An addition to the teacher's repertoire of silent reading tests is the formal cloze procedure. This test requires the reader to replace exactly individual words deleted from a reading passage. It serves to identify those students who are not reading at an expected level, but it does not suggest why this is so. However, with modifications to both…

The psychological process of segmenting sentences into meaningful units or "chunks" is believed to be an important aspect of text comprehension processes. The most characteristic type of parsing task elicits perceptions of text structure indirectly by asking individuals to make judgments about pause placement in sentences. In four…

A technique for measuring the acquisition of Spanish skills is described. The technique is designed for fourth-year advanced Spanish students enrolled in business Spanish. It not only tests the students but promotes learning by requiring the use of new vocabulary items and comprehension of printed texts. Students are given a text with 25 to 30…

The linguistic form of a nonliteral expression, and the context in which it occurs, can greatly influence young children's succcess or failure in assigning a meaning to a figurative expression. Experiments have shown that the same metaphorical expression can be easier to understand when expressed in a linguistic form that is familiar to young…

The evaluation of reading in the West Hartford Public Schools is part of a larger evaluation of English/Language Arts. Its purpose is to provide information for program improvement and growth. Using existing data, the reading evaluation focuses on four questions: (1) Does the reading achievement of West Hartford students improve from grade four…

Consistent with the philosophy that reading is an integral aspect of the total curriculum, the objectives listed in this handbook (developed by the Utah State Office of Education as part of a total course of reading study) are related to four dimensions of reading comprehension: literal, inferential, critical, and creative. For each of the listed…

Intended for teachers of students with learning disabilities, the paper reviews recent trends in research. The importance and the difficulty of keeping up with new developments in the field are noted. Research and theoretical considerations are presented for the following topic areas: definition and identification difficulties (including,…

Using the generative model of learning, this study investigates the effects of reader constructed text headings on readers' text recall and comprehension. One hundred pupils, ages 12-14, from the Blythe Bridge Comprehensive School, Staffordshire, England, were assigned to one of two treatment groups using a 1000-word passage. The experimental…

The primary purpose for reading is to derive the meaning of an author's message, which has been transmitted through print, as it relates to the reader's personal need to go from a point of lesser to greater information. Within the college reading improvement program, the many purposes surrounding reading should intersect to form the basis for…

A study of the vocabulary and comprehension scores of juniors and seniors at Marygrove College was conducted during the winter term of 1983 in order to determine the reading levels needed for success in upper division courses. Because the research was designed to determine the reading levels needed for successful study, students on academic…

The concept of "structured programming" was developed to facilitate software production, but it has not carried over to documentation design. Two concepts of structure are relevant to user documentation for computer programs. The first is based on programming techniques that emphasize decomposition of tasks into discrete modules, while the second…

A study explored children's notions of what stories and reports are, how they can be organized, and when to use them, as revealed in the stories and reports they wrote or recalled and in their responses to questions about each. Sixty-seven high achieving children in grades three, six, and nine read and wrote similar kinds of stories and reports.…

Recreational reading habits of grade six students were investigated in relation to certain teacher factors and personal factors of students. (JH)

A group of children, in their last term of attendance at nursery schools, were tested on their comprehension of words used in the first books of well-known reading schemes. (Author)