To examine the hypothesis that children learn to ask questions by modeling their parents' behaviors during interactive book-reading experiences, transcripts of reading experiences of nine mother-child dyads from the Harvard Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development were examined. Found that few questions were asked. Results did not…

Finds that readers will not completely comprehend the sentences they read unless sufficiently motivated by situational demands. Shows that complete comprehension entails three separate yet interdependent processing tasks but that experimental participants had a strategy of minimal task satisfaction: they did not resolve anaphors, build structures,…

Compares the reading of hearing-impaired and normally hearing children on several measures. Finds, in contrast to an earlier study, that the use of an associated strategy by the hearing impaired occurred only in response to isolated sentences. Concludes that the hearing impaired's reading is delayed in some respects but is not different. (SR)

Examines the conscious and unconscious reading connections that third grade children made when they wrote fairy tales after spending six weeks studying fairy tales. Finds that students make intertextual links and that students internalized the rhythm, cadence, and sentence structure of fairy tales. (PRA)

Describes the concept of phonemic awareness and offers suggestions to classroom teachers on how to enhance phonemic awareness in their students. (PRA)

Describes the responses of one English teacher recorded in a journal throughout her second reading of Margaret Mahy's novel, "Dangerous Spaces." Considers how later rereadings of the novel were influenced by earlier readings. Shows how one reader can fail to do justice to a book when reading it alone. (HB)

Two experiments studied the role of phonemic information in children's comprehension during silent reading. A sentence acceptability task indicated that readers required more time to read and comprehend sentences with word-initial phonemes (the "tongue-twister effect") than control sentences. When the first task was added to a digit…

Describes the use of a "process approach" to teaching English as a foreign language to English majors at a Chinese teachers' college. (RS)

Shares how students in second through sixth grade learn the "language of challenge" as they learn to read and write in their classrooms. Describes how the teachers and students challenge each other to grow as readers and writers and how they support each other in this process. (MG)

Presents open-ended and semistructured interviews to assess reading comprehension. Highlights the potential value of interviews in aligning assessment practices with instruction and learning theory. (MG)

Argues that reading is a creative act of the individual imagination. Notes that, instead of recognizing that reading requires children to make something new, to take a leap, writers of children's literature are often tempted to make reading easy. (RS)

The knowledge of college students about conditions under which particular reading tactics are appropriate was studied. Results of 2 experiments with 377 college students identified 10 distinct categories of reading situations, which constitute an approximation of a typology of reading situations that could organize research on reading strategies.…

Outlines three basic views of how readers infer causal connections and how they generate causal inferences. Evaluates these three hypotheses with reference to current research in the field. (HB)

Considers the difference between commonplace inferences versus more elusive inferences in reading processes. Claims that higher level inferences may be restricted in part because they do not operate in response to simple memory symbols but depend on complex compositional representations not always available. (HB)

Suggests that the term "inference" itself has had a negative effect on the study of how information is elaborated and reduced in text processing. Discusses some of the current views of inferencing in text comprehension. Suggests viewing information reduction processes within the same framework as information accretion. (HB)