Using a study of 30 Danish freshman college students' vocabularies as a springboard, this paper explores and discusses a number of current assumptions about vocabularies in the mother tongue and in foreign language pedagogics. The paper contends that it is logical to assume that vocabularies in reading are fluid and depend on the text read, on the…

Differing views on how meaning in a literacy event is formed have a large impact upon literacy instruction and language research. Teaching and research are often conducted without considering who is in charge of meanings. Yet the answer to this question establishes an interpretive frame that creates the questions, methods, and findings in language…

To examine the effectiveness of various writing devices, a study used Richard Carter's Signalled Stopping Technique (SST) to compare these devices as used in two student-authored science stories. The SST indicates how messages are mentally processed, and uses the following seven stops: (1) C (confusion); (2) R (reread); (3) Q (question); (4) T…

Intended for those who want to know more about reading and how it is taught, but who will themselves probably not specialize in the teaching of reading, this book addresses such questions as (1) Why read? (2) What motivation does one have for reading? and (3) What does reading provide as a means of communication that cannot just as easily be…

Given that comparative/contrastive arguments can be displayed separately in a text (one complete argument followed by another, or O-organization) or in an integrated way (with the various aspects interleaved, or A-organization), a study compared a third arrangement--a graphic format, or G-organization--that presented the two descriptions side by…

Written for prospective and practicing teachers, this book is built on two major premises: firstly, that there are two broad categories of learners--inductive or traditional learners and noninductive or nontraditional learners; and secondly, that in order to prevent or remediate failure, all reading curricula must be modified to meet the needs of…

Psycholinguistic theoretical information provides the framework for the argument that talking books, taped books, shared book experiences and composing activities that include real text prepared for a specific audience provide an environment conducive to beginning reading. Six assumptions underlie the learning to read process: (1) children learn…

As part of a larger study of developmental deficits in the skills of automaticity of name retrieval, phonological awareness, and memory span and their role in reading disabilities, a study tested 13 average and 14 poor fourth-grade readers for digit and letter naming speed, phonological awareness, and digit span. Among the reading skills assessed…

A study investigated the ability of above average and average high school students to use text structure to identify main ideas and write a summary. Schema possession of 388 sophomores was assessed by measuring their ability to organize the components of a scrambled passage. Only 10 students in the above average and 20 in the average ability…

In developing an interactive model of composing, this paper discusses three groups of reader-oriented theories, each of which provides composing theorists with some research and theory to use in developing such a model. First the paper discusses the main principle of the literary reader-response theorists--that the meaning and value of texts do…

The research reviewed in this paper concerns the visual perceptual processes occurring as people are engaged in the act of reading. The issues that are examined include the control of eye movements, perception during a fixation, and perception across successive fixations. Consideration also is given to problems related to obtaining information…

A study investigated processing differences between metaphorical and literal versions of the same sentences. The purposes of the study were (1) to directly compare the on-line processing demands of metaphoric and nonmetaphoric sentences, and (2) to examine the consequences of such sentences for memory performance. The subjects were 39 college…

Reading comprehension involves making connections between prior knowledge and the visual information on the page. To reduce uncertainty, the reader makes orthographic, syntactic, or semantic predictions. Thus, comprehension is relative, dependent on the answers to different readers' different kinds of questions. The reader does not record a…

Several models of the reading and writing processes suggest that the two should be taught together as part of the communication process. The first responsibility of a teacher interested in teaching the connection is the selection of a model that seems to fit perceptions about the connection. Next, the teacher must decide the balance and sequence…

Working on the assumption that an adequate model of comprehension must also deal with its connotative aspect (the aspect that concerns the feeling, mood, or "tone" of the text), this paper examines the concept of contextual tone. After defining tone according to its various senses and synonymous forms (voice, attitude, style, mood, and…