Various studies investigating psychological variables associated with reading comprehension are currently available. However, there has been little linguistic research conducted to examine the pedagogical practices of teachers in teaching reading comprehension of EFL Secondary Schools, Ethiopia. The present study was conducted to fill the research…

According to the Nation's Report Card (2015), American schools are suffering a double-digit academic gap between minority and non-minority students in reading proficiency scores and graduation rates. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of mediated reading (MR) across the curriculum on the achievement of at-risk low-SES minority…

Secondary teachers nationwide are encouraged by the Common Core State Standards and recent research to enact disciplinary literacy instruction. However, little is known about how teachers make sense of teaching disciplinary literacy skills to adolescents. To what extent might adolescents still need the kinds of foundational support provided by…

Subject comprehension and critical thinking are both key goals of higher education. However, while the former is, on the whole, successfully cultivated in undergraduate students, the latter is not. Few empirical studies have investigated the relationship between subject comprehension and critical thinking. In the present article we suggest that…

Disciplinary Literacy is about to go from theory to game plan--taking students from superficial understanding to deep content expertise. And guess what? ReLeah Lent's big secret lies in highlighting each content area's "differences"--advancing a discipline-specific model in which literacy is used as a tool for strategic thinking,…

Students' vocabulary knowledge is a significant predictor of their overall comprehension. The Common Core State Standards are raising the expectations for word learning and there are now 4 distinct standards related to vocabulary as well as expectations in other standards, including content areas. To address these expectations, teachers need…

Within the context of a first-person account of pedagogical growth, a social studies methods professor describes three pragmatic ways to bring literacy-based instruction into a history class. The three ideas are supported by current research on content-area and disciplinary literacy, and the rationales for increasing student engagement and…

This paper describes an approach to developing intermediate level reading proficiency through a strategic and iterative use of a discreet set of tasks that combine some of the more common metacognitive theories and strategies that have been published in the past thirty years. The case for incorporating this composite approach into reading…

When students read more, vocabulary knowledge increases (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2003; Krashen, 2004). Out of every 100 unknown words that students encounter while reading, they learn an average of 15 of them from text alone (Swanborn & de Glopper, 1999). In addition, as students age, they are more likely to infer word meanings, indicating…

Science curriculum standards were mapped onto various texts (literacy readers, trade books, online articles). Statistical analyses highlighted the inconsistencies among readability formulae for Grades 2-6 levels of the standards. There was a lack of correlation among the readability measures, and also when comparing different text sources. Online…

This article describes the importance of vocabulary knowledge in adolescents' reading comprehension, particularly for students with disabilities. Students with stronger vocabularies tend to have better background knowledge and improved understanding of content-area texts. We describe evidence-based vocabulary instructional practices that…

An alarming percentage of middle and high school students find themselves unable to read their textbooks at grade level proficiency; lacking the necessary skills to access and process information, and read critically. The Common Core State Standards require students to apply reading strategies across the curriculum, therefore requiring teachers to…

Focusing on the perspective of lecturers, this qualitative research investigated the academic reading and writing challenges faced by international English-as-a-foreign language master's students at a Malaysian university. Data was collected through semi-structured, in-depth, one-on-one interviews with 16 lecturers who taught international…

We examined social studies teachers' use of text and supports for reading text during their instruction as well as how their practices related to students' content acquisition. A total of 37 social studies teachers and their students (n = 572) participated and recorded their instruction during 3 instructional units. We documented the amount of…

Adding instructional time and holding teachers accountable for teaching social studies are touted as practical, logical steps toward reforming the age-old tradition of marginalization. This qualitative case study of an urban elementary school, examines how nine teachers and one administrator enacted district reforms that added 45 minutes to the…