Reports a study indicating that summarization training of sixth-grade students improved recall of major but not minor information on a studying task and that such training is an effective tool for improving reading and studying skills. Includes ways to improve summarization instruction for children of this age group. (HTH)

Reviews the literature relevant to the subject of comprehension monitoring and offers ideas from the reading research for how students can improve their comprehension and how teachers can tell if students understand what they read. (JC)

Presents the results of a study on how adult illiterates process text, which showed that adults engaged in a greater degree of meaning-related processing and more graphemic and graphophonic processing in expository text. Adults were more successful with narrative text. (JC)

Describes a basic reading course designed to meet the specific needs of the weakest basic writers enrolled in a large midwestern university with an open admissions policy. Shows how the developmental course improved the students' reading comprehension so they could better understand the texts they would encounter in college courses. (SKC)

Provides information on how to use newspaper comic strips with reluctant, older disabled readers because the visual nature of the comics helps reading comprehension. Activity types include: (1) categorizing; (2) finding main ideas; (3) comparing; (4) determining cause-effect relationships; and (5) predicting outcomes. (SKC)

Investigates the reading-writing relationship, emphasizing theories postulating identicality of knowledge use. Administered four reading measures and eight writing measures to second and fifth graders and found few correlations between reading and writing variables. Suggests little improvement arises from combining reading and writing or from…

Summarizes interviews with adult illiterates enrolled in volunteer reading programs. Reports that no one remembered being read to as a child, and that interviewees recommended phonics, sound work, and word work to improve reading instruction. Emphasizes the importance of self-esteem, and of reading and telling stories to children. (MM)

Reports two studies of comprehensible and memorable expository writing. Finds that Time-Life editors' revisions of a high school history text improved eleventh grade students' recall, while revisions made by text linguists and composition instructors did not. But given latitude to change content, all editors' revisions improved recall. (RAE)

Compares the reading processing strategies of native and proficient nonnative speakers of Chinese. At the word level natives show a phonological strategy, while nonnatives mix phonological and visual processing. At the sentence level natives mix visual and semantic strategies, and nonnatives prefer visual processing. (LMO)

Explores how well measures of verbal short-term memory and naming speed tasks predict children's reading achievement under various IQ control conditions. Both were effective, but when controlling for verbal IQ, memory measures are less reliable, whereas digit-naming speed remains a significant predictor of reading achievement. (MM)

Examines the relationship between leisure-time reading and home environment, reading attitude, and reading motivation. Suggests, from the perspective of developing the leisure reading habit, that (1) what parents "do" is more important than what they "are" and (2) the emphasis placed on reading in the home and on academic and intellectual…

Indicates a reasonable range of individual differences in the dark interval threshold (DIT). Reveals a significant interaction between DIT and illumination level in their effect on reading accuracy. Finds that children with a short DIT read more accurately in high rather than low illumination and that this performance was reversed for long DIT…

Provides results of a survey of how 90 elementary and secondary teachers used their content area and English textbooks. Reports that both elementary and secondary teachers use textbooks primarily to supplement instruction, but that secondary content area teachers could benefit from inservice education to assist in flexible use of textbooks. (SKC)

Examined whether altering the sequence of the traditional basal reading lesson by placing enrichment activities first increased comprehension of text. Found altered format subjects (of 45 subjects in total) correctly answered 71% of comprehension questions, whereas traditional format subjects correctly answered only 58%. Suggests these significant…

Presents results of a study indicating that what young readers say when they first read is influenced by their previous experiences with books, the structure of the text, and also the accompanying illustrations. Points out implications for reading to young children, and for choosing early texts. (SKC)