Reading instruction for educable mentally handicapped students requires the use of flexible learning strategies and teaching techniques for basic sight word training; instruction in phonic analysis, structural analysis, and contextual analysis; comprehension lessons; and fluency development. Sample techniques (for fluency development) include…

Theoretical issues related to the parallel role of internal revision in reading and writing are explored in this paper, which explains that meanings generated during reading or writing are always tentative and that readers and writers must build and maintain a continuous text world. The paper next examines criteria for evaluating the continuity of…

Arguing that teachers need to provide direct instruction if they expect children to learn to apply semantic or syntactic clues as they are reading, this paper presents a variety of activities for teaching children to use context clues. Among the more than 35 activities described are: gathering clues from pictures, using a language experience…

Of the currently available programs for microcomputers, only a few are applicable for reading instruction, and those being used are most frequently drill and practice. These programs focus on reading skills such as letter recognition, word alphabetization, and sight words. Very few programs are concerned with comprehension. Consequently, a team at…

The relationship of readability, "readable writing" techniques, and comprehension was evaluated in a series of five experiments involving United States Navy recruits. Eight expository passages from a standardized reading test were revised by using word lists to simplify the vocabulary and a restriction in syntactic structure to simplify…

Noting that researchers in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics are taking a constructivist view of reading comprehension, this paper undertakes a comparison of that view with views concerning comprehension that have been expressed at the Claremont Reading Conferences over the past 50 years. The first…

Long term studies of advance organizers (AO) were analyzed with Glass's meta-analysis technique. AO's were defined as bridges from reader's previous knowledge to what is to be learned. The results were compared with predictions from Ausubel's model of assimilative learning. The results of the study indicated that advance organizers were associated…

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether an instructional set for visual imagery would facilitate reading comprehension of elementary school children. In the first experiment, 38 fifth graders randomly assigned to experimental and control groups were given the Durrell-Sullivan Reading Capacity and Achievement tests after the…

Using a definition of metacognition that distinguishes between knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition, this paper discusses the role of metacognition in the identification and categorizing of students with learning problems. Following this discussion, the paper describes three types of cognitive skills training studies--blind,…

The efficient reader constructs tentative hypotheses about the meaning of the text that has been read and about the content yet to come. The hypotheses remain tentative until all related information has been accounted for. The reader then constructs a model that considers all of the details in a text. If a promising interpretation fails to account…

Pronouns, substitutes, elipses, conjunctions, synonyms, antonyms, superordinates and subordinates, and part-whole relations all provide cohesive ties that help a reader understand text. A study at Britain's Open University (England) has revealed the way in which the perception of cohesive ties is achieved as children's reading ability grows.…

Drawing on work from a number of disciplines, this volume brings together experimental and theoretical information relevant to the problems of assessing children's reading comprehension. After a short introduction, the first section defines reading comprehension, presenting theoretical issues intended to provide an understanding of what is being…

Noam Chomsky's theory of grammar, or more specifically his theory of syntax, proposes to describe all possible English sentences through an explanation of how the native speaker generates sentences. It is the study of one's competence that offers insights into how language is acquired and how the rules and generalizations of that language are…

The convergent and discriminant validities of tests designed to measure the subskills of literal and inferential reading comprehension in different content areas were assessed. A multitrait-multimethod matrix was generated, using three measuring methods: (1) a standardized reading test; (2) individually devised tests; and (3) teacher ratings.…

Behaviorism cannot adequately explain language processing. A synthesis of the psycholinguistic and information processing approaches of cognitive psychology, however, can provide the basis for a speculative analysis of reading, if this synthesis is tempered by a perceptual learning theory of uncertainty reduction. Theorists of information…