As part of the work from the Content Area Reading Project (CARP), which focuses on inservice teacher education in content area reading, a study examined the effects of an inservice content area reading program that involved two three-hour workshops per month on the theory and practical application of teaching methods for content area reading…

A study was conducted to describe factors influencing the acquisition of facilitating and inhibiting reading strategies by adult beginning readers (ABRs) in order to generate potential guidelines for instruction. Using an adapted form of the Goodman and Burke taxonomy of oral reading miscues as initial framework, the investigators described ABRs'…

In presenting a historical overview of trends in vocabulary research, this paper emphasizes the importance of word knowledge as a critical component in reading comprehension. It describes research examining current psychological and pedagogical models as they relate to vocabulary knowledge, and explores vocabulary research in the area of specific…

A study investigated children's recall and representation for multiple episode stories differing in terms of goal structure. Subjects were 36 third and fifth grade students reading below grade level, and 48 students from the same grades who were identified as average readers. The students read or listened to stories containing embedded and…

An ethnographic study of small group reading instruction was conducted to learn how teachers' judgments of students' abilities influenced the way they grouped students for reading instruction and the effects of these grouping practices on teachers' planning and instructional behaviors. Two teachers and 20 students were observed over the course of…

A total of 954 teachers in ten school districts near Eastern Michigan University (Ypsilanti) responded to a questionnaire concerning their needs for university-related assistance in reading instruction. The results revealed the following: (1) teachers were greatly concerned about reading instruction; (2) most teachers were able to recognize a high…

A study was conducted to describe the characteristics and effects of the verbal feedback offered by teachers to student miscues occurring during group oral reading instruction. Analyses were also made of the ways in which teachers varied feedback between students at different ability levels. The subjects were eight second grade teachers and their…

A selection of seven articles on teaching reading to high school students is presented in this report. The topics discussed are: (1) a structured approach to reading expository prose, (2) the effectiveness of sustained silent reading, (3) readability variations in secondary remedial high interest books, (4) the effects of previewing difficult…

A study explored the relation between Piagetian conservation tasks, IQ scores, and reading test scores. A series of 16 items involving conservation tasks for area, length, weight, and volume were presented to 516 students in grades four through nine. The scores on these conservation items were correlated with students' scores on achievement and IQ…

Instead of merely correlating the amount of time a child is read to with gross measures of language development or reading achievement, researchers need to examine closely, through naturalistic studies, the underlying construction and organization of story book reading events between parent and child. The notion of scaffolding, in which the adult…

This journal issue deals with training teachers of reading. The four articles discuss a summer reading methods practicum that worked, how students rate their reading instructors, how reading consultants can survive school politics, and college students' perceptions of the fairness and the difficulty of examinations. (FL)

The literature of reading theory and research suggests a number of key factors involved in the comprehension process. In simplest terms, comprehension is the process by which an individual actively generates meaning from some linguistic input. Five factors of reading comprehension have been identified through research: vocabulary knowledge, the…

A study of student interest was carried out focusing on current reading and media interests of high school boys as compared with those of high school girls and identifying changes in those interests since Paul Witty conducted similar research 20 years earlier. The sample randomly selected 300 ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grade students from…

A review of literature by reading authorities identified seven criteria necessary for meaningful research about reading readiness tests. These criteria were then used in analysis of 15 research studies dealing with the "Metropolitan Readiness Test" and first grade reading achievement. Five major findings resulted from this analysis:…

The applicability of phonics generalizations, particularly the rule "When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking and the second one is silent," is examined in this paper. The first section reports on a study of the applicability of the two vowel rule to words in first- and second-grade basal readers and on a core vocabulary list; the…