In response to teachers' requests for specific information about implementing the curriculum in the Expository Writing Program (EWP), this manual presents the instructional methods and materials used during the Teaching Expository Reading and Writing Project. First, the lines of research that formed the basis for the instructional program are…

A study investigated how children's writing reflects the syntactic complexity, style, and format of their basal readers. Subjects were 116 students drawn from 10 second, third, and fourth grade classrooms in two different schools located near Boston, Massachusetts. A matched group design was used, and students using a form of the "Ginn"…

A study examined whether writing instruction focusing on organizational patterns has a significant effect on reading comprehension. Writing samples were obtained from 18 second graders, nine of whom received no instruction, while the other nine received instruction on the purpose and use of the topic sentence, adding details to the topic, and…

A study compared and evaluated alternative theoretical models of the relationship of learning to read and learning to write at beginning and advanced levels of reading development. The reading dimensions of the three models included word analysis, vocabulary, and sentence and passage comprehension components. The writing dimensions included…

A study examined the efficacy of the keyword method of vocabulary instruction by comparing it with five methods designed to increase semantic processing of the definitions of the vocabulary words. Subjects in all five experiments were college students. In the first three experiments, recall of the definitions from the vocabulary words was the…

A study examined (1) whether students whose teachers possess a higher level of professional development exhibit greater time-on-task in reading than students whose teachers exhibit a lower level of professional development, and (2) if any specific aspects of teachers' professional development were related to a significantly greater amount of…

A study combined a simple mnemonic counting system with the keyword method to determine whether the keyword vocabulary methods can be effectively combined with other mnemonic strategies to facilitate coding of numerically ordered information. This system was then taught to 48 eighth-grade students in the context of learning the names and numbers…

The spontaneous use of imaging and its relationships to verbal recall and literary analysis were investigated in a study in which 72 college students read a literary text under one of three sets of instructions that manipulated processing depth in an externally valid fashion. Imagery reports and free verbal recalls of the story were collected…

A study was conducted to apply what is known about how expository text structure variables enhance main idea comprehension and to determine if restructuring content textbook passages improves such comprehension. Original texts were rewritten to be more "considerate" as follows: the paragraph main ideas were rewritten and placed in the…

The revised version of this monograph serves two purposes: (1) to describe what the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R) measures with regard to reading/learning disability in the light of current findings, and (2) to summarize research with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and WISC-R as related to…

A study was conducted to determine whether the expressed reading interests of third grade students corresponded with the topics in their basal readers. Students indicated on an interest survey the kinds of stories they liked to read. Two fourth grade basal readers were analyzed--"Time to Wonder" by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, and "Clearing Paths"…

Those to whom teachers are accountable--administrators, parents, and the public--seem to be inclined to ignore the findings of more than 20 years of research into the process of efficient and proficient reading in favor of dehumanized instruction that reduces reading to bits and pieces of skills instruction. They cling to the metaphor of mind as…

Research on working memory has revealed a developmental trend in memory performance, but a controversy exists as to whether the improved performance is due to a developmental increase in working memory total processing space (M-space), is the result of more efficient processing and storage of material, or is due to the use of "chunking" or other…

To explore ways to improve reading instruction, a study examined the relation of discussions about assigned reading to students' critical reading behavior and investigated the efficacy of coaching teachers on techniques for discussing the readings they assign. Five teachers from a rural Georgia high school, and their classes of 25 students each…

Most studies of eye movement behavior during reading have dealt with the processes involved with local aspects of text, such as visual or graphic characteristics or individual word features. To determine if a global level of processing (pertaining to the whole text or to large sections of it) would affect eye movement patterns differently, a study…