A survey of 14 leading language arts, children's literature, and reading methods books, as well as professional journal articles and other notable books on reading to children, yielded a total of eight recommendations made by more than half of the authors, including the following: (1) prepare by previewing the book, (2) read with expression, (3)…

Using 33 college freshmen enrolled in a basic reading skills course as subjects, a study was conducted for two purposes: (1) to determine the effects of direct exposure to the topics of the selections in the New Jersey College Basic Skills Placement Test (NJCBSPT) on their posttest scores, and (2) to investigate whether students exposed to the…

A study was conducted to explore first grade students' conceptions of reading and writing, and how those conceptions may be associated with and influenced by the type of reading instruction they receive. The study was conducted in three separate classrooms, each based upon theoretically different models of literacy learning: (1) a content-centered…

A case study of a young boy's learning to read and write from the beginnings of literacy at age 5 up to age 11, after reading and writing have converged, is the focus of this book. The first part of the book, a description of his learning to write, discusses invented spelling, research about other young spellers and writers, the shift toward…

From l979 to l985, data were gathered from approximately 600 students in 24 Dutch elementary schools to determine changes occurring in the interrelationships among the reading skill components of decoding, reading comprehension, and spelling ability. Information for each student was obtained from reading performance test scores recorded at the end…

In direct instruction, the teacher, in a face-to-face, reasonably formal manner, tells, shows, models, demonstrates, and teaches the skill to be learned. Therefore, it is the teacher behavior aspect of classroom instruction that underpins the instructional strategy for teaching main ideas. Much has been learned about teacher behaviors that…

A state of the art report on the development of native and second language reading skills in nonnative English speakers begins with a review of the reading process and the relationship of language to the reading process. The second chapter reviews various levels of language and relates them to reading and learning to read a first and second…

The comparative effects of instruction in self-questioning, summarizing, and question-answer relations on reading comprehension test performance were studied with 49 juniors and seniors enrolled in a remedial reading course at Georgia State University. The objective was to find a method to help students pass a statewide college reading exit…

To help Pennsylvania-based reading professionals share the results of their research with colleagues, this guide contains abstracts of both published and unpublished articles, doctoral dissertations, masters' projects, institutional research projects, and articles in preparation, all prepared by researchers living in Pennsylvania or affiliated…

There is no shortage of surveys on children's and young adults' leisure time reading interests, stretching as far back as 1888 in Great Britain and 1897 in the United States. The most comprehensive research undertaken in Great Britain was a study conducted by the Schools Council, published by Macmillan in 1975 as "Children and Their…

Research and descriptive studies of the active reader (one who starts reading early in life with a broad range of interests and continues this behavior) are of particular interest, because they identify salient characteristics and acquired traits of people who like to read. For example, the mature reader has been characterized as being able to…

A study investigated the effects of microcomputers on children's attention to reading tasks and the relationship between previous reading achievement and grade level on such attentional behavior. Fifty-five third and fifth graders read two stories each, one presented on a microcomputer and one presented in print. Television cartoons and rock music…

Forty-eight college students participated in a study that (1) explored the degree to which the reader response technique developed by W. F. Brewer and E. H. Lichtenstein to study artificial texts could be applied to natural texts, and (2) compared texts written over a wide time period and from two different literary traditions (six American and…

Predicated on the assumption that many of the problems exhibited by learning disabled children arise from difficulties they have in processing information, the program of research described in this paper was undertaken to (1) identify reading comprehension difficulties that are due to disorders in the reader, and (2) design and test effective…

Focusing on trends in reading achievement during the period from l970 to l984, this report draws from national assessments that involved more than 250,000 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The first chapter (1) provides an overview of the report; (2) summarizes recent achievements documented by the…