Because application of reading research and theory development to the English as a second language (ESL) classroom has not always been forthcoming, this monograph is aimed at helping teachers develop better, sounder reading instruction in the ESL classroom through a better understanding of the reading processes, of the factors that affect reading…

A study was conducted to determine the appropriateness of a particular whole language program, entitled "Project Victory," designed specifically for a group of high-risk, seventh-grade students in a predominately urban intermediate public school. Subjects were 20 students identified as high-risk by their school district on the basis of…

A study demonstrated that young children who have difficulty with phonics can be taught to read through other methods, that phonics is only one of the many useful strategies that a child can employ, and that many contextual strategies are easier to learn and more reliable than phonics. A case study was conducted during an intervention with a young…

A child's success in learning to read in the first grade appears to be the best predictor of his or her ultimate success in schooling as well as all of the events and outcomes that correlate with that. Yet, across the research literature reviewed for a recent book, "Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print," children's…

This study utilizes content analysis to compare and contrast the female protagonists in award-winning contemporary adolescent fiction. R. J. Havighurst's developmental tasks are discussed in reference to diverse female protagonists from approved school reading lists in Montgomery County, Maryland. Sara, from "Summer of the Swans" (Byars,…

A study compared performances on a test of selective auditory attention between students educated in open-space versus closed classroom environments. An open-space classroom environment was defined as having no walls separating it from hallways or other classrooms. It was hypothesized that the incidence of auditory figure-ground (ability to focus…

Eight fifth grade students participated in a study that investigated the effects of test context on test performance and subjects' perceptions of tests in varying contexts. In the first three contexts, reading of words in isolation was tested using materials drawn from three different informal reading inventories equivalent in difficulty level.…

To assist textbook adoption committees in answering the questions that arise as they consider basal reading series, this paper provides a discussion of readability. Following a brief introduction, the second section of the paper offers a background discussion of what readability really means. In addition, this section looks at three factors to…

A study was conducted to identify strategies used by successful readers in comprehending and interpreting various kinds of texts. Seventy-three graduate students were asked to keep a journal (unedited and freely written) of what they were thinking as they were reading Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose." Selected journal entries…

An earlier study found virtually no relationship between college students' reported studying practices and various tests of reading comprehension, so a second study investigated whether different results would be obtained with an instrument based on study strategies college students actually reported using. Scores on this instrument were to be…

To explore how instruction in questioning can enhance teachers' use of questions that promote comprehension and how teachers' instruction of students in such strategies can enhance their ability to comprehend content area texts independently, this paper looks at prereading, during-reading, and postreading questioning activities. The first major…

A study conducted in Israel investigated the relevance of subject-specific reading passages to performance on reading comprehension tests for advanced university students of English as a second language. The research specifically examined (1) whether students performed better when the reading test content was directly related to their field of…

As an extension of an earlier investigation that examined the effects of mnemonic strategy application on children's memory for abstract prose passages, a study compared the benefits accrued by students taught two different variations of the mnemonic keyword method for learning abstract prose information, via tasks of associative recognition and…

A study was designed to improve fifth-graders' limited use of comprehension monitoring processes during reading through a self-instructional approach. Thirty-nine average and superior comprehenders were tested on their ability to detect inconsistencies contained in short essays prior to, immediately after, and one week after participation in one…

A series of studies was conducted to explore three trends that have emerged from sentence combining research: (1) students with lower abilities in sentence combining and reading comprehension tend to register higher gains in both areas as a result of sentence combining instruction; (2) the broader the range of any student's sentence combining…