Two hundred Honolulu-area students from the fourth, fifth, eighth, and ninth grades participated in a study that examined the variables effects of five selected factors (developmental level, sex, reading ability, adult intervention, and variation in film content/form) on the ability of two age groups (nine and ten year old children and thirteen…

The six authors of this monograph draw from their experience in elementary education in proposing practical techniques for using literature to teach a variety of literacy skills to children. The following topics are developed individually: reading for learning about the nature of language, picture books for reading vocabulary, the trade book as an…

The effect of ESL (English as a Second Language) teaching techniques on student learning was investigated. A group of 18 ESL teachers and their classes were observed across four lessons having a similar content. Students were pre- and post-tested over a six-month period in two measures of language performance: oral comprehension and production.…

Systematic classroom observation instruments were used to study the relationship between student coping style and student growth in reading. Classrom behaviors were recorded in the fall and the following spring with the Coping Analysis Schedule for Educational Settings (CASES). Data were analyzed separately for two types of classroom setings:…

Two types of problems are found in the reading performance of children with poor work habits: a child may have mastered skills but performs inadequately in tasks due to poor work habits, and a child may never have mastered skills because of such habits. Work habit behavior is the student's tendency to apply himself or herself to learning tasks by…

The main purpose of this study was to determine and describe the effects of the comprehension component of the criterion-referenced reading program, Wisconsin Design for Reading Skills Development (WDRSD), on reading achievement and self-concept of sixth-grade students. Parametric techniques were employed in a quasi-experimental study involving 44…

This document describes a course in the teaching of reading for content-area teachers, which has been offered at Temple University since 1970. It was designed to help English, science, and social studies teachers meet state certification requirements in reading. The theoretical base of the course is psycholinguistic, with a major emphasis upon…

This study compares the critical-reading strategies of 83 good and 72 poor sixth-grade readers and 96 good and 67 poor eighth-grade readers. After reading seven brief passages on social studies and science topics, the students responded to 42 statements that required either the ability to pull facts together and make conclusions based on unstated…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of a crowded or spaced appearance of narrative material on the reading comprehension of above-average and below-average fourth grade students; (2)…

The strategies of active surveying and active skimming are previewing techniques that may enable high school students to discover independently the macrostructure of expository materials. Research has indicated that advanced knowledge of overall discourse structure improves reading comprehension by serving as a framework for organizing new,…

A study tested the instructional hypothesis that variation in instructional methods in the initial stages of formal reading development will differentially develop subsystems for attaining comprehension. The 91 kindergarten and first grade students in the study received their usual reading instruction plus supplementary instruction in one of four…

This volume reports on several aspects of the Bristol (England) study of language development in pre-school children. The study was comprised of two overlapping investigations: the first covering the range from 15 to 42 months and the second, the range from 39 to 66 months. The introductory chapter gives an overview, and provides a statement of…

Three techniques for teaching effective reading--using students' textbooks, reading modules, and individual instructional packets--have proven successful in reducing reading time while improving comprehension skills for students in a reading and study skills course at a Texas university. Students assigned to the course use their content area…

This paper discusses the kinds of vocabulary items retained by a group of native German speakers in the context of an English language proficiency examination. Its main purpose is to indicate the kind of information that can be gathered using cloze procedures, with the aim to integrate this information into further learning strategies for the…

A computer-assisted instructional program to teach the Arabic writing system and elementary vocabulary and comprehension, which was developed at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin in cooperation with the university's College of Liberal Arts, is described. Among the benefits of the computer-assisted approach…