Research has confirmed that what parents view as being important for their children to learn and how they believe their children are able to learn are reflected in both the learning opportunities parents provide in the home and the teaching strategies they use with their children. Tape recordings of children and their parents during planned…

A study explored context effects on two selected indexes of communicative competence in the narrative language of a sample of first grade children. The 30 subjects each completed 2 tasks--the retelling of a story that had been read to them and the dictation of an original story. These narratives were recorded and analyzed for linguistic competence…

The application of computer technology to reading research has made it possible to study the perceptual processes that take place as people read with a level of precision never before attainable. This computer assisted research has revealed that where the eyes go for fixations is of significance to normal reading and that during each fixation only…

A study investigated the effect of Frank O'Hare's "Sentencecraft" sentence combining program on the written syntactic skills, reading comprehension level, and speed of average ability ninth-grade students. The sample consisted of 75 experimental group students and 68 control group students. Following a pretest, the experimental group…

The effect of Title I reading instruction was examined in a group of students as they progressed from grade two through grade six. The number of students who fell below the twenty-third percentile on a reading achievement test (the criterion for Title I participation) was tabulated for each year to determine the program's effectiveness both in…

A study was undertaken to determine (1) the relationship between listening and reading (the receptive language mode) and (2) the relationship of listening and reading to speaking and writing (the generative mode), intellectual ability, self-concept, impulsivity/reflectivity, and socioeconomic status (SES). Sixty grade six students were…

A study examined the relationships between retelling--an indicator of reading comprehension obtained through a student's oral recall of a story--and three other indicators of reading comprehension representing various viewpoints in comprehension measurement: miscues, a post oral-reading cloze test, and a passage dependent multiple choice test.…

A study evaluated the effectiveness of various models constructed to account for how children read and comprehended a story presented in a directed reading lesson. A commercial directed reading lesson was revised to introduce information related to the story and to help the children form a "map" of the central story content. Data were…

To better understand the effects of the family on the reading achievement of black children, a study examined the relative influence of specific maternal variables and the family socioeconomic status (SES) on reading achievement. A total of 31 mother-child dyads were selected from a university reading clinic, with the children aged 7 through 11…

Videotapes of eight high school classes were analyzed to determine patterns in the reading activities, materials, and instruction in secondary content area classes. The analysis included a summary of the language arts involved, the duration of specific instructional segments and their percentage of the total class time, and apparent patterns in…

Results of a 1977 assessment of the reading abilities of approximately 1,250 adults (26 to 35 years old) are reported in this paper and are compared with results of a similar assessment made in 1971. After discussing a typical comprehension exercise used in the assessment, the paper presents the materials and multiple choice questions used in…

A study was undertaken to explore how five-year-old children approach becoming literate. Interviews consisting of eight core questions were conducted with each of 20 kindergarten children. The questions dealt with children's concepts about reading and writing, and about the purposes children establish for writing. Accompanying each set of…

Nineteen children, aged 7 through 17, were pretested, individually tutored in reading for 12 weeks, and posttested in a study to examine the effect of an individualized reading tutorial program on the locus of control and locus of evaluation of children with reading disabilities. A reliable, valid measure of locus of control and locus of…

The reading interests of a group of older adults were examined. Subjects were 16 adults between the ages of 50 and 85 who read five stories from "Readers' Digest" short story collections and who responded to a questionnaire about their preferences for the stories, their reading habits and interests, and the appealing elements of the stories. The…

A study examined the concept of the universality or the cultural specificity of the ideal story structure using the J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson story grammar. Specifically, the study tested the effect of two different story structures, one a conventional fairy tale and the other a Cree Indian narrative, on the recall of Cree Indian children.…