Prompted by concern that the State of New Jersey driver's manual was too difficult for many low-skilled readers to read and comprehend, a study was conducted in which chapter 6 of the driver's manual was rewritten, lowering its readability level from grade 8 to grade 6. It was hypothesized that significant differences in comprehension would result…

Assuming that the ability to interpret punctuation is basic to reading comprehension, a study was conducted to assess the junior high school reader's ability to interpret internal punctuation in a written passage. From an examination of texts, reference and research materials used at the junior high school level, six uses of three punctuation…

Meaning does not reside in the text or the reader but results from interactions between text, reader, and the interpretive communities that the readers belong to or that influence them. These interpretive communities are those communities or authorities that influence the reader/writer in interpreting texts, with resulting ideational,…

The Fairview Reading Curriculum Based Assessment (CBA), which was used in a cross categorical elementary school resource program at Fairview Elementary School in Darien, Illinois, is described. The test measures oral reading accuracy, rate and comprehension on passages taken directly from the two basal reading series used in the school. As the…

As comprehension failure results whenever readers are unable to infer missing causal connections, recent comprehension research has focused both on assessing the inferential complexity of texts and on investigating students' developing ability to infer causal relationships. Studies have demonstrated that texts rely on four types of causal…

Flowcharting, a skill used to program computers, can be used to teach reading skills. Like programing, flowcharting requires knowledge of a particular content area and an understanding of how to process the information. Skills such as identifying the main idea and supporting details, sequencing ideas or statements, and distinguishing relevant from…

The Nelson Denny Reading Test (NDRT) is probably the most widely used test of reading comprehension at the college level in the nation. However, reviews of the test, as well as recent reports of its failure to adequately measure gain or lack of gain of college students enrolled in reading improvement courses, do not support the popularity it has…

For those analyzing oral interpretation performance, the theory of Symbolic Interactionism can be used to explain two interrelated phenomena that occur during the performance: expanded understanding of the text (emergent meaning) and expanded understanding of oneself (development of the self-concept). George Herbert Mead, a founder of Symbolic…

The study reported in this paper investigated the effects of a frequently recommended study technique on the comprehension of expository text by high-school students having learning disabilities. The instructional procedure studied was "Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review" (SQ3R). Six experiments were conducted over a 3-year period,…

Reciprocal teaching is a form of dialogue in which students and teachers construct meaning from text. The teacher models the steps of the procedure and gradually encourages students to assume the role of "teacher." Reciprocal teaching involves four strategies which promote comprehension of the text: question-generating, summarizing,…

This book explains the most effective ways to teach children to read. Chapters in part 1 are written in traditional textbook fashion and include seven different activities which apply the material in the book to classroom practice. Chapters deal with: (1) five key ideas about reading; (2) emergent literacy; (3) teaching word identification; (4)…

Although knowledge of multimeaning words is important for reading comprehension, deaf readers may know only the most common meanings or nuances of high-frequency multimeaning words. Results of a study are reported in which 33 profoundly hearing impaired students stratified into three equal age groups (ages 10, 11, and 12) were administered a…

A study investigated whether basal reading instruction combined with whole language development instruction would help a group of sixth graders improve in reading skills as measured by the Metropolitan Reading Test. Subjects, 82 students from a metropolitan area in the Southwest, were given pretests and posttests which measured performance in word…

To determine whether story mapping would improve reading comprehension, five intermediate grade students with mild learning handicaps and poor comprehension were prepared to use story mapping procedures as a schema-building technique. As they were reading, students learned to identify the setting, problem, goal, action, and outcome of narrative…

According to recent neurolinguistic theories and research, language and other analytic functions are located on the left side of the brain, while spatial and configurational abilities are located on the right side. However, there is some evidence that while learning a language requires the use of both hemispheres of the brain, the right hemisphere…