This article compares four theories relating vocabulary knowledge to reading comprehension and applies these theories to vocabulary development instructional approaches for various types of students with problems in reading comprehension. The four theories are the instrumentalist hypothesis, the aptitude hypothesis, the access hypothesis, and the…

Compares the effects of two prereading instructional treatments on students' comprehension of narrative and expository texts. Indicates that the teacher-directed condition is more effective than the interactive condition at promoting comprehension, and that both treatment conditions are superior to no prereading instruction at all. (MG)

Annotates and reviews five professional resources concerning the comprehension processes of reading and mathematics and recommends several ideas for classroom practice. (MG)

Discusses a proposed "context adaptive" model for English-as-a-Second-Language program evaluation and suggests that the boundaries are set too narrowly within this model between phenomena and contexts and that the model of the Reading English for Science and Technology program in Guadalajara (Mexico) suffers from this constriction.…

Studies second, fourth, and sixth grade students to answer four questions to determine whether comprehension of anaphora is a strong structural factor in children's personal composition as it is in reading comprehension. Concludes that students' reading and writing are correlated in the frequency and use of singular and plural pronouns. (MG)

Presents six key questions to ask about any instructional resource. Suggests a few specific questions to ask when selecting decoding and comprehension games and manipulatives. Presents seven instructional games and manipulatives appropriate for classroom use. (MG)

Addresses the question of improving students' literal comprehension in reading by asking inferential and evaluative level question exclusively. Finds that teachers can teach literal comprehension skills more effectively by simply focusing instruction on higher cognitive levels. (MG)

Reports that a meta-analysis of the effects of sentence-combining on reading comprehension (which compared the mean effect sizes with zero) affirmed the congeniality of sentence-combining with cloze tests but not with standardized tests. (NH)

Two studies on the rhythmical patterns of eye movements during reading, displayed by adolescents with reading disabilities and by undergraduates without reading disabilities, revealed that subjects with reading disabilities exhibited rhythm variability, unpredictability, and lethargic tempos; and subjects who were primed exhibited improved parsing…

Provides examples of content literacy activities to help children with the demands of content textbooks and instructional materials. Shows how teachers can model the use of comprehension strategies that broaden understanding, integrate literacy processes, and support students from diverse language backgrounds. (SR)

The reader's knowledge about how a message is woven into discourse plays an important role in reading comprehension. This article first reviews reasons for student difficulties in comprehension, sentence groups, and sense units and then presents a basic discourse framework and its applications for analyzing text passages. (Contains two…

Story grammar is a recent area of research related to an interactive conceptualization of reading. A study of 70 sixth-grade students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) suggests that direct instruction in story grammar helps students abstract a story's episodic sequence and metastructure. Sample texts are appended. (Contains 21…

Investigation of the relationship between short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) with 75 children and adults with learning disabilities and 86 children without learning disabilities concluded that STM and WM reflect different processes, both of which seem to separate the 2 ability groups. Both STM and WM were related to reading…

Describes a Learning Activity Portfolio designed to help high school literature students discover and explore the novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. (SR)

Studies empirically the effects on reader performance of reduced text structure in technical writing texts. Reveals that removal of cues to local coherence produced reliable decrements in reader performance. Discusses results with regard to questions of information design. (HB)