Examined the effects of racial imagery and cultural themes in reading content on the reading comprehension of 109 African-American elementary school students. Results provided some support for the hypothesis that stories depicting African-American characters would facilitate more efficient recall and comprehension than stories about white…

Finds that reading comprehension and attitudes toward reading were significantly improved when second- and third-grade delayed readers participated in a 10-week cognitive apprenticeship in reading involving an adult volunteer reading partner, who scaffolded the reading experience to enable the student to accomplish the authentic task of reading a…

Compares and contrasts chapters from two children's science textbooks, one published in 1992 in a traditional format, and the other in 1995 using a new format. Finds them very different in terms of structure and organization. Shows that children respond to these texts very differently. Shares some ideas about teaching with such texts. (SR)

Outlines a model for understanding the second-language reading process. Uses errors in comprehension to illustrate how the reading comprehension process works. Discusses pedagogical implications and suggestions for teaching students to develop and practice better comprehension strategies using think-alouds. (RS)

Describes navigation, evaluation, and comprehension skills that instructors should guide students into developing. Outlines a four-step process approach to encourage students to read Web site material for comprehension and discusses application of strategic skills. (AEF)

Explored the role of folktales of deception in developing 3- and 4-year-olds' theory of mind. Found that the story's deceptions elicit discussions that change over successive readings as the child shows increasing comprehension of the deceptions and decreasing need of parental support. Parent's and child's gender influenced frequency and…

Compared construction of meaning in poetry for experts (PhD English candidates) and novices (undergraduates or high school students). Found that for experts, knowledge was an important component of poetic communication. Novices had well-developed expectations for understanding poetry as discourse. Experts used productive interpretive strategies to…

Studied the theories student teachers held about literary understanding through interviews with 25 Hungarian and 8 Swedish student teachers. Categories of theories captured a substantial portion of the variation in how literary understanding can be seen. Three central aspects of human understanding, variation, discernment, and simultaneity, could…

Examines the effects of a balanced, accelerated, and responsive literacy program on the reading growth of second grade struggling readers. Finds that students grew in their word identification abilities, fluency, strategic comprehension abilities, perceptions of themselves as readers, attitudes toward reading, and instructional reading levels.…

Describes a working model used to determine the target language use in a language for specific purpose test project: the Listening Summary Translation Exam in Taiwanese (LSTE/T). The purpose of the LSTE/T was to evaluate the summary translation ability of applicants who want to work as linguists in law enforcement agencies in the United States.…

A study provided hemisphere specific simulation and hemispheric alluding stimuli to 15 middle school students with L-type dyslexia and 15 with P-type dyslexia. Traditional decoding and comprehension exercises were provided to 15 students with M-type dyslexia. Readers with all types of dyslexia exhibited significant improvement in reading accuracy…

Reports on a project to develop and validate a criterion-referenced performance test of listening summary translation ability. This exam is designed to assess ability to comprehend and summarize in written English recorded conversations spoken in Spanish. The Bachman framework is used to present the test and provide evidence for its validity. (12…

Finds that the program was somewhat more effective than the traditional (basal) curriculum for teaching word attack and letter-word identification, especially for students in low socioeconomic schools in a metropolitan school district, but that the program was not more effective than the conventional curriculum for more complex language skills…

Postage stamps provide second-language instructors with colorful and appealing materials to emphasize the four language skills and to introduce cultural topics. The use of visual materials in the classroom increases student interest, bestows a sense of the context of the language, and provides a specific reference point of stimulus. (41…

Examines the effect of test method on the reading performance of two levels of early-stage second-language (L2) readers of French. The study compares two global response modes, the summary and the recall protocol. Results indicate a significant qualitative difference in the performance on the two tasks. The summaries contained significantly more…