Reports that by combining a phonetic writing system with instruction in carefully selected clusters of related Chinese characters, Chinese schools can start children on productive reading at an early age with texts closer to their developed cognitive levels. (FL)

Examines the role of suprasegmental phonology in speech processing and its implications for reading instruction; also reviews evidence for the hypothesis that prosodic features cue the boundaries of perceptually functional units in spoken sentences, thus assisting the listener in the segmentation of verbal information. (FL)

Reports on a study during which intermediate level students were exposed to three auditory backgrounds while reading (no music, classical music, and rock music), and their subsequent comprehension performance was measured. Concludes that the auditory background during reading may affect comprehension and that, for most students, rock music should…

Indicates that sentence combining and kernel identification training enabled sixth-grade students to comprehend longer, syntactically more complex sentences than control group students and to retain this ability over a six-week period. (HOD)

Shows how older, largely context-free models of reading and its instruction became changed into a multidimensional, context-dependent orientation toward written language and the reading process and concludes with suggestions for using a variety of contextual strategies to increase reading comprehension. (HOD)

To determine effect upon comprehension of technical information of text presentation, visual presentation, and execution of an activity, 140 junior high students were tested for comprehension of a passage on slip casting. Data from 14 experimental groups were analyzed by Verbatim Cloze, Idea Cloze, and Recall. Independent application of…

Makes a case for adventure and fantasy computer games as encouraging development of problem-solving skills and organizational abilities and for fostering reading comprehension. Suggests ways of incorporating these games into classroom activities. (RBW)

Reports on a study that found an alternative cloze test format both valid and practical when compared to the conventional cloze format. (HOD)

Offers an instructional sequence based on the premise that the spelling of English words very often reflects meaning more than sound and designed to help students make use of this understanding in learning to spell and to increase their vocabulary. (AEA)

Presents a historical overview of the introduction of the major reading comprehension assessments, showing that the predominant approaches were shaped by the prevailing educational measurement milieu and were implemented largely in response to public pressure. Argues in favor of a naturalistic reading comprehension assessment for evaluating those…

Argues that the reader's active transformation and recreation of the text and both the content and function are best understood within the context of the personal style or identity the reader is shaping. (HOD)

Discusses research supporting the instructional validity of three comprehension monitoring strategies: (1) summarization of text, (2) self-initiated questioning, and (3) differentiation of reader-based and text-based questions. (FL)

Offers suggestions for the systematic study of characters that can help children develop skills in understanding stories. Describes two activities that can be used for this purpose. (FL)

Using a developed structural schema specifying the categories of knowledge important to understanding a scientific theory, two experiments involving 82 undergraduates were conducted to assess the effects of structural schema training and text organization on the comprehension and recall of scientific prose. (Author/PN)

To improve the inferential comprehension of good and poor fourth-grade readers (n=40), teachers provided instruction in (1) drawing inferences between new and existing knowledge, (2) discussing, prior to reading, events similar to the story, and (3) providing inferential questions to discuss after reading. (Author/PN)