Concludes that beginning English-as-a-second-language students might be getting an instructional message about the reading process that overemphasizes the least useful aspects of print at the expense of comprehension. (FL)

Suggests that most countries using an alphabetic language system judge success in beginning reading as the ability to do tasks demonstrating mastery of the same set of skills, but that the types of tasks used to measure these skills and the number of skills tested vary from country to country. (FL)

Reviews research and concludes that many studies support the use of various types of writing to help students develop their reading skills. (AEA)

The author maintains that subject teachers will not fear or resent the task of improving reading performance in their content areas if they realize that reading is not additional content requiring extra class time but rather a way to improve students' comprehension of their own course content. (SJL)

Describes the results of a project designed to improve children's reading skills by providing them with television program scripts to read prior to viewing the program. (JMF)

Three classes of research on reading are identified. The articles of this section pertain to investigation of the organization and operation of basic processing mechanisms underlying skilled reading; each is described briefly and commented upon. Particular attention is devoted to the articles on context effects. (Author/RD)

Examines the relationship between syntactic maturity of oral language and reading achievement of first-grade students and compares this aspect of language competency to several traditional factors of reading readiness. (FL)

This study of various methods of teaching English as a foreign language concludes that an intensive method in which university students study passages in detail yields the best results. (AEA)

Reports on two experiments concerned with the use of the limited capacity cognitive processing system in a later stage of reading: the processes associated with processing information and knowledge from text for retention. (HOD)

Three measures--logical reasoning ability, lexical comprehension, and home teaching activities--provided the best overall model in accounting for differences in children's performances across the print awareness measures. (HOD)

Reports that five basal reader programs, kindergarten through grade six, give far more attention to assessment and practice than to direct, explicit, comprehension instruction. (AEA)

Concludes that preschoolers, unlike older children, view books and reading as masculine objects and activities. (AEA)

Reports that fourth-grade poor readers were able to identify more high-frequency words in context than in isolation. Discusses the findings in terms of a context-oriented approach of word identification instruction and assessment. (FL)

First- and third-grade students were assigned to a list/list, list/story, or story/list condition and their ability to recognize easy and hard target words was noted. (FL)

Reports that children's reading speed for paragraphs in which either words, syllables, or letters were spaced widely apart was a good predictor of reading ability in grades one through three, but not in grades four through six. (GT)