The use of cinema in a French literature class can help students become more aware of their role as receivers in the reading process. "Le retour de Martin Guerre" and "Entre Nous" helped develop students' awareness of gender's importance in a variety of literary texts. (16 references) (LB)

Tests whether nominal compounds, the juxtaposition of three or more nouns, retain sufficient semantic information to justify their use for brevity. Finds that respondents often misidentified at least one out of five given headwords. Recommends reminding students of headwords' importance and employing nominal compounds only after their fuller…

Critical background references on the problems related to comprehension of science text material, a conceptual framework on which to base instructional decisions, and some specific activities designed to enhance science reading comprehension are presented. (36 references) (KR)

The study examined the effectiveness of the use of nonoptical tinted (Irlen) lenses with 44 children (ages 9-16) with reading disabilities. Evaluation after 6 and 12 months indicated a significant improvement in attitude to school and to basic academic skills. Reading comprehension and accuracy, but not rate, were also significantly improved.…

Reviews research in revising instructional text by examining multidisciplinary research in readability, text structure, text interestingness, expert revisers' strategies, and readers' comprehension strategies. Finds that much of this research is limited by a simplistic view of reading, the use of experimentally contrived texts and contexts, and a…

Investigates the degree to which children and adult readers use semantic and syntactic information sources to increase speed of word recognition and to increase speed of determining sentence meaningfulness. Finds three developmental differences in the speed of analyzing these sentences for words/nonwords versus meaningfulness/nonmeaningfulness.…

Examines comprehension of students provided with relevant background knowledge and then tested on two versions of a text. Finds that students who read the revised text recalled significantly more material and answered more questions correctly than students who read the original text. Discusses the importance of the teacher's role in mediating…

Second, fourth, and sixth graders were given passage of text whose material could be represented as four-level class inclusion hierarchy. Students were asked to construct external representation of passage and answer questions that required them to reason about contents of passage. Quality of representation and performance on question tasks were…

Effects on comprehension of a text structure used primarily in science and mathematics to present principles and associated proofs were studied for 70 undergraduates in 3 experiments. Results suggest that the usual proof-first structure is more difficult than a principle-first structure and results in less complete text representation. (SLD)

Argues that providing students with a repertoire of important learning strategies is one crucial way of helping all students to become independent readers, thinkers, and learners. Describes a third grade reading environment and the practices of the Students Achievement Independent Learning Program (SAIL). (PRA)

This study addressed effects of varied presentations of advance organizers on text recall of grade level content area reading by 30 seventh grade subjects with reading problems. Most effective was oral delivery of the advance organizer followed by guided discussion. Recall was also improved if questions were asked soon after reading and were…

The effect of equations in scientific proofs on readers' comprehension was studied. Forty college undergraduates solved unfamiliar physics problems with or without a traditional series of related equations. Verbal proofs produced better responses than did equation-based proofs. Equations in proofs cause readers to shift attention away from…

Explores the benefits of using Readers Theatre in the content areas. Discusses how to select and adapt text for Readers Theatre scripts and provides suggestions for rehearsal and performing of the scripts. (MG)

A series of classroom activities for adult beginning learners of French, designed to improve reading comprehension through newspapers and news magazines, are described. The technique focuses on development of grammar and vocabulary and makes use of photos, text, layout features, and headlines. (MSE)

The Literature Learning Project at the English Studies Department, Institute of Education in Singapore is described. It focuses on determining how well lower-level students cope with their literature texts and also tests the hierarchical properties of Hillocks' taxonomy of skills in reading and interpreting fiction. (18 references) (LB)