The summary information in this report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public in Alberta, Canada with an overview of results from the June 1998 administration of the English 30 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

Aiming to make the literacy tutoring task as easy and effective as possible, this guidebook presents a set of strategies that tutors can implement immediately as they begin to work with students and provides enough information about the elements of literacy learning and effective instruction so tutors can make sensible decisions about the best…

This paper discusses six instructional components that meet the literacy needs of all students and address all of the components of a balanced and comprehensive approach to reading instruction: (1) phonemic awareness (the understanding that spoken words and syllables are made up of sequences of elementary speech sounds); (2) letter names and…

Two experiments investigated the role of capacity in children's comprehension of relative clause sentences. Sentences varied in number of participant roles, focus (object, subject), and embeddedness (center-embedded, right-branching). Center-embeddedness and object-focus were expected to constrain individuals toward assigning more nouns to their…

A study examined the effect of cooperative learning on the reading comprehension of 16 second-grade students. A modified Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program was used with the experimental group over a 20-week period. A control group of 17 students was taught to read using traditional whole-group instruction with a…

A study determined the effect of three types of text structures (attribution, comparison, and collection) on fifth graders' reading comprehension. Subjects, 71 students from 3 classrooms in 1 public elementary school in southern California, were randomly assigned to 1 of those 3 conditions. There was no instruction given. Students read…

A practicum addressed the problem of poor reading comprehension of average ability third graders in a southeastern U.S. elementary school. The target group consisted of 24 third-grade students from a low socio-economic background. The reading program was initiated to improve reading comprehension skills. The average test score on the basal reading…

A study investigated the degree to which the page layout of a book affects the young reader's association of text with appropriate illustrations. Four hundred native French-speaking third-graders in eight Montreal (Canada) schools participated. In a third-grade text about animals, the names of the animals illustrated in pictures and other words…

This paper examines one section of the objective paper of the Hong Kong Examination Authority's (HKEA) Use of English Examination. One of the test types in this section of the examination involves candidates completing a cloze passage based on a text. It is the HKEA's contention that the exercise involves summarizing/paraphrasing skills. The…

This study examined whether and to what extent the characteristics of mental models derived from the identical text, which is known to produce a certain type of mental model, are influenced if the subjects are given different task expectations before the reading session. Seventy-one undergraduates read one of the two text genres, descriptive or…

This 24-item annotated bibliography discusses factors affecting reading achievement, including classroom management techniques, reading instruction, reading comprehension, teacher behavior, and beginning reading. The books, journal articles, and research reports in the annotated bibliography were published between 1963 and 1977. (RS)

A study tested the effectiveness of three instructional strategies in three expository text structures on students' reading comprehension and writing performance. Subjects, 173 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders, were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: mental modeling, graphic organizer, or a control read/answer group. They received…

The practicum described in this paper used an eclectic approach to promote word meaning vocabulary growth in 14 fourth-grade students from an urban elementary school who had scored below 74% on a vocabulary pretest. Students were tutored once or twice a week for a 10-week period with direct vocabulary instruction, utilizing semantic mapping and…

A study compared a text annotation method to underlining to ascertain whether students were more likely to learn and remember material they had read using one strategy or the other. Subjects were 67 students in 4 classes of a 7-week study skills course. One group was trained in text annotation, one in underlining, and two control groups were given…

A review was conducted of the research on error detection studies completed with children, adolescents, and young adults to determine at what age children begin to detect errors in texts. The studies were grouped according to the subjects' ages. The focus of the review was on the following aspects of each study: the hypothesis that guided the…