A study was conducted to examine whether improved and more intensive teaching of conceptualization and abstract reasoning skills could be a factor in the improvement of reading comprehension. Subjects were 48 high school sophomores reading at or below grade level, evenly divided in experimental and control groups, from four intact classes. A…

To determine if purposes in reading differ with sex, grade level, and nationality, a 16-item "Functions of Reading Scale" (developed from content analysis of student essays on why they like to read) was administered to 459 Irish (Dublin, Ireland) and American (Windham, Connecticut) students in grades three, five, and eight. Data…

To determine if integrating course content with reading study skills would (1) increase student learning of course content and (2) improve students' general reading achievement, one section of a reading education course for preservice teachers was taught reading study skills along with course content; two sections were given no classroom…

Research suggests that reading is a written language process that is learned naturally in much the same way as oral language. To test this hypothesis, a descriptive, longitudinal study was conducted of the reading development of eight kindergarten and first grade students who showed environmental print awareness but were not considered readers.…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 18 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of illustrations on third grade students' attitudes toward the elderly; (2) visual and phonological coding in word processing by fourth, sixth, and…

A two-part study investigated the effects of a text adjunct on poor readers' recall and comprehension. The text adjunct, a thematic organizer, was designed to define explicitly the central theme of a passage, relate the theme to students' prior knowledge, and provide cohesion among the ideas of the passage to accommodate text structure. Subjects…

More than 1,000 studies of reading research published between July 1, 1982, and June 30, 1983 are summarized in this report. The studies are arranged into six categories: (1) Summaries of Reading Research, (2) Teacher Preparation and Practice, (3) The Sociolgy of Reading, (4) Physiology and Psychology of Reading, (5) The Teaching of Reading, and…

A study evaluated the effects of a 5-week study strategies program called RAVES (Read, Answer, Vocabulary, Examples, Share) designed to help intermediate students understand and recall information presented in expository text. Subjects, 156 fifth and sixth grade students enrolled in suburban Maryland science classes, read a section of expository…

A study investigated the role of phonemic information in young readers' silent reading comprehension. Subjects, 56 children in grades 2 and 4, from Seattle parochial schools, were blocked into groups based on their grade and skill level (skilled and less skilled). Each subject saw 48 sentences presented in a random order on an Apple II…

This collection of papers, from a conference on reading and writing connections held at the University of Illinois in October 1986, reflects the value of demonstrating connections between reading instruction and writing. The book shows practitioners how writing can be blended with reading instruction and how writing activities can be used not just…

Focusing on how textbooks and ideology influence and reflect literacy instruction, this book examines literacy as defined in the public elementary schools of British Columbia, Canada. Chapters include: (1) "Approaches to the Study of Literacy and Curriculum"; (2) "The Text in Historical Context: The Debate over Schooling and…

To measure the effectiveness of the computer based instructional system designed to develop the writing and reading skills of kindergarten and first grade students, Writing to Read (WTR), which was implemented by three Kettering (Ohio) Elementary Schools in l988 and three more in 1989, was examined in five areas related to the program. Results…

Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students, this book summarizes and puts into a coherent framework the research on reading processes conducted by cognitive psychologists since the early 1970s. The book focuses on the process of reading: how information is extracted from the printed page and comprehended. Part 1 provides…

This paper, number eight in an ongoing series, is part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures. Presented are the written responses from 129 readers in Denmark, Greenland, Great Britain, India, and…

This paper, number nine in an ongoing series, is part of an interdisciplinary project on the context of reading and reading research that explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature in readers from different cultures. Presented are the written responses from 137 readers in Denmark, Greenland, Great Britain, India, and…