This article discusses (1) assessment of discourse through listening and reading to evaluate comprehension problems; (2) developmental aspects of the relationship between listening and reading comprehension skills; (3) problems with selecting text passages and methods of testing comprehension; and (4) the development of a set of passages and a…

This article presents strategies, including communicative reading strategies, to facilitate holistic language learning in young children with language and learning disorders. Strategies include pairing oral and written language and using preparatory sets, semantic maps, flowcharts, and theme building. An example of narrative discourse demonstrates…

Describes the use of authentic Spanish language materials to design activities to help students discover and understand a text's underlying sociocultural context, using both pre- and postreading strategies to foster cultural awareness and understanding. (two references) (Author/CB)

The effect of five types of topical structure (including initial sentence element, mood subject, and surface subject) on the item difficulty of reading comprehension questions was investigated. Results indicated differences in the item difficulty of questions according to the type of topical structure on which the questions were based. (21…

Examines the relationships between social and emotional variables, and oral and silent reading comprehension. Finds significant correlations between reading effectiveness and various personality characteristics. Finds also that anxiety and a low sociometric score impair oral reading more than silent reading. Argues that social and emotional…

Explores the reading-writing relationship using control and treatment groups from two separate populations--college remedial readers and sixth graders. Finds a significant increase in reading comprehension and a significant decrease in writing errors for the sixth grade experimental group and an improvement in writing complexity in the college…

The relationship between lower-level verbal processing skills and foreign language reading proficiency was investigated with U.S. college students learning Japanese. Focus was on the specific effects of letter identification and word recognition. Findings suggest that efficient lower-level verbal processing operations are essential in foreign…

This paper argues that the ability to rapidly compare phonemes is a primary sensory-cognitive function underlying self-correction in word recognition and spelling and thus, indirectly, reading comprehension. Such phonological defects can be addressed both preventively and remedially using procedures that are fundamentally different from typical…

Assesses the effectiveness of whole language instruction over the course of a school year. Finds that middle and low progressing experimental subjects and experimental males at each of three ability levels attained significantly higher mean scores on a cloze test than did their counterparts in the control group (who used basals). (RS)

Study examined the relationship between elementary students' perceptions of instructional behaviors and use of cognitive strategy during reading comprehension. Students read, then answered questions about, strategy use and teacher behaviors. Teacher behaviors created conditions that influenced strategy use; student interpretations of certain…

Describes a teacher's first efforts to implement Reading Workshop in her classroom. Reports the study she conducted that convinced her that Reading Workshop successfully improves reading comprehension and counters students' negative attitudes toward reading. (RS)

Assesses the effects of interspersed-adjunct summary questions (i.e., questions appearing regularly throughout reading text requiring students to summarize the main points of previously read material) on reading comprehension and comprehension monitoring (i.e., awareness of level of understanding during reading tasks) of high-ability and…

This article uses two case studies of eighth grade students (one attending an Amish school and the other in a residential school for adjudicated juveniles) to illustrate the power of ethnography to contextualize literacy experiences. Five ethnographic questions are suggested for literacy assessment. (DB)

This study, with 30 students with learning disabilities (grades 6-9) and 15 nondisabled students, found that instruction in a 5-rule summarization strategy significantly increased reading comprehension of expository prose. Strategy use was maintained over time, and students were reported to generalize its use. (Author/DB)

Eye-fixation analysis of 38 undergraduates allowed identification of phases in solution of arithmetic word problems and location of students' difficulties with inconsistent problems within the phases. Results indicate that the locus of the inconsistency effect lies outside the execution phase of problem solving. (SLD)