An education assessment study revealed inexplicably large drops in reading scores for nine- and 17-year-olds. According to the report, teachers are less likely to emphasize comprehension and critical thinking with poor readers and more likely to focus on decoding strategies. (MLF)

Offers a humorous look at the problem of assessment. (FL)

Provides a wide range of practical teaching ideas, including tips for using big books, the use of word maps for teaching new concepts, and the use of storybooks to teach counting. Provides an annotated bibliography of summer reading for students and teachers. Discusses the history, content, and future of the Whole Language Approach. (ARH)

Presents excerpts from "Becoming a Nation of Readers," a recent publication that synthesizes current knowledge regarding the process of learning to read. (GC)

Describes efforts to promote the desire to read and the availability of materials for Nigerians who have already been introduced to reading. (FL)

Looks at ERIC documents that deal with readability concerns. (FL)

Notes that while researchers talk about many things--what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach reading--they don't talk about why to teach it. (FL)

The Reading Recovery Program, a staff development process providing teachers with a framework for observing teaching and learning, requires close observation and analysis of children in the process of reading and staff development team members to observe each other as they work with children. (CB)

Argues that perhaps 15 to 20 percent of reading and learning disorders are rooted in emotional difficulties. (FL)

Discusses the conventions that define the range of legitimate routine in the reading profession. (FL)

Eleven mildly handicapped elementary students were taught to spell new words by using spelling patterns from known words. Control Ss learned to read and spell sight word vocabulary. Experimental Ss were significantly superior in spelling high-frequency sight words and untrained transfer words. (Author/CL)

Suggests that the use of newspapers in the remedial reading classroom will emphasize the transfer of the process of main idea from known levels to more extensive contexts by offering realistic application on multiple levels--pictures, words, sentences, and paragraphs. (SRT)

The article examines causes of adult illiteracy and notes the effects of failure to progress at the early stages of reading development, often due to inadequate language experience and stimulation. Suggestions for promoting language acquisition and comprehension are offered. (CL)

To examine associative aspects of reading, the author explores the idiosyncratic evolutionary development of word meaning as theorized by J. Bruner and L. Bygotsky and relates to this the oral language deficits manifested by many children with severe reading disorders. A clinically effective method, based on these theories, is then presented.…

Highlights ways in which standard information processing models of language, and specifically of reading, are deficient. Deficiencies are considered under four headings: (1) theoretical rigour, (2) the interaction of different levels of information during reading; (3) the parallel nature of much of human information processing, and (4) reading…