A study examined whether (1) there are untested indices of difficulty that can be used to enhance the accuracy of readability formulas, (2) the same readability formula can be used to assess the readability of text for mature and immature readers and for good and poor readers, and (3) some one model of the reading process or some synthesis of…

Most word learning studies conducted over the past decade have shown that methods of word instruction that emphasize the graphic or phonic features of words presented alone (word alone method) affect learning rate more positively than do methods that emphasize meaning through oral, written, and pictorial cues (context methods). To compare the…

While word discrimination studies based on the subjects' conscious manipulation of words--for example, counting the number of words in a line--indicate that beginning readers are unskilled in identifying word boundaries, tests using such indirect methods of assessment as word recognition reveal a strong correlation between the ability to…

A study sought to describe the nature of teacher and student behaviors related to textbook reading assignments at the secondary school level, and to explore the relationship between the amount of time secondary school teachers devoted to specific assignment-related behaviors and students' subsequent performance on the assignments. The sample…

A study examined the ability of third, fourth, and sixth grade students to use spellings to arrive at the pronunciations of unknown words. A test of 29 pseudo words was developed. Pseudo words were chosen because they eliminate familiarity with a word in its spoken form and contextual cues as sources of help in decoding. At the start of the test,…

A study investigated the reading comprehension processes of gifted readers, specifically their use of comprehension strategies and their metacognitive awareness. Grade level differences in strategy use and metacognitive awareness were also examined. A standardized reading test and a metacognition questionnaire were administered to 100 gifted…

Many functionally illiterate freshmen feel helpless in the face of their inability to learn to read at a competent level. College freshmen who drop out because of this disability are losers who suffer tremendous disadvantages when they leave college without earning a diploma. Possible causes of functional illiteracy hindering the least educated…

The first paper in this collection summarizes 21 years of research into reading and presents a list of developments in the field and their implications for practice. The developments include: (1) reading is a process influenced by the text and the purpose; (2) the developmental context in which literacy is acquired is important, as is the…

A study examined the effectiveness of a program designed to increase literature appreciation and recreational reading of intermediate grade students. Subjects, 460 students an all-black midwestern city, recorded the amount of time spent reading at home, were observed by their teachers during reading periods to evaluate on-task behavior, were…

To determine whether high school students can be trained to use maps more effectively, a study examined linkage of feature and event information, the role of individual differences, and the roles of reading ability and preference for dealing with visual information. Subjects were 31 16- to 17-year-old high school students. Experimental and control…

Intended for people who have a professional or personal interest in the elderly (researchers, public librarians, and people with elderly relations and friends), this annotated bibliography presents 34 items from the ERIC database from 1977-87 which explore aspects of reading as it relates to the elderly. The first section, an overview, is followed…

The ninth in a series of studies to improve the strategies that poor reading comprehenders use to study text began as a training study containing three components: strategies to be taught, instructional mode by which they would be taught, and the metacognitive environment for the instruction. After identifying four strategies that merited…

A study examined students' achievement in vocabulary development under two modes, teacher directed instruction and computer-assisted instruction. The subjects--38 seventh graders who had a one to three year vocabulary deficit, according to the "Iowa Test of Basic Skills" pretest in vocabulary--were divided into two groups, Sample A (control) and…

A study investigated the effectiveness of strategies designed to improve reading comprehension, in order to (1) determine the effectiveness of the Cloze Story Map (CSM), a cloze-mapping strategy, on improving the reading comprehension of fourth-grade students using expository text and different sorts of deletion procedures; (2) investigate the…

A study investigated what is done with reading in kindergarten, specifically: (1) what is done and for what amount of time to prepare kindergartners for reading and to teach them to read; (2) what accounts for what is or is not done; and (3) how differences in children's abilities affect what is or is not done. Forty-two kindergarten classes from…