Written by teachers for teachers of elementary school students, the 20 articles in this collection are designed to provide insights into the way children learn to write and to encourage teachers to examine their own theories and perceptions of writing and writing instruction. The articles are grouped in five sections. In the first section, six…

This study examines the relationship between student misconceptions and learning by focusing on six fifth-grade students as they attempt to make sense of classroom instruction on light and seeing. Pretests, posttests, and classroom observation narratives served as student data. Pretests indicate that students held the misconception that sight is…

The specific performance characteristics of eight alternative cloze test formats were examined at the fourth and sixth grade levels. At each grade, 64 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four basic treatments (every-fifth/standard, every-fifth/cued, total random/standard, and total random/cued) and tested. Responses on each of the cloze…

A study was conducted to determine if visualization could be used as an organizational tool to help adult education students improve their reading comprehension by helping them to see the structure of what they are reading in a sort of verbal picture of organized ideas. Following a review of research, which identified five areas in which…

In the first two parts of an eight-part series of radio broadcasts from the People's Republic of China, transcripts of the broadcasts are presented in Chinese along with glossaries of vocabulary words and questions for each program. These transcripts are intended to be used with cassette tapes of the radio program selections. The series was…

In the third and fourth parts of an eight-part series of radio broadcasts from the People's Republic of China, transcripts of the broadcasts are presented in Chinese along with glossaries of vocabulary words and questions for each program. These transcripts are intended to be used with cassette tapes of the radio program selections. The series was…

In the fifth and sixth parts of an eight-part series of radio broadcasts from the People's Republic of China, transcripts of the broadcasts are presented in Chinese along with glossaries of vocabulary words and questions for each program. These transcripts are intended to be used with cassette tapes of the radio program selections. The series was…

In the seventh part of an eight-part series of radio broadcasts from the People's Republic of China, transcripts of the broadcasts are presented in Chinese along with glossaries of vocabulary words and questions. The transcripts are intended to be used with cassette tapes of the radio program selections. The series was designed to assist advanced…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 100 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from test instructions, instructional magazines, encyclopedias, reference books, and children's magazines; and the accompanying answer key.…

In 1981, the reading achievement of a representative sample of Queensland (Australia) Year 5 students was assessed by using a test that measured skills in the areas of vocabulary, comprehension, and speed of reading. The aim of this testing was to compare reading achievement in 1981 with reading achievement in 1971 and 1976. Comparisons of…

Although the argument that comprehension is a cognitive process is extremely convincing, the fact that comprehension can be assessed only through some sort of interaction makes this view inadequate as a base for reading/literature curricula. Questions, context, and teacher-student interaction can all influence a student's comprehension. It is also…

These conference proceedings report on and review the Learning from Text Project activities that started in the fall of 1980, and by the end of the second year had expanded to three University of California (UC) and six California State University (CSU) campuses. Following a summary of the conference proceedings, an introduction describes the…

To determine the relative transfer value of imposed and induced visual images in relation to level of textual materials' illustration-dependence, 108 seventh grade students read textbook excerpts written at four levels of illustration dependence under four visual imagery conditions. The four levels of illustration dependence were high, moderate,…

Idea-mapping (i-mapping), a way of representing ideas from a text in the form of a diagram, is defined and illustrated in this document as a way to help students "see" how the ideas they read are linked to each other. The first portion of the document discusses the fundamental relationships found in texts (A is a characteristic of B, A…

The acquisition of the metalinguistic abilities involved in ambiguity detection and resolution was studied with children. It is suggested that metalinguistic abilities may serve as potential test measures for facility in learning a second language. School children (ages 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13) were tested for their ability to detect ambiguous…