This paper reviews recent research to determine why children encounter problems understanding what they read. Four points are discussed as especially relevant to children's problems in reading comprehension: (1) reading differs from early language experiences, and an analysis of these differences can indicate likely sources of reading difficulty;…

To determine specific objectives for language arts programs in Alberta schools, a study was conducted in which a comprehensive list of specific objectives was compiled for use in developing tests of reading and writing in grades three, six, nine, and twelve. Measurable objectives were ranked in terms of their importance to the total program, and…

Using mathemagenic-based research as a guide, this study attempted to determine whether the location of a picture (pre- or post-reading passage) or the type of picture (overview or specific incident) could affect reading comprehension. Ninety-two college students were randomly assigned to one of the cells in a two-by-two factorial design and…

This study was conducted to determine if the low reading achievement of a group of Creole-speaking first and second graders was caused by lack of comprehension (due to dialect interference) of their Standard English texts. The materials used were three stories in Creole and three stories in Standard English. Because they had never encountered…

To ascertain whether subjects spanning the range of reading acquisition exhibit semantic constructivity when confronted with a silent reading task, a study was conducted involving 120 second, fifth, and seventh graders, and 30 graduate students. For purposes of the study, semantic constructivity was defined as the uncued production of inferences…

Research by developmental psychologists has investigated metaphor comprehension without its surrounding context. This research has the positive feature of being unidirectional, all indicating that the older the child, the greater the possibility that metaphor will be understood. The disadvantages of the studies for educators include the fact that…

This report documents a series of studies on how undergraduate students learn from and reason with textual information. The studies described were undertaken to produce models that could serve as the basis for designing computer systems capable of structuring and presenting text material in optimal formats. Divided into sections, the report…

Two experiments investigated individual differences in semantic recall of expository text. In the first experiment, fourth grade students of superior and average ability read and recalled a prose passage that had been analyzed for its semantic and logical content with a content structure grammar. Unlike past research results, the superior…

Sixty undergraduate students read and summarized eight short passages in a study of how semantic components were involved in text comprehension. After the first summary was completed (the naive or untutored summary), the students were assigned to one of three groups. The experimental group was introduced to the semantic components, including…

This annual publication contains summaries of more than 1,100 reading research reports that appeared in print between July 1, 1978 and June 30, 1979. The summaries are arranged into six major categories. The first category contains a listing of other general bibliographies offering summaries of reading research, while the second category presents…

This report describes the work of the text analysis groups of the Center for the Study of Reading, whose goals are to investigate the problem of reading comprehension from the standpoint of comparing properties of texts to the difficulty or ease of reading and to construct appropriate theories to account for text properties. The text analysis…

A three-way mixed factorial design was used in a study of the ways good and poor readers used context in cloze tasks. Reading ability (good versus poor readers) and booklet format (sentence versus sentence fragment presentation) served as between-subject factors, while context (whole versus partial passage) served as a within-subject factor.…

Two studies were undertaken to continue a line of research designed to identify the subskills of word identification that correlate most highly with reading comprehension and to develop empirically based instruments to assess those subskills. The issues studied related to the broad area of structural analysis and concerned assessment of skills in…

The effectiveness of different frequencies of summarization during studying and processing prose passages was compared. The 48 college students in the study were equally divided into a control group (normal study techniques), a frequent summarization group that created four noncumulative summaries at equally spaced intervals throughout the passage…

Drawing from research and from classroom experiences, this paper suggests five strategies for use by reading teachers in helping low-achieving students write responses to comprehension questions. The strategies call for the teacher to: (1) analyze questions carefully and sequence them according to difficulty; (2) give students steps to follow in…