Defining cognitive style as the modes an individual uses in perceiving, organizing, and labelling aspects of his or her environment, this paper is the first in a series concerning some implications of a learner's cognitive style for the development of reading competence. The paper identifies nine dimensions of cognitive style and then provides a…

Testing the assumption that textbooks were getting harder while students' abilities have been declining over the years, a study was conducted to determine the readability levels of six college reading textbooks across three editions to see if they were equal or the same in readability. The study also sought to determine whether these texts were…

A study investigated reading performance in one dimension of the language experience approach--the dictation of a story to accompany a wordless picture book. A miscue analysis procedure was used to describe the strategies and miscues evidenced by eight first grade beginning readers while reading a basal text story and while reading a dictated…

A study was conducted to determine if context facilitated the understanding of idiomatic expressions and multiple-meaning vocabulary words presented in narrative passages and if the passages containing these linguistic elements were comprehended. Specifically, the study compared the performance of monolingual and bilingual sixth grade and eighth…

Focusing on how teachers can devise instructional routines to help students learn to learn, this paper discusses mechanisms for training students to devise their own strategies for learning. Because of the dominance of deliberate memory strategies in training research, the paper begins with a brief consideration of such literature, then proceeds…

The purposes of this study were (1) to investigate the metalinguistic knowledge children have acquired from their environment before formal instruction, and (2) to examine the relationship between evolving writing and reading behavior. Twenty middle-class children ranging in age from 4.1 years to 5.11 years were selected. The Goodman and Cox…

Two studies were conducted to determine the effects of specific reading strategies on content area comprehension and reading skills. The strategies tested were a specific study guide, directed reading questions, cognitive organizer, and structured overview. In the first study, 225 students enrolled in a community college history course were…

The seven articles in this journal issue focus on the evaluation of reading programs at the elementary and secondary school levels. The articles contain (1) guidelines for evaluating reading materials, (2) a checklist designed to provide a broad overview of a school reading program, (3) an interview with Wayne Otto concerning techniques for…

A study was conducted (1) to examine the development of comprehension and production in written language of two aspects of linguistic knowledge, knowledge of ambiguity and paraphrase; and (2) to examine the influences of reading ability as measured by currently used standardized reading tests and of sex on the development of this knowledge of…

Many factors influence the comprehension of a linguistic act by a listener or reader. Some, such as maturity, background, and interests of the decoder are nonlinguistic; others, such as the vocabulary and complexity of the morphological and syntactical structures are linguistic in nature. A review of the literature reveals that while studies have…

A total of 108 junior college freshmen participated in a study comparing the effectiveness of small group instruction with individualized instruction in remedial reading programs. Sixty of the subjects were taught in a small group classroom setting (ten students per class), while the remaining subjects received individualized instruction in a…

A model of cognitive operations that children use in reading and comprehending a sentence was tested by using Sternberg's independent-process analysis on 64 second and fifth graders who were either high- or low-ability readers. Three specific component processes were examined: a decoding process, a word meaning process, and a comprehension…

Differences in perceptual processes of good and poor readers relevant to single word perception have been studied in a series of experiments. The major differences between good and poor readers have been shown to occur at the level of the single word; other differences occur in knowledge of spelling patterns and ability to make use of letters'…

The difficulties children have when learning to read vary from child to child and from age to age. Some learning variables transfer as a child develops so that skills acquired in early learning stages transfer to more mature stages of development. However, the abilities that transfer and produce effects at one stage of learning may be different…

Research on the effects of two modes of sentence combining instruction on writing skills was conducted from 22 September through 17 December 1976, at Evans School in Tempe, Arizona. Subjects were 40 students in two fifth grade classes designated the individualized class and the group class. The individualized class followed a sentence combining…