Argues that metacognitive training in students can help students to remediate comprehension difficulties, to more accurately guage their success as learners, and to view reading as a flexible, thought-provoking process of interaction with text. (HOD)

Reports the findings of a study indicating that reading aloud to Black first grade students in an inner city area expanded significantly their knowledge of specific topics. (FL)

Discusses social studies as an area of study in which to apply a variety of strategies for improving the reading comprehension of students. Important factors that can aid students in improving reading comprehension are considered, including understanding textbook organization, vocabulary improvement, speed reading, following directions, and…

Demonstrates how having students dramatize a novel from many points of view can help them to understand the work on different levels. (FL)

Describes a program designed to teach content area vocabulary that resulted in vocabulary growth and improved comprehension. (AEA)

Future efforts to assist with reading-disabled students should include: early identification and intervention, more effective differentiation of students, increased individualized instruction, an increase in specially trained personnel, and a greater variety of specialized materials. (JN)

Describes an approach to the utilization of news items and ads from a local newspaper in the culture and civilization classes of a French language program for foreign students. Suggests criteria for the selection of materials by students and provides examples of "grids" that facilitate the content analysis of texts. (MES)

Explains how education majors try to learn to recognize thought unit sentences (ThUS's) and to gauge their difficulty. Shows examples of simple writing and discusses the task of writing ThUS's to match style and level of author. Gives a rationale for doing a readability analysis in this way. (FL)

Outlines a teaching unit based on the use of the telephone, with activities aimed at easing the difficulties experienced by foreign speakers. Among these difficulties are problems of comprehension due to the absence of visual clues, the use of special formulas, and the characteristic speed of delivery. (MES)

The study evaluated two kindergarten predictive instruments, the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests: Readiness Skills and the Teacher Estimate of Kindergarten Pupils' Abilities, by following the same 107 kindergartners over 1, 2, 3, and 4 years using multiple regression analysis. (Author/SBH)

Variation in syntactic difficulty in arithmetic problems is studied to determine its influence on students' ability to solve problems correctly. Findings in a study of elementary school students indicated syntactic difficulty affects problem solving ability, regardless of sex (f=fiche number). (MH)

The construct validity of reading comprehension test items was studied in a two-stage process. Five characteristics of task difficulty were defined and a heterogeneous set of 52 items were rated for these characteristics. Then correlations were obtained between ratings and item difficulty data. (CTM)

A model of reading comprehension focuses on eye fixations, which are related to the level of reading processes--words, clauses, and text units. Longer pauses are associated with greater processing difficulty. This model is illustrated for a group of undergraduate students reading scientific articles from "Newsweek" and "Time" magazines. (GDC)

Describes a study in which seventh-grade students achieved higher scores on a cloze test after reading stories that contained their own names and those of people and places familiar to them. (MKM)

Reports on reading research studies conducted in Great Britain during 1979, noting that two areas have attracted much more attention recently--reading comprehension and the importance of motivation. (HOD)