Reviews research in revising instructional text by examining multidisciplinary research in readability, text structure, text interestingness, expert revisers' strategies, and readers' comprehension strategies. Finds that much of this research is limited by a simplistic view of reading, the use of experimentally contrived texts and contexts, and a…

Investigates the degree to which children and adult readers use semantic and syntactic information sources to increase speed of word recognition and to increase speed of determining sentence meaningfulness. Finds three developmental differences in the speed of analyzing these sentences for words/nonwords versus meaningfulness/nonmeaningfulness.…

Examines comprehension of students provided with relevant background knowledge and then tested on two versions of a text. Finds that students who read the revised text recalled significantly more material and answered more questions correctly than students who read the original text. Discusses the importance of the teacher's role in mediating…

Second, fourth, and sixth graders were given passage of text whose material could be represented as four-level class inclusion hierarchy. Students were asked to construct external representation of passage and answer questions that required them to reason about contents of passage. Quality of representation and performance on question tasks were…

Effects on comprehension of a text structure used primarily in science and mathematics to present principles and associated proofs were studied for 70 undergraduates in 3 experiments. Results suggest that the usual proof-first structure is more difficult than a principle-first structure and results in less complete text representation. (SLD)

Argues that providing students with a repertoire of important learning strategies is one crucial way of helping all students to become independent readers, thinkers, and learners. Describes a third grade reading environment and the practices of the Students Achievement Independent Learning Program (SAIL). (PRA)

This study addressed effects of varied presentations of advance organizers on text recall of grade level content area reading by 30 seventh grade subjects with reading problems. Most effective was oral delivery of the advance organizer followed by guided discussion. Recall was also improved if questions were asked soon after reading and were…

The effect of equations in scientific proofs on readers' comprehension was studied. Forty college undergraduates solved unfamiliar physics problems with or without a traditional series of related equations. Verbal proofs produced better responses than did equation-based proofs. Equations in proofs cause readers to shift attention away from…

Explores the benefits of using Readers Theatre in the content areas. Discusses how to select and adapt text for Readers Theatre scripts and provides suggestions for rehearsal and performing of the scripts. (MG)

A series of classroom activities for adult beginning learners of French, designed to improve reading comprehension through newspapers and news magazines, are described. The technique focuses on development of grammar and vocabulary and makes use of photos, text, layout features, and headlines. (MSE)

The Literature Learning Project at the English Studies Department, Institute of Education in Singapore is described. It focuses on determining how well lower-level students cope with their literature texts and also tests the hierarchical properties of Hillocks' taxonomy of skills in reading and interpreting fiction. (18 references) (LB)

In a reading comprehension study, random parallel reading comprehension tests in Japanese and English were administered to a sample of native Japanese students enrolled in intensive English instruction at three levels of English proficiency. Evidence for a threshold competence ceiling in both languages was found. (14 references) (Author/LB)

A comic book (accompanied by an audio cassette) was freely accessible to secondary students of English as a foreign language within a structured class setting of pre- and postreading activities. (10 references) (CNP)

Studied interrelationships among metacognitive abilities at the word level (phonemic awareness and metacognitive abilities in word identification), word identification skills, and reading comprehension for 55 year-5 Australian students (aged about 9-10 years). Metacognitive abilities at word level are related to reading comprehension directly and…

This study investigated the relationship between reading comprehension and oral storytelling abilities in 31 Latino junior high school students with learning handicaps. Although comparison of the standard scoring protocol and reading comprehension revealed no relationship, a significant correlation was found between story structure analysis and…