The articles in this special journal issue focusing on children's literature were drawn from papers presented at the Conference on Children's Literature held in 1982 at The Ohio State University. The first section contains articles that address the question "What makes a good children's book?" The question is approached from a historical…

Designed to alert adult basic education teachers to the factors of readability and to suggest ways that some readability problems can be alleviated, this resource unit discusses the problems posed by readability formulas and suggests that teachers must both press for more readable adult texts and question intelligently the products of publishers…

Theories of cognitive processing suggest specific effects result from different elaboration treatments. To test this assumption, 125 high school students were randomly assigned to read concept materials containing adjunct elaborations that varied by elaboration type (mnemonics, schematics, or metaphors) and presentation mode (verbal or visual). To…

Working on the assumption that poor comprehenders of reading cannot retrieve relevant information to provide a context for the understanding of new information, a study sought to gather some empirical data about the retrieval of information. It was hoped that these data would validate some aspects of J. R. Anderson's ACT theory of memory (that…

A study is presented which attempts to clarify the notion of communicative proficiency in a foreign language and which outlines an instructional model that incorporates the insights of the study. Communicative proficiency is defined as fluent mastery of the foreign language in different contexts. The definition was operationalized into discourse…

Studies of age differences in second language learning ability are collected along with commentary on the results. The 12 papers describe long and short term studies of children and adults that focus on the optimal age for second language acquisition, the effect of different teaching methods and environments on age differences, and theories that…

Two case studies involving possible violations of the rights of Spanish speaking criminal suspects are presented. In cases where suspects do not understand English, the Miranda warnings regarding the right to remain silent must be delivered in their native language and in a way that is understandable to the suspects. In the two cases involving…

A study investigated the role of visual imagery in the comprehension and retention of prose. Subjects were 48 fifth grade students who orally read a story and then completed three comprehension tasks directly related to the story: a retelling, an oral reading cloze test, and a multiple choice question test comprised of items demonstrated to be…

A course was developed for teaching reading comprehension of English technical texts to German speaking professionals. Before proceeding with the course, students are administered a memory test and vocabulary test to determine their initial skill levels in English. The materials used for the course include learner's dictionaries of approximately…

Two experiments were conducted to determine what readers are likely to understand about the information contained in a medical insurance brochure intended for employees. Twenty-seven subjects were recruited through newspaper advertisements for a "reading experiment." The studies addressed questions concerning (1) how likely readers are…

Written for those who would like to seriously and systematically study response to literature and the teaching of literature, this book presents a review of the major theories that might inform research on response and a catalog of most of the promising research techniques. The book is organized into three parts: theories of response, ways to…

Through reflections upon the ideas and events that have shaped current views about reading comprehension and its teaching, this paper characterizes patterns of development in three related domains: theory and research about basic processes in reading comprehension, research about reading comprehension instruction, and practices in teaching reading…

A study investigated the effects of a spatial adjunct aid--maps--upon probed comprehension and free recall with respect to a text in which map-related information (macropropositions) could be clearly distinguished from more abstract information (micropropositions). Forty-eight tenth grade students were randomly assigned to either a control group…

A study to determine whether college students in first-, second-, and third-year Spanish courses who saw and heard dialogs between native speakers would score significantly higher on a listening comprehension test than those who only heard the dialogs had as its subjects 178 students randomly divided into two treatment groups. Twenty-seven…

In a primary school in Dade County, Florida, disadvantaged kindergarten children were entering first grade without the receptive language and listening skills necessary to succeed academically. A practicum attempted to remedy this problem by stimulating kindergarten children's receptive language skills in vocabulary and listening comprehension.…