There is continuous debate about which word recognition techniques should be taught, especially to early primary grade pupils. All learning activities provided in reading instruction should: (1) be meaningful; (2) have perceived purpose; (3) be interesting; (4) stress understandings, skills, and affective goals; (5) provide for individual…

This paper presents a series of reading and writing activities centered around a 19-item word list suitable for use in tutoring adults. The activities in the paper involve short stories, writing exercises, and take-home exercises. Included with the activities is a guide that presents, in addition to the word list and the exercises, instructions…

A study investigated whether lowering the reading level of a health education pamphlet would increase comprehension by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) readers. The reading level of a general pharmacy education handout was lowered by changing vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization, by highlighting the main idea of each point, and…

This paper focuses on ways to include collaborative learning experiences in reading/writing courses as a method of addressing the demands for improving the communication skills of college students. It includes suggestions drawn from methods used in a college developmental reading class (which can, however, be modified for other types of classes),…

A study determined if regular listening to oral reading by the teacher affected fourth-grade students' level of comprehension. Subjects were 47 students from an elementary school in central New Jersey. Twenty-five students were read to for 30 minutes daily for 8 weeks in addition to their regular classroom reading instruction. The remaining 22…

This practicum developed a multimodal approach for remediation of "main idea" reading comprehension deficits with secondary school students having behavior disorders. The six target students (ages 12 to 18) attended a school within a psychiatric hospital and residential treatment center and were reading significantly below grade level.…

Guidelines for Hebrew language proficiency are presented in two companion volumes which are identical except that one gives examples of various linguistic forms in Hebrew and the other provides them in Roman script. These guidelines are based on the generic guidelines published in 1986 by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.…

This pamphlet describes the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) program, a comprehensive approach to reading and writing instruction for grades 2 through 8. The pamphlet addresses the three principal elements of the program: story-related activities, direct instruction in reading comprehension, and integrated writing/language…

A study determined the effectiveness of strategy instruction for children with reading problems. Subjects, 24 Dutch children in grades 4 to 6 from 2 schools for special education associated with a clinic for intensive child care, were divided into a control group and an experimental group. The experimental program consisted of 13-14 lessons, each…

The research project reported in this paper had two aims: to demonstrate what standard multiple-choice questions and two new varieties (multiple-choice cloze and guided summary test and to assess whether the new formats test the same skills. To find out what the various question formats test, the study looked at a battery of tests, each of which…

This research disproves the hypothesis that less-skilled comprehenders are less able to take advantage of constraints at all levels of structure. Five studies used self-paced reading, meaning probe judgment, recall, and sentence and word recognition tasks to examine the effect of supportive discourse contexts on sentence processing in skilled and…

Two studies examined the validity of a model of procedural document processing, and the relationships among document features, reader characteristics, and successful completion of a button-sewing task. The first study tested three information sources. Subjects were 12 seventh-grade, 12 tenth-grade, and 12 adult students who used 2 commercially…

A practicum addressed fifth and sixth graders' deficiencies in writing and comprehension skills with the implementation of diagnostic-prescriptive teaching techniques. The Multi Level Academic Skills Inventory and interest inventories aided in defining students' specific strengths and weaknesses in the areas of reading and language arts. Among the…

Some problems facing Japanese learners reading English as a Second Language at the college level are discussed, based on classroom experience with first- and fourth-year English majors. In one group of tasks, students were asked to respond to an open-ended question, perform a reading comprehension exercise, and find specific constructions in…

Assessment of higher order literacy skills encounters three initial problems aside from assessment methods: (1) definition of literacy; (2) range of skills to assess; and (3) whether or not higher order literacy can be assessed independently of a particular content area. Regardless of definitions, the general performance areas to be covered must…