Reviews and evaluates reading instruction software that helps teach word attack and recognition and reading comprehension. (CRH)

It is proposed that language acquisition improves if beginning students are allowed to experience three stages of acquisition: comprehension (preproduction), early speech production, and speech emergence. Each stage requires a different kind of activity building on the previous stage's development. (MSE)

Latent class modeling procedures were used in exploratory and confirmatory analyses of the prerequisite relations among five types of text-based inference question tasks for good and poor sixth-grade readers. All tasks types provided separate manifestations of the same underlying attribute for both good and poor readers. (Author/BS)

A study of the first grade books in two basal series, compared with typical storybooks, shows that the amount and type of picture-dependence varies, even over the year. (FL)

Indicates that the format and use of the informal reading inventory need to be modified in order to address recent research findings of schema theory, text analysis, and metacognition. (FL)

Offers a set of lesson plans that use simple semantic word maps to help students improve their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension in all subject areas. (FL)

Investigates the relationship between field dependence-independence and the comprehension test scores for expository and literary text types and examines the relationship between text structure and reading comprehension. (FL)

Examines some recent ERIC materials on comprehension processes and on how teachers can improve students' awareness of comprehension or metacomprehension. (HOD)

Explores parallels between understanding of chemistry for younger teenagers with the learning of a language by younger children. Also discusses: (1) teacher perspective and the development of core science; (2) religion and science; and (3) the physics examinations of the Department of Science and Art. (JN)

Describes an Environmental Reading Program, in which students come to realize that they are readers of their surroundings. Shows how the program can stimulate thought processes and promote comprehension. (FL)

Describes how the retelling of stories can reveal (1) the point or points students see in the stories they read and (2) the problems students have organizing the different elements of a story into a coherent whole. (HOD)

Outlines a technique using articles from "Le Francais dans le Monde" to teach reading comprehension and theory simultaneously to teachers of French as a second language. Describes a program in Italy using this approach. (MSE)

In order to determine how use of responsive listener cues (e.g. head nods, yesses, smiles, etc.) changes over preschool years, children were videorecorded as they listened to an adult speaker talk about his experiences. Age and sex differences in preschoolers' responsive behaviors are discussed as well as the relationship between the development…

High school biology teachers (N=18), and one 10th-grade class of each teacher, were given the Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale at the beginning and end of a school year to determine their conceptions of the nature of science. Results (such as students not possessing "adequate" conceptions of science) are reported and discussed. (JN)

Analyzes multiplication word problems to identify the origin of children's difficulty. Emphasis is given to problems involving the concept of combination. (JN)