Interactions between metaphor comprehension and level of operational thought were examined to determine what advantages individuals at the formal operational level had in natural language tasks such as the understanding of figurative language. After 30 undergraduate students were classified as either late concrete, early formal, or late formal…

Sixty undergraduate students read and summarized eight short passages in a study of how semantic components were involved in text comprehension. After the first summary was completed (the naive or untutored summary), the students were assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group was introduced to the semantic components, including…

This annual publication contains summaries of more than 1,100 reading research reports that appeared in print between July 1, 1978 and June 30, 1979. The summaries are arranged into six major categories. The first category contains a listing of other general bibliographies offering summaries of reading research, while the second category presents…

This report describes the work of the text analysis groups of the Center for the Study of Reading, whose goals are to investigate the problem of reading comprehension from the standpoint of comparing properties of texts to the difficulty or ease of reading and to construct appropriate theories to account for text properties. The text analysis…

A three-way mixed factorial design was used in a study of the ways good and poor readers used context in cloze tasks. Reading ability (good versus poor readers) and booklet format (sentence versus sentence fragment presentation) served as between-subject factors, while context (whole versus partial passage) served as a within-subject factor.…

Two studies were undertaken to continue a line of research designed to identify the subskills of word identification that correlate most highly with reading comprehension and to develop empirically based instruments to assess those subskills. The issues studied related to the broad area of structural analysis and concerned assessment of skills in…

The effectiveness of different frequencies of summarization during studying and processing prose passages was compared. The 48 college students in the study were equally divided into a control group (normal study techniques), a frequent summarization group that created four noncumulative summaries at equally spaced intervals throughout the passage…

Drawing from research and from classroom experiences, this paper suggests five strategies for use by reading teachers in helping low-achieving students write responses to comprehension questions. The strategies call for the teacher to: (1) analyze questions carefully and sequence them according to difficulty; (2) give students steps to follow in…

The effectiveness of previewing versus discourse analysis as methods of reading instruction was tested. Previewing (supported by schema theory) was based on the premise that helping students relate their knowledge to the content of a reading selection would facilitate comprehension. Discourse analysis (based on research on text structures)…

A program model for teaching basic reading and writing skills to secondary special education students is described. Instruction is divided into three levels, within which instruction covers decoding, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, and composition. Assessment measures are discussed for each area. Criticisms of high interest-low vocabulary…

Listening comprehension of six French language scripts was tested using three types of instructional presentations and two sequenced exposures. The three presentation modes were: (1) video (a combination of audio and visual presentation of the script materials by a native speaker of French), (2) audio (a taped recording of the script materials by…

The nineteenth of 20 volumes of lessons designed for use in a full-time, intensive training program in Arabic is presented. This volume is a companion to the preceding ones. It presents summaries and explanations of the major patterns which were explained and practiced in the preceding volumes. (AMH)

A study was undertaken (1) to determine if a relationship existed between preadolescents' levels of reading comprehension as defined by T. C. Barrett's Taxonomy of Reading Comprehension and their levels of moral development according to Lawrence Kohlberg's stage sequence and (2) to discover if females demonstrated higher levels of reading…

Mexican university students enrolled in a general English course were administered a battery of tests including a reading comprehension test based on a Spanish text, one based on an English text, and the TEAL test battery of English language proficiency for adult students. Half the students were given an easy English text and a difficult Spanish…

This resource unit, appropriate for advanced students of French as a second language or for native speakers of French in a bilingual context, has two main topics: (1) the city of New Orleans, and (2) formation and use of the present participle. The grammatical explanations, readings, and exercises are completely in French. The readings give the…