Presents summaries of the research studies winning the Albert J. Harris Award, the Elva Knight Research Grants Award, and the Outstanding Dissertation of the Year Award at the 1983 convention of the International Reading Association. (FL)

Reviews the literature concerning oral reading fluency and offers six hypotheses about how beginning readers develop oral fluency and about strategies to help those who do not. (FL)

Examines existing reading theories and synthesizes them into a comprehensive new theory. (FL)

Notes that there are no clear cut findings to be derived from research concerning the effects of television viewing on reading achievement. (FL)

Asserts that reading instruction to prepare students for occupational or societal settings must be grounded in a realistic view of the nature and function of the reading activities that are indigenous to those contexts. (AEA)

Argues that, as an exquisitely designed pattern detector, the human brain can most effectively acquire reading skill through exposure to varied texts, and that teaching isolated "reading skills" may only serve to improve scores on skill tests. Contrasts the theoretical bases underlying these two approaches to reading instruction. (PGD)

Concludes that children were better able to comprehend sentences containing pronouns that functioned as objects in relative clauses, but that in clauses where the pronoun functioned as subject, its presence or absence was not important. (FL)

When eight-year-old children were given a test of verbal-imagery learning style and a test of reading ability, it was found that both their reading accuracy and comprehension were significantly related to their learning styles. (FL)

Reviews research dealing with creativity as it applies to the process of reading. (FL)

Defines direct instruction, reviews research analyzing its characteristics and offers reflections on direct instruction of reading comprehension. (FL)

Frank Smith and Kenneth Goodman were the most frequently cited authors; Bond and Dykstra's "The Cooperative Research Program in First Grade Reading Instruction" and Chall's "Learning to Read: The Great Debate" the most frequently cited works in a survey that asked graduate faculty in reading to name "classics" in reading research. (FL)

Discusses reading as a culturally conditioned and situationally sensitive activity. (FL)

Reviews research findings concerning the recreational reading habits of students in colleges of further education. (FL)

Reports that children do employ semantic/syntactic linkages in comprehending text, but not so early as expected. (DD)

Reports that the reading comprehension of 14- and 18-year-old students and the volume of reading done by students and adults ranks higher in New Zealand than in the United States or Iran. Suggests that levels of reading achievement for students depend on the reading demands of society. (AEA)