Compares the performance of poor readers with that of matched good readers and younger average readers. Found that all poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and these difficulties persisted; poor readers demonstrated a difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills;…

Describes teacher inquiry in the University of Georgia's National Reading Research Center's School Research Consortium (SRC). Discusses reasons to formalize the teaching and reflecting process by conducting research, how SRC members are becoming researchers, and what impact SRC research is having. (SR)

Extends an earlier study by using different materials, ratings for familiarity, and more stringent experimental controls. Finds concreteness effects in two experiments using undergraduate students. Suggests that familiarity and concreteness contribute separately to recall. Supports a dual coding theory. Discusses implications for text design. (RS)

Explores teacher beliefs and creates teacher profiles that would influence reflective teaching. Notes that teacher profiles served as a means of self-evaluation by assessing instruction and investigating attitudes and belief formation. Suggests that clarifying beliefs may force teachers to reexamine what they do and why they do it. (RS)

Investigates book report policies and how they affect the volume of and attitude toward student reading. Recommends that educators establish a clear, reasonable book report policy; involve parents, teachers, and students in the design and implementation of a schoolwide or districtwide policy; keep developmental needs of early adolescents in mind;…

Finds no evidence to counter the assumption that reading begins with a logographic stage; teaching method had a significant impact on children's reading strategies; and several children taught using the whole word technique appeared to exhibit letter-by-letter reading. Suggests that letter-by-letter dyslexia might be an extreme form of a strategy…

Follows a representative sample of poor readers through secondary school. Finds that, as a group, poor readers fell further behind a normal-reading comparison group during their early teens. Finds also that poor readers were more likely to leave school early and had much depressed educational qualifications. (RS)

Investigates whether Arabic orthography differs from an alphabetic orthography regarding context effects among poor and skilled readers. Finds that skilled as well as poor readers significantly improved their reading accuracy when they read voweled and unvoweled words in context and that skilled readers significantly improved their reading voweled…

Examines gendered aspects of literacy in two bilingual primary classrooms in a working-class Latino community. Centers on values that are associated with literacy in each room and the gendering of those values through specific classroom practices, with attention to gendered aspects of literacy tasks, texts that were written and read, and the talk…

Investigates effects of silent reading embedded in small-group lessons typical of much classroom reading instruction. Finds both positive and negative effects--students were more attentive during silent reading and were more responsive to story content than during oral reading, but the slower pace of silent reading offset these benefits. (RS)

Investigates the relationship between different levels of phonological awareness and literacy acquisition in Portuguese. Finds that phonemic awareness plays an important role in alphabetic literacy acquisition. Notes that both sensitivity to phonemic similarity and phonemic segmentation skills significantly predicted reading and spelling ability,…

Investigates the development and role of phonological recoding in beginning reading. Finds regular phases in phonological recoding prior to accuracy in reading simple pseudowords and a strong but changing relationship between these rudimentary skills and several reading tasks. Finds that phonological recoding and phoneme awareness are complex…

Extends the discussion of an article by J. Myers published in an earlier issue of this journal. Suggests that Myers's response to earlier critiques failed to address major criticisms. Readdresses 12 criticisms regarding research methodology, the role of the researcher, researcher-subject relationship, standards for researchers, and the notion of…

Describes a Reading Recovery case study involving a first-grade student who was at risk for learning how to read and write. Notes that this student learned to read strategically and was accelerated to the average band in her classroom after 81 Reading Recovery lessons, without first knowing the alphabet. (SR)

Suggests that readers need to be encouraged to use the text structure when identifying information in a text for later review. They also need to be advised to make summary statements in the margins of their texts when the important information is not explicitly stated in the text. (SR)