Used 4 experimental conditions to examine the effectiveness of different instructional ratios of known to unknown vocabulary words on the reading progress of 46 students. Results suggest that students acquired new information as instructional ratios expanded. An inverse relationship was established between instructional material presented and…

Comparison of scores of 35 third- and fourth-grade students with learning disabilities on 3 major achievement tests found high positive correlations among the reading subtests. Agreement across all 3 tests for learning disability eligibility in the basic reading skills area was found in 20 of 35 cases and 9 of 35 cases in reading comprehension.…

Reviews evidence related to the readability and comprehensibility of material in primary school science textbooks, which shows that texts are often too difficult for children, particularly in developing countries where pupils are learning through English as the medium of instruction. (69 references) (Author/CK)

Examines issues concerning the learning process in the information age. Highlights include new concepts of literacy, including information literacy; teaching methods and instructional design, including global influences, faculty as facilitators of learning, and learning environments; learning to learn; learning strategies; the presentation of…

Discusses the limitations of dominant notions of background knowledge (BGK) as neutral information and objective knowledge and of the reading techniques that accompany these notions. The article argues that the notion of BGK should be broadened to include awareness of the social processes of production and interpretation of text. (26 references)…

Examines the effectiveness of Early Steps, a first-grade reading intervention program in which at-risk students receive one-to-one tutoring lessons. Results reveal that at the end of the school year, the Early Steps group outperformed a comparison group on a variety of reading measures, including oral reading accuracy, comprehension, and…

Describes a whole-class strategy called Imagine, Elaborate, Predict, and Confirm designed to improve reading comprehension and writing among middle school students. Reviews research and describes modeling, prereading, reading, post reading, and follow-up stages for classroom procedures. Includes sample lessons for science, literature, and social…

This article examines several sub-constructs of information processing and their potential association with the poorer language comprehension of children with specific language impairments (SLI). It argues that some of the language comprehension problems of children with SLI are related to certain information processing inefficiencies. Techniques…

Of 93 undergraduates, 75% attended 2 lecture-based and 2 case-study-based training sessions, 25% were controls. Knowledge gained in lectures was significantly related to verbal comprehension; knowledge from case studies was significantly related to reasoning. Individual differences between comprehension and reasoning scores support the value of…

Examined how reading texts for different purposes affected amounts of incidental word learning. Grade 6 students were asked to read texts for fun, to learn about the topic of the text, and for text comprehension. Level of reading ability was a significant factor in all conditions. Low ability readers learned hardly any words incidentally;…

University students were screened to determine whether some could comprehend text well despite very poor recoding skills, measured by pseudoword reading. There was no evidence that resilient readers relied on superior verbal ability or working memory to compensate for poor recoding. Resilient readers were poor at spelling, reading isolated words,…

A solid, emerging research base exists on how to provide meaningful access to the general education curriculum for students with learning disabilities. This article uses examples from research in comprehension and writing to highlight the underlying features of these empirically based approaches. The importance of multiple teaching strategies is…

This investigation examined the comprehension skills of 63 urban African-American children (ages 4-6) from middle-income homes. Performances on a task designed to elicit responses to wh-questions and another to make distinctions between active and passive sentence constructions revealed grade effects and a positive relationship to age. (Author/CR)

Discusses how second-language reading research is focusing increasingly on the cognitive processes involved in reading--the interaction of lower-level, bottom-up processes such as vocabulary acquisition with high-level, top-down processes such as activating prior knowledge. This knowledge is combined with current research on learning with…

Describes how the introduction of information books into a first grade classroom led a "traditional" teacher to provide students with a wider variety of literary experiences and allow students the opportunity for more active involvement in books. Notes that the classroom evolved into a child-centered environment where each child reads and writes…