The failure of readability formulas can be attributed to three weaknesses in the formulas. First, they ignore or violate current knowledge about the reading process. Most formulas affect only sentence length and word difficulty while ignoring factors that influence text comprehensibility, such as cohesion, the number of inferences required, the…

A study was conducted to determine whether explicit instructions could be as effective as paraphrased adjunct questions in enhancing subjects' reading comprehension. Eighty-six United States Navy enlisted men were assigned to one of four groups and given a lengthy passage from the "Naval Orientation Manual" to read. Following the…

Written so that the reader participates almost as if in a game, this book is aimed at achieving five goals: reading faster, understanding better, remembering longer, learning more easily, and thinking more clearly. Chapters discuss the following: (1) reading dynamics; (2) Evelyn Wood; (3) how to increase reading speed; (4) how to increase…

Intended for use by reading teachers, this document presents classroom activities for using drama as an aid to reading comprehension. Following a brief introduction discussing the rationale for drama in the reading classroom, the paper details various phases in comprehension, matching each level with suggested books and appropriate dramatic…

The study involving 12 learning disabled (LD) junior high school students investigated whether LD students with reading comprehension difficulties were deficient in syntactic abilities as compared to normal students. Syntactic and reading tests were administered to each student. Comparison of the scores between the two groups showed that LD Ss…

In an exploration of the comprehension process of the beginning reader, 16 first and second grade students were each asked to listen to two stories--one a narrative account and the other an expository passage-- and then immediately to retell them. Recall protocols were compared by propositional analysis for text-related superordinate and…

A number of areas concerning the use of pictorial illustrations in the comprehension of instructional materials still need empirical investigation. One such area, the influence of time on the reading comprehension of science materials, was explored in a study involving 108 fourth graders. Selections covering topics with which the students were…

Because of the positive correlation between vocabulary size and reading fluency in a second language, every effort should be made to increase students' recognition vocabulary. Vocabulary-building techniques include: (1) phonic and morphological analysis of words, (2) cognate recognition, (3) contextual analysis, (4) matching sentence halves and…

The papers in this volume represent thoughts about the state of the art of teaching reading (with an emphasis on persistent problems) of many recognized authorities in the field of reading education. Eight of the articles were originally presented at a joint Reading Hall of Fame and International Reading Association (IRA) symposium at the IRA…

This paper is a summary of research on the perceptual and memory processes related to reading, their developmental progress in children, and the reading abilities in adults. Reported among the results of the various studies are the following: (1) developmental changes in reading after second grade primarily improve speed of coding, (2) reading…

This paper shows how to integrate reading comprehension instruction and writing instruction through the use of sentence combining--the act of combining several short sentences that have been derived by transformational analysis from longer ones. Suggestions are offered to guide teachers through the necessary steps for designing appropriate…

The reliability of short versus long passages in informal reading inventories was compared. After 132 fourth grade students were tested with the Standard Reading Inventory, Form B, they read longer passages in either the oral or silent modes. Students with higher silent reading scores read long passages orally, while students with higher oral…

This issue of the "Journal of Children and Youth" focuses on children's strategies for decoding and comprehending written language and teacher's strategies for facilitating this process. The issue includes eleven papers by members of the Indiana Reading Professors division of the Indiana State Reading Council and several invited guests. Peggy…

It was reasoned that readers who have difficulty processing intersentence relationships to discover main ideas of paragraphs would be among those identified as weak comprehenders by a standardized test measure. To test the hypotheses related to this premise, 48 community college students designated as good and poor comprehenders on main idea items…

In this unit of the Basic Course in Indonesian for the official use of faculty, staff, and students of the Defense Language Institute, a glossary of Indonesian abbreviations and acronyms, taken from Indonesian newspapers and magazines, is presented. An adequate command of these terms is necessary to comprehend written works in Indonesian. No…