Suggests that the emphasis on basic reading research in the decade of the 1970s has devalued the importance of reading instruction research and has ignored the needs of the reading educator. (AEA)

Criticizes a study of the reliability and validity of curriculum-based reading inventories by L. S. Fuchs, D. Fuchs, and S. L. Deno and raises questions regarding the study's internal and external validity. (AEA)

Forty-eight participants read one of three texts (high explanatory, low explanatory, and standard) that varied in the degree of explanation of basic concepts of elementary probability. Performance test data showed that participants in the high-explanatory test condition did equally well on both formula and story problems. (Author/LC)

Three experiments were performed to investigate differential recall of prose materials as a function of the number of decisions made about the content during reading. Results indicated that (1) recall is increased as the number of decisions is increased and (2) the effects on recall are noted only in conditions requiring decisions. (Author/LC)

The existing literature on reading comprehension instruction is organized and reviewed. The authors question whether explicit training to improve comprehension or monitoring strategies should be offered, since these behaviors improve with maturity and experience and in the absence of any apparent training, but conclude that it is possible that…

Reviews the guidelines for the construction of an advance organizer as proposed by David Ausubel and examines why the term has so many possible definitions. (FL)

Explores the effectiveness of training in miscue analysis on teachers' perceptions of reading, accuracy in describing reading behavior, and judgments of readers' patterns of strengths. Concludes that the training was valuable. (FL)

Presents reports from five educators on the research studies that influenced them most. (JL)

Discusses techniques for helping second language students develop strategies for dealing with unfamilar words and long sentences in second language texts. (EKN)

Reviews research concerned with eye movement training in the classroom and points out how specific research has been interpreted and applied incorrectly. (FL)

Analyzes the plot structure of the 61 most popular picture books on the 1982 "Children's Choices" list and discusses interesting trends found in the list. (FL)

Reports on a study that examined the effects of reading habits on journalistic writing abilities of 100 university students and found that there was no correlation between the amount of reading and the quality of writing. (HOD)

Finds that the most common type of figurative language in fourth- and sixth-grade basal readers is personification. Overall, the most commonly used figures of speech are: personification; animal, sense, and inanimate metaphors; and hyperbole. (FL)

Describes a study that examined the ways students responded to the styles of texts and that also looked at the effects of repeated reading of the same passage and different task instructions. (JL)

Presents an analysis of prose narratives that allows content to be identified as central and provides a priori rationale for why the content is central. Investigates which content is supportive of, or distracting to, the central content. (FL)