Compares retention of popular science material by fifth grade students using either computer simulation software or expository text as the instructional tool. Finds a statistically significant superiority in favor of the expository text group. (RS)

Discusses a longitudinal case study of the literacy levels and styles of thinking of a group of males disabled in print acquisition. Finds that subjects rapidly perceived a whole gestalt, executed with an economy of language, and retained strengths in visuospatial, nonverbal processing, while losing verbal language abilities. (RS)

Investigates whether novelistic prose can be dated by considering marked stylistic changes that occurred over the past 240 years. Finds a positive correlation between publication date and stylistic markers of sentence length, word length, rare punctuation, and word shortening or informality. Argues that this process can form the basis for new…

Examines how students use geographical maps in history and social studies textbooks for comprehension purposes. Reports training 32 eleventh graders to use maps as aids in their comprehension of information. Finds a positive impact upon comprehension and learning of the original training passage. (MG)

Three experiments with 20 first grade students concerned possible benefits of onset-rime segmentation for reading instruction of children. In all experiments, onset-rime segmentation proved more helpful than postvowel segmentation in short-term learning of single words composed of 4 letters representing 3 and 4 phonemes. (RH)

Introduces reading research from Great Britain, Sweden, and Australia. Discusses three conclusions from this literature particularly relevant to college reading specialists. (SR)

Explains the details of a method of teaching text structure that proved successful in improving both reading comprehension and summary writing of fifth graders. Reports that students quickly learned how to attend to and remember main ideas from problem-solution passages in their textbooks and how to write summaries. (MG)

Examines the relevance of decoding, comprehension, and reading rate as used by teachers for evaluation of their students' reading competence. Finds that teachers claim to rely only on decoding and comprehension in assessing reading competence, but that in practice teachers rely quite heavily on reading rate as a diagnostic tool. (RS)

Finds that, among 168 Mexican and Puerto Rican children in grades two, four, and seven, television viewing was positively related to reading comprehension and vocabulary scores, but the relationships differed by ethnicity, grade, level of English proficiency, and time of day of television viewing. Contains 17 references. (SV)

Reviews multidisciplinary research on second culture and second language reading comprehension to support the claim that second language reading is an interactive process, involving the interrelationship of cultural schemata and discourse structure. Argues for the roles of cultural schemata and discourse structure in an interactive model of first…

Explores the effect of graphic organizer instruction versus outlining on students' recall of text. Finds that students who used graphic organizers and who received training in summarization and question generation scored significantly higher than groups instructed in outlining or graphic organizers alone. (RS)

Discussion of the amount of mental effort children invest in television viewing versus book reading focuses on a Dutch study based on Salomon's model and his studies with children in Israel and the United States. The depth of information processed is discussed, and differences in results are examined. (18 references) (LRW)

Uses miscue analysis to find patterns of reader strategies on two types of texts: a syntactically complex/high vocabulary newspaper editorial; and a syntactically simple/low vocabulary editorial. Suggests that teachers should guide students to focus on the contextual relationships found both within and beyond the sentence level. (MG)

Asserts that certain traits and factors, such as persistence through failure and a tolerance for frustration, help children overcome life's problems. Analyzes 30 award-winning children's books from 1928 to 1987 and 14 "children's favorites" to determine if these books contain characters and plots that display resiliency. (MM)

This article discusses findings from three studies investigating the effect of special instruction in sentence-combining on reading comprehension and writing skills. Results indicate significant gains among younger or still-developing students and focused gains among older students. (IAH)