This report surveys the significance and implications of the question of how the knowledge of past reading instruction might engender a better understanding of contemporary practices and help to resolve current problems. The report advocates the necessity of educator/historians and outlines the requirements for their dual training and experience.…

Research and practical ideas on inservice reading programs are the subject of this report from the National Right to Read Effort. The report deals with the following topics: producing an effective inservice program, constructive changes, planning, "do-it-yourself" teachers' centers, research on effective inservice education, and…

A brief review of reading research studies is presented, and the need for unifying reading theories is discussed. It is noted that speed training, comprehension skills, and vocabulary development compose the main areas of reading research and that most of the studies are taxonomic and do not give accurate explanations or allow for predictions and…

First and second graders were taught to recognize a set of written words either more accurately or more rapidly. Both before and after word training, they named pictures printed with and without these words as distractors. Of interest was whether training would enhance or diminish the interference created by these words in the picture naming task.…

This study, involving 131 students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve, investigated the effects of order of administration of subtests on scores from the Nelson-Denny Reading Test. Results indicated that order of administration had no significant effect on scores from the vocabulary subtest or on the total test score, but subjects taking the…

Four tasks believed to assess different subskills of word decoding were administered to 87 kindergarten subjects after determining their ability to decode novel word forms. The four tasks included visual-aural recognition, aural-aural recognition, visual-oral production, and aural-oral production. Subjects were grouped into high, middle, and low…

In this address, the author examines the complex scope of reading achievement, instruction, and research in the United States. The discussion begins with a historical perspective, continues with views of the development of reading as a science and as a profession, and concludes with a discussion of current and future developments in the reading…

Information on six research programs which studied eye movements during reading and evaluated aspects of PLATO-displayed reading instructional material is provided in this report. An analysis of eye movements of "competent" and "less competent" readers reading for general and detailed information showed many differences between…

The purpose of this paper was to investigate letters-per-syllable constants as predictors of true syllable counts for basal readers and trade books at five instructional levels. One hundred fifty language samples of approximately one hundred words each were selected and keypunched for computer analysis to determine average word length and total…

The purpose of this study was to survey the present status of reading in Alabama secondary schools. A survey of reading in secondary schools was designed to answer the following questions: What achievement or reading tests are presently administered in Alabama secondary schools? What is the purpose of such testing? What format is presently used in…

This paper analyzes the reading task, using a conceptual analysis of reading developed by the linguistic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Eschewing theory and explanation while leading his reader through a series of cases and experiences, Wittgenstein causes the reader-experiencer-viewer to "see" that reading is a word which stands for…

An inservice program, Project Alert, was conducted during the summer of 1973 in 50 school districts in New York State. Project Alert had a two-fold purpose: to increase the diagnostic/prescriptive skills of selected classroom teachers and to increase the leadership capabilities of the selected teachers so that they might function as inservice…

The purpose of this study was to systematically investigate the effects of various orienting tasks on the recall of prose material. In particular, subjects were asked to read a prose passage while performing either a semantic (outlining the material) or a nonsemantic (circling e's) orienting task under either incidental or intentional recall…

Investigated in this pilot experiment was a reading readiness program designed to introduce to kindergarten children the prereading skills necessary for later success in reading. Eighty-one children, primarily of Spanish origin or Negro, participated in the study. The 42 experimental subjects received instruction in the reading readiness program,…

Research on word recognition is listed in two sections: Part 1, 1950 to the present, and Part 2, 1900-1949. Citations in each section are alphabetized according to the author's last name and are followed by descriptive abstracts in Part 1 and by brief annotations in Part 2. In order to make this bibliography helpful to users with varying concepts…