Describes a third-year English test for fifth graders, with examples (and discussion) in the areas of listening comprehension, answering questions, asking questions, speaking about a series of pictures, reading comprehension, sentence conversion and letter writing. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

A description of a French course given in Mexico to mathematics teachers. The object was to enable them to read primary, untranslated sources as quickly as possible. The general learning objectives, characteristics of students and teachers, methods, and a complete sample lesson plan are given. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Reviews research relevant to understanding the conditions in which elaborative inferences are made, with a particular concern for the implications for schema-theoretic notions of comprehension. (FL)

Reports a study indicating that summarization training of sixth-grade students improved recall of major but not minor information on a studying task and that such training is an effective tool for improving reading and studying skills. Includes ways to improve summarization instruction for children of this age group. (HTH)

Examines how students make and revise meaning when writing in purposeful, informal ways about their interpretation of literary texts. Also reveals five ways in which students develop their understanding of literature through writing. Suggests a mutually enriching reading-writing process of interpretation. (AEW)

Focuses on the underlying elements in the reading comprehension process that better distinguish its developmental phases. Offers suggestions for the acquisition of strategies pertaining to textual organization that, together with proposed activities for comprehension, contribute to the formation and consolidation of reading habits. Includes…

Reviews the literature relevant to the subject of comprehension monitoring and offers ideas from the reading research for how students can improve their comprehension and how teachers can tell if students understand what they read. (JC)

Describes a basic reading course designed to meet the specific needs of the weakest basic writers enrolled in a large midwestern university with an open admissions policy. Shows how the developmental course improved the students' reading comprehension so they could better understand the texts they would encounter in college courses. (SKC)

Provides information on how to use newspaper comic strips with reluctant, older disabled readers because the visual nature of the comics helps reading comprehension. Activity types include: (1) categorizing; (2) finding main ideas; (3) comparing; (4) determining cause-effect relationships; and (5) predicting outcomes. (SKC)

Among techniques which can be used by foreign language teachers to help learners use multiple-choice tests (after reading a text) to become better readers are: have students attempt to answer questions before reading the text; rearrange the order of the questions; and have students make up multiple choice questions. (CB)

Examples are presented of worksheets designed to help students prepare for discussions of literature in terms of the language, plot, and literary aspects of a particular work. All examples are from an introductory course in German literature. Benefits of using such worksheets include increased students comprehension and class participation. (LMO)

Reports two studies of comprehensible and memorable expository writing. Finds that Time-Life editors' revisions of a high school history text improved eleventh grade students' recall, while revisions made by text linguists and composition instructors did not. But given latitude to change content, all editors' revisions improved recall. (RAE)

Poor readers often know only the most common meanings or nuances of multimeaning (polysemic) words frequently encountered in reading materials. Teacher-directed, systematic vocabulary instruction must focus on specific problem areas. A three-step plan for teaching multimeaning words is proposed, emphasizing recognition and classification of word…

Four activities for language learning are presented, including: an exercise in compound word formation; television program production; a puzzle made of text fragments; and organizing a trip to France. (MSE)

Explores how well measures of verbal short-term memory and naming speed tasks predict children's reading achievement under various IQ control conditions. Both were effective, but when controlling for verbal IQ, memory measures are less reliable, whereas digit-naming speed remains a significant predictor of reading achievement. (MM)