Performance of 31 deaf students (ages 7-17) on 15 language and literacy measures found that students scoring highest on a passage-comprehension measure also demonstrated greater proficiency on specific skills (such as reading more listed words). In addition, students who used Signing Exact English (SEE) for 5 years or more scored better than those…

In this study, 16 skilled adult readers who are deaf and 14 less skilled readers completed a battery of experimental tasks that generated multiple indicators of storage capacity and automaticity. Results indicate less skilled readers must invest significantly more conscious mental effort than skilled readers to complete basic operations of…

Fourteen adults who stuttered and 14 adults who did not participated in a self-paced word-by-word reading experiment. Results indicated that the two groups were not different with respect to speed of word identification but that persons who stuttered retrieved semantic information more slowly than those who did not stutter. (Author/PB)

Explores longitudinal effects of television viewing on 1,050 Dutch children's reading comprehension, causal mechanisms that underlie these effects on reading comprehension, and longitudinal effects of television on decoding skills. Surveys children three times at one-year intervals. Suggests that television viewing inhibited development of reading…

Hirsch's Cultural Literacy Test was completed by 200 undergraduates. Subjects who scored highest had higher grade point averages and Scholastic Assessment Test scores. Results for minorities were inconsistent and based on small samples. Effectiveness of the test for adult literacy students remains unproven. (SK)

Forty-five second-grade students with reading problems were provided supplemental reading instruction and assessed after 10 weeks. Those who did not meet exit criteria received 20 more weeks of instruction, were tested again, and then given 10 additional weeks. Pretest scores on fluency, passage comprehension, and rapid naming were performance…

Contends that providing vocabulary instruction is one of the most significant ways in which teachers can improve students' reading and listening comprehension. Describes a 16-week intervention in which the comprehension of middle and high school students reading below grade level was improved significantly by instruction that developed their…

Investigated the role of higher-level syntactic and semantic processes and lower-level word recognition and graphophonic processes in adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) reading comprehension. Particular focus wa on the extent to which these processes can discriminate skilled from less-skilled readers in a sample of fairly advanced ESL…

A study involving 80 undergraduates with deafness enrolled in first-year algebra courses found students were more likely to miscomprehend a relational statement and commit a reversal error when the required arithmetic operation was inconsistent with the statement's relational term. Reading ability influenced performance, and errors decreased as…

After each page of reading a short story, 10 elementary students attending a residential school for the deaf were asked to think aloud (or think visibly). Participants constructed meaning, monitored comprehension, and activated strategies to improve comprehension, and evaluated, but did not demonstrate, each reading strategy within these…

Analyzes pre- and post-test measures of curriculum-based measurement (CBM) of oral reading fluency and reading comprehension collected from a sample of middle school students in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the computer-based Reading Plus and Guided Reading program. Obtains significant differences in discrepancy ratios from pre- to…

Studies the influence of illustrations on children's book preferences and comprehension. Finds that while third graders scored higher than first graders, both groups showed highest comprehension for the Text-plus-Illustrations book content and the lowest for the Illustration-Only book content. Notes that participants preferred bright illustrations…

A study examined relationships between reading fluency and comprehension by having 49 students (grades 3-4) orally read four passages with an incrementally increased percentage of scrambled words. A suggested criterion of approximately 50 words/minute was found using the mean fluency rate of the highest passage of demonstrated adequate…

Investigates the impact of the World Wide Web instructional medium on second language comprehension during independent reading. Results of the study suggest that when teaching content through self-directed reading, the web medium can evoke better reading comprehension than the traditional print medium. (Author/VWL)

Points out reading/comprehension strategies applied by higher education first-year students during their daily learning academic tasks and their major difficulties in the field. Research consists of a measuring frequency Likert scale questionnaire completed by 1,000 students from four of the main Portuguese state universities from science and…