A study was conducted to determine if interest in a basal reader story could be heightened and reading comprehension improved by (1) having the children predict the story content from the title prior to reading the story and (2) having them predict the outcome of the story at a salient midpoint. Subjects, 45 children in 2 fifth grade classes, were…

A study was conducted to determine whether word length and sentence position influence the likelihood that a child will acknowledge that a word has disrupted comprehension of a reading passage. In the first task, third and fifth grade skilled and less-skilled readers read 16 short paragraphs containing nonsense words and reported whether the…

Since the time of E. B. Huey (1908), there have been clear indicators that oral language as a reflection of a child's linguistic ability has been clearly related to his or her reading achievement or comprehension. P. McKee (1937) and W. S. Gray (1937) both speculated that reading difficulties might parallel language deficiencies. G. Hildreth…

There are two disconcerting aspects of the research studies selected and discussed in the publication "Becoming a Nation of Readers: The Report of the Commission on Reading" (1985). One is the kinds of reading materials that were designated as sources for meeting the various functions of reading; the other is the omission of the role of…

This article discusses dyslexia (one of the many complex issues that affects students) and the ways to tackle it appropriately. Dyslexia is described as a syndrome in which a person's reading and/or writing ability is significantly lower than that which would be predicted by his or her general level of intelligence. People are diagnosed as…

Many effective classroom teachers profess reluctance to use miscue analysis, either because they experience interference by their previous use of informal reading inventory procedures or because they find the procedures for miscue analysis too involved for use in the classroom. Such teachers need a brief explanation of the psycholinguistic…

Two conflicting hypotheses exist regarding how oral reading behavior patterns follow from encounter with the text. One hypothesis views them as following decoding (decoding hypothesis), and the other sees them as occurring after comprehension processes have constructed a semantic representation of the message. These hypotheses are further…

Evaluative comments from one participant in the June 1976 Pittsburgh conference on the theory and practice of beginning reading are presented in this paper. Discussion centers on curriculum analyses, testing practices, teaching practices, units of analysis that are required for reading research, learning characteristics, stages of reading…

This document summarizes 599 reports of reading research published between 1 July 1975 and 30 June 1976. The research studies are categorized in six major areas, four of which have been subcategorized. The majority of studies reported were classified in the area of the physiology and psychology of reading. Large subdivisions under that major…

To support the position that radio has significant instructional potential for the improvement of language arts skills--especially reading--in developing nations, this paper discusses the use of radio in relation to other aspects of educational development in those countries. The first section of the paper discusses the role of language in…

"Language Skills in English," a three-year project designed to explore the application of mastery learning techniques to solve the reading and writing problems of secondary school students in Scotland, is discussed in this paper. Background information provided in the first section of the paper concerns the context of the project, its…

Overviews of schema theory, which focuses on the cognitive operations engaged in by the reader, and discourse analysis, which focuses on structural characteristics of the text itself, are presented in this paper. The first section explains the notion of cognitive schemata (patterns of expectations that are applied to incoming information) and…

This personal progress report, telling where the author is and where he thinks the field of reading is, is a response to both the "know-more movement" (based on an explosive seeking of greater knowledge of the reading process) and the "know-nothing movement" (a systems-oriented movement based on tightly structured arbitrarily…

Developed as part of a statewide effort to improve reading achievement in West Virginia through a competency based staff development program, this inservice instructional packet is intended for school district reading administrators and principals and contains the materials for a five-day inservice administrative workshop. The materials focus on…

Developed in West Virginia as part of a statewide effort to improve reading achievement through a competency based staff development program, this inservice instructional packet on recreational reading and personal development is one of five devised to present classroom teachers with the essential competencies and learner outcomes involved in…