To determine if able and disabled college student readers can be distinguished by their awareness and use of metacognitive and cognitive strategies, 36 freshmen students enrolled in a reading and study skills class were classified as either good or poor readers based on their Nelson-Denny Reading Test scores. After reading five short passages and…

A study examined the effects of sex-typed content and sex role preference on 87 fifth grade boys' and 64 fifth grade girls' reading material preferences. It also explored how high- and low-rated sex-typed reading content and students' sex and sex role preferences influenced reading comprehension. After reading the sex-typed content, which…

To determine if performance on short term auditory memory tasks is influenced by reading ability or sex differences, 62 third grade reading students (16 above average boys, 16 above average girls, 16 below average boys, and 14 below average girls) were administered four memory tests--memory for consonant names, memory for words, memory for…

After reviewing criticisms of the exclusive use of readability formulas to evaluate text difficulty and describing successful efforts to broaden the traditional readability formula approach, this report presents a 20 item checklist for determining text comprehensibility based on four criteria: (1) specific objectives or outcomes expected from the…

A study examined the effect of five types of sentence faults on the method of information processing, recall ability, confidence rating, and comprehensibility rating of college freshman English students. The control text consisted of five passages and the accompanying comprehension questions exactly as they appear on the multiple choice Georgia…

A study investigated whether direct instruction in story constituents and their interrelationships could enhance children's organization in story writing. It was hypothesized that the special instruction could provide children with an internalized prototype story structure that could serve as a heuristic or planning device for organizing…

Recognizing that children's spontaneous use of text structure facilitates their comprehension of expository prose, a study examined the transfer effects of graphic organizer instruction on 24 fourth grade students' ability to use top-level structure in the comprehension and recall of new content area material. Subjects were randomly assigned to…

Using schema theory as a contextual framework, three studies were conducted to examine the effects of two triggering mechanisms on transfer of learning across two noncontiguous passages: similar terminology for shared concepts and a brief review of the first passage read immediately before the second passage. The first two studies served to pilot…

Intended as a resource to help mathematics teachers better understand how reading difficulties can affect student math performance, this annotated bibliography contains approximately 75 entries. The entries are arranged into the following categories: (1) reading skills needed in mathematics, (2) mathematical vocabulary and symbols, (3)…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The inquiry reported focuses on problems/difficulties of learning about the concept of "force" through…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on primary, intermediate, and secondary students' (N=41) ideas about selected…

Three suggestions are offered to the teacher of reading: permit the students to read, encourage students to guess or predict, and focus the students' attention on meaning. (JH)

To meet the needs of industry a variety of communications courses have been designed to improve the speaking and writing skills of pre-professional students. Unfortunately, such courses stress the quality of message production in the business setting while neglecting to emphasize properly the equivalent need for strong reception and comprehension…

A study of the relationship of request comprehension with context and experience with the language is reported. Sixty-two East Asian non-native English speaking students from China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were presented with seemingly spontaneous indirect requests during a taped interview. Their ability to respond appropriately to the…