Indicates that textbook explication alone of causes of events is insufficient for acquisition and use of hierarchically organized knowledge; students must be taught how to construct text-based information into hierarchically structured form and use it for making predictions. (FL)

Provides a background of response theory, two Canadian perspectives on response theory, a description of transactional response theory and response-centered curriculum, a discussion of the concepts of participant and spectator roles in literature and of the idea of narration and storying as literature, and a discussion of analysis and criticism.…

Discusses psycholinguistic models of reading comprehension and presents general guidelines for reading comprehension testing in a second language. The guidelines focus on content validity, construct validity, and predictive validity. Suggestious are given for ways teachers can prepare students for tests and avoid problems in each of the three…

Discusses the following questions: (1) What is the nature of the reading process? (2) How does one bring meaning to print? (3) What sort of knowledge does the reader bring to bear on the text to make sense of it? and (4) What are the implications of these issues for teaching? (SED)

Historically, research has shown that a reader's recall of ideas from text is enhanced when the reader uses relations among concepts to organize information. Text structure is a term used to describe the various patterns of how concepts within text are related. Knowledge of text structures assists a reader to comprehend text by allowing the reader…

When one educator was teaching English in middle and high school, she wondered why so many adolescents disliked reading. Even teen-aged protagonists and up-to-the-minute topics were not guaranteed to be "interesting." Yet something engages these young readers, at times and in some texts. To begin to get some answers, she interviewed…

This digest, based on a book of the same title, summarizes relevant research and promising practices in the strategic processing of text, both narrative and expository, by students with learning disabilities. For narrative text, it cites studies on improving students' ability to use narrative structure and the effectiveness of teaching students to…

Describes a half-year curriculum called "Portraits," developed by three middle school teachers in collaboration with the education department of a museum, in which students learn and practice the skills involved in visual observation and apply them to reading and writing: precise observation of detail, accurate inference based on these facts, and…

Describes how, in one Texas fifth-grade classroom, Shared Inquiry book discussions were taught and implemented over a six-month period in connection with the Junior Great Book Series. Discusses solutions to the dilemma of grading these active class discussions, and reports that scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) tests were…

This study used eye-gaze analysis to determine the extent to which four preschoolers (ages 52-68 months) looked at print when being read two storybooks. Children rarely attended to print; however, they attended to and fixated on print at higher rates with the storybook containing more salient print. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)

Shares how the author designed reading activities to increase students' understanding of nonfiction by adhering to three principles: purpose, classification, and collaboration. Recounts how students responded to the reading materials and each other as they developed an understanding of the information available to them. (MG)

Compares skilled and unskilled adult readers' approaches to finding the main idea in text. Describes and tests Author's Intended Message (AIM), a holistic main idea strategy suitable for independent use by college study skills students. Investigates the effectiveness of this strategy. (RS)

Shows how to help students fill in textual "gaps" to interact more fully with contemporary texts, classics, and myths. Presents examples of this approach for studying (1) Shakespeare's "Hamlet" with Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"; and (2) George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion" with the…

Investigates readers' response patterns to informative documents. Finds that readers make direct confirmations and positive comprehension evaluations when information is conveyed clearly; when understanding is impaired, readers seek more clearly established relationships in the text. Concludes that readers make evaluative suggestions that…

Presents the theoretical framework for examining texts in educational contexts. An actual reading lesson is analyzed in terms of the text structure and content, the nature of student-teacher interaction with the text, and post-reading discussion of the text. Tables outline the text structure and contrast teacher manual recommendations to actual…