Centering around the common theme of reading evaluation, the papers in this yearbook were either presented at or are based on presentations from the 1985 American Reading Forum conference. Titles of some of the papers and their authors are as follows: "Teacher Competency Testing" (S. Kossack); "Principals as Instructional Leaders" (J. Laffey);…

A study was conducted to provide insight into the consistency of reading achievement scores from four standardized tests. Several sets of data were compared to assess the accuracy of grade equivalents or instructional reading levels obtained on standardized tests. Each test was randomly assigned for administration to 23 third graders in a group…

A reading activity inventory was administered to approximately 13% of the employees at one division of a high technology company in order to (1) assess the amount of time spent reading different content or topic areas, (2) assess the amount of time spent reading different types of materials, and (3) determine the prevailing uses for reading in…

"Inquiry Training," a teaching technique promoted during the 1960s, involves students gathering information about a discrepant event or puzzling situation, and formulating theories to explain the event. Continuing the work of two studies into the efficacy of Inquiry Training (subsequently renamed Cognition Enhancement), a more refined…

The heuristic model and measurement models guiding a proposed seven-year investigation of how children learn to comprehend what they read--and in particular how they comprehend science text--are described in this report. The report first offers a brief description of the heuristic model, which is based upon and extended from studies of effective…

Noting that both comprehension and decoding are used by effective readers and that both processes should be taught, this concept paper focuses on effective strategies for reading instruction. Following an introduction, the first section focuses on the conclusions drawn about word identification by reading researchers. Subsections include…

Since confusion continues to exist over what teachers mean when they say they are holding a discussion over previously assigned content reading materials, a study compared and contrasted the verbal and nonverbal interactions between teachers and students (or students and students) in eight content area classrooms in rural high schools in Georgia.…

A study was conducted to determine if instruction in schematic aspects of narratives would enhance children's knowledge of story constituents and their interrelationships and to assess the effect of instruction in narrative schema on the reading comprehension of average and below average readers. Subjects were 20 fourth grade students who had been…

A study was conducted to compare students' recreational reading levels to their independent, instructional, and frustrational levels determinable with an informal reading inventory. Subjects, 20 second grade and 20 fifth grade students, were administered the Basic Reading Inventory. In addition, the school's librarian recorded titles of four books…

The literature concerning tutoring in the elementary schools was surveyed and evaluated to determine the relative effectiveness of two types of programs--peer and cross-age tutoring. Studies involving each type of program were analyzed separately and effectiveness was judged by the gains in reading achievement experienced by both tutors and…

Three studies were conducted to investigate the development of the ability of individuals of varying ages to use macrorules for paraphrasing expository text. Macrorules were defined as the general rules of deletion, superordination, selection, and invention that underlie comprehension of prose. In the first study, 18 fifth grade, 16 seventh grade,…

A study was conducted to determine whether students comprehend student-authored material more easily than the material of published authors. The Fry Readability Graph was used to estimate the readability of 8 published passages of 200-270 words, which varied from grade 5 through grade 10. The topic of each passage was listed and used in a 2-day…

Noting that the Neurological Impress Method (NIM) of reading instruction has been shown to be an effective intervention strategy for use with remedial readers, this paper examines the theoretical and empirical validity of NIM techniques. The discussion focuses on (1) a procedural description of the technique, which involves having student and…

A study was conducted to determine whether there is a typical instructional sequence used to teach reading in third and fourth grade classrooms, to what extent the core text-related sequence (a child-related introduction of the text, followed by reading, and then discussion and interpretation of text content) is used, and if it is not used, what…

In 1981, the reading achievement of a representative sample of Queensland (Australia) Year 5 students was assessed by using a test that measured skills in the areas of vocabulary, comprehension, and speed of reading. The aim of this testing was to compare reading achievement in 1981 with reading achievement in 1971 and 1976. Comparisons of…