Describes an art technique--creating paper dolls of main characters--to help remedial readers develop their comprehension of characters in novels. (MM)

Recommends pretesting intermediate grade students' basal skills to eliminate unnecessary basal skill instruction. Provides guidelines for pretesting reading comprehension skills. (MM)

Discusses the importance of developing disadvantaged children's background knowledge by using prereading strategies which focus on the text's central ideas. Suggests several guidelines for choosing prereading strategies. (MM)

A successful reading instruction program requires ample time for actual text reading; teacher-directed comprehension strategy instruction; opportunities for peer and collaborative learning; and time for discussing what has been read. To develop independent, motivated, lifelong readers, a substantial part of children's reading instructional time…

A multilanguage project for development of a foreign-language curriculum is reported along with the teaching method that has evolved from it. The method is represented primarily in a set of "mini-courses," each being a short introduction to a given language. (Contains 34 references.) (Author/LB)

Describes ratings and rankings by both researchers and children of the new and old basal text series. Describes students' response to the texts. Identifies the engaging qualities of these texts. Shows similarities between children's and researchers' preferences. (HB)

The use of the cognate recognition strategy to enhance reading comprehension in a Latin American English-for-Special-Purposes context is considered. Focus is on the subtechnical vocabulary found in 40 texts from English engineering magazines, first describing vocabulary identification techniques and then assessing whether the items have Spanish…

Describes a game that helps middle grade students develop awareness of the five major ways authors present and tie content information together. (SR)

This study used think-aloud protocols to examine the responses of readers to two newspaper science articles. When readers encountered information they could not understand, they used reading strategies; responses illustrate how individual predispositions, social affiliations, and information processing can influence impressions of science news.…

Three experiments involving 138 college students investigated why one type of graphic organizer (a matrix) may communicate interconcept relations better than an outline or text. Results suggest that a matrix is more computationally efficient than either outline or text, allowing the easier computation of relationships. (SLD)

Examines undergraduate students' imaginative processes (i.e., spontaneous imagery and emotional response) to newspaper articles. Finds that, as in previous studies with literary texts and feature journalism articles, imagery and affective responses (i.e., emotional response and story interest) were moderately to strongly related. Finds that both…

Compares the effectiveness of a traditional vocabulary instruction unit with an alternative unit which applied the concepts of procedural and conditional knowledge to secondary students' word learning. Discusses key characteristics that made the alternative unit successful. (SR)

Investigates the relationship between the relative difficulty of passages and the number of unknown words in passages. Finds little support for the theory that free reading results in large vocabulary growth. Calls into question the practice of devoting large amounts of classroom time to free reading if the purpose is to increase vocabulary or…

Ten students (ages 10-12) with severe written and spoken language difficulties were provided explicit instruction in phonological processing skills and semantic-syntactic skills. Results indicated that phonological and semantic-syntactic deficits could be remediated successfully, and improvement in these skills had significant positive effects on…

Discusses the phenomenon of involuntary mental rehearsal of language as an indicator of second language (L2) acquisition among acquirers. This study provides evidence for an L2 "Din in the head" after reading from a survey of two classes of intermediate Spanish students: a reading-only group and a reading-and-conversation group. (11 references)…