This paper outlines the teaching and research program in language and education at the University of Southampton (England) and examines problem areas found in the combination of language and education, including confusion in interpretation of textual material by students. Language and education often involves language teaching, but not language,…

This paper examines the uniqueness of poetry and classroom methodology as found in children's experiences of hearing, enacting, discussing, and making poems. Poetry offers the peculiar use of language, form, and a fresh look. Poems are useful in the classroom as they are read differently from ordinary text, are read with both the eye and the ear,…

In this paper, the effectiveness of a "CyberBuch," a multimedia program for reading authentic German texts, is assessed in three areas. First, based on user evaluation of the visual interface design, the usability of the program is assessed with particular regard to user reaction to the multimedia components of the program. Second,…

This conference paper provides examples of reading comprehension strategies that can be used with students with learning disabilities or reading comprehension difficulties. Before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies are presented. The before reading strategies, which activate the students' background knowledge and attention,…

A study evaluated the validity of the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP) grade-3 reading assessment from 2 perspectives: its relationship to 21 other measures of reading via factor analyses, and the sensitivity of the IGAP to instruction in 3 schools via multiple regression. Data were collected in a longitudinal study involving 350 students.…

This report describes a program for improving reading comprehension in seventh graders by focusing on higher order thinking and metacognitive skills. The targeted population was in a growing, middle class community located in northern Illinois. The problem of below grade level reading comprehension was documented by Illinois Goals Assessment…

This paper explores the concepts of representation and response as illustrated, first, by "seeing-in" (Wollheim, 1980, 1987) or by the "reading" of a painting in which the viewer regards a particular painting from different perspectives and angles. In both instances, the reading involves a dual engagement with the substance and the medium. This…

A study examined the extent of peer tutors' awareness of reading comprehension problems as a source of academic difficulties. The study, conducted in the spring of 1996, used a questionnaire to determine some of the reading habits of peer tutors and their perceptions of reading comprehension difficulties among students they tutored. The…

A study explored the effects of bimodal (concurrent auditory and visual stimulus modes) versus unimodal reading on 8 poor readers between the ages of 9 and 12 years. An alternating treatments design was used to compare student performance on 12 passages, 45 in each of 3 presentations modes: bimodal, visual, and auditory. Session measures included…

The summary information in this report provides teachers, school administrators, students, and the general public in Alberta, Canada with an overview of results from the January 1997 administration of the English 33 Diploma Examination. The information in the report is most helpful when used in conjunction with the detailed school and jurisdiction…

A study extended the investigation of readers' imaginative processes (spontaneous imagery and emotional response) to a new genre of texts: newspaper articles. A sample of 25 articles was randomly selected from a well-defined population of naturally occurring texts (articles with one or more subheadings and three to five paragraphs before the first…

This paper challenges the assumption that meaning is in some way magically encoded within texts and argues that questions, when they are used simply as tools to lead readers to a single meaning, are inadequate as a means of reading comprehension assessment. The paper then goes on to describe one of a series of micro case studies that explored…

A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a text, and how that influences what they recall from the text. Subjects, 46 sixth graders from 3 elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were tape recorded as they thought aloud while reading either a passage on "sugar" or a passage on…

The domain of second language reading is a rich source for insights into bilingual cognitive processing. Most cross-language transfer research has been carried out on acquisition and production of second-language (L2) structures. Relatively little work has been done on cross-language transfer in bilingual reading. An overreliance on top-down,…

The addition of captions to television is a technological breakthrough that can be used to enhance the vocabulary and comprehension skills of young readers. Taken together, several studies suggest that captioned television is a motivating medium for below-average readers and bilingual students, and that simultaneous processing (audio/video/text)…