDIVIDUALIZED READING AND A PLAN FOR IMPLEMENTING AN INDIVIDUALIZED READING PROGRAM ARE DISCUSSED. PLANS FOR FLEXIBLE GROUPINGS AND THEIR COMBINATIONS, SHARING ACTIVITIES, RECORD KEEPING, EVALUATING PROGRESS, AND INITIATING A PROGRAM ARE PRESENTED. REGULAR…