Two comprehension-time experiments were conducted to identify factors affecting the comprehensibility of written materials. The subjects (a total of 52 college students for the two experiments) were presented with pairs of sentences--"context" sentences followed by "target" sentences--and were asked to relate the content of the target sentences to…

A new, computerized readability assessment program was developed to verify the reading levels of stories, as designated by publishers in current sixth grade reading texts. The Spache, Harris-Jacobson, Dale-Chall, Flesch, and Fry readability formulas were incorporated into one computer-based program designed for rapid calculation and comparative…

The seventh-grade and eighth-grade program of "Reading Basics Plus" consists of an integrated set of texts, workbooks, and teacher's guidebooks. By a process of small group trials, students' and teachers' reactions to the proposed content of this program were obtained in order to provide editors and contributors with useful information about…

A review of research reveals that, although several reading researchers recognize the significance of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence in reading comprehension, little research exists in this area of grammatical interrelationships among sentences. The first step toward an understanding of grammatical complexity beyond the sentence is for…

Although there is general agreement on the importance of children's literature in the elementary school curriculum and on the need for adequate teacher education in this field, there are many specific issues related to children's literature that need clarification. One such issue is the role of literature in the reading program. Some educators,…

The purpose of this study was to compare the reading ability of university freshmen in two remedial track courses with the readability of the assigned texts and in light of the instructional methodology employed by the instructional staff of two courses. The investigations findings seemed to suggest that the reading ability of the students in the…

The subjects for this study were 81 freshman students who were taking courses in the social sciences at Herbert H. Lehman College in New York. A Nelson Denny Reading Test showed their average reading grade level to be 10.4 Twenty-three books in the social science areas were selected for appraisal, using such procedures as the application of a…

One hundred students enrolled in the welding and air-conditioning/refrigeration classes at Delgado Community College (Louisiana) were randomly selected to participate in a study to evaluate their effective reading comprehension level, to investigate the impact of a study skill "preview" method such as the SQ3R on their test-taking…

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the development of the cloze procedure, to introduce the most recent work done, and to project the implications for further research in the cloze procedure. The cloze procedure was derived from the Gestalt theory of closure whereby a subject has a tendency to fill in the gaps of an uncompleted visual or…

Based on Daniel Fader's philosophy that "pleasure and enthusiasm must be the first (and at times the only) goal of an English teacher," this paper discusses the use of best sellers and current literature in remedial and freshman English classes. Best sellers were used as the basis for class discussion and provided topics for themes in the remedial…

This study has three purposes: (1) to determine if there were differences in the readability levels of the content-oriented textbooks and the reading levels of students in grades 10, 11, and 12; (2) to determine the percentage of students in each grade for whom the textbooks were too difficult; and (3) to determine the cost of those textbooks…

This paper reviews "The American Heritage Word Frequency Book" by John B. Carroll, Peter Davis, and Barry Richman (CDR). CDR is a word frequency count derived from school books for children in grades 3-9. Included in this review are an explanation of the development of CDR and a guide to its practical use. The guide can be used…

It has been assumed that written and spoken language contains many words and word sequences which are unnecessary for the comprehension of a message. The purpose of this research was the development and evaluation of three major telegraphic production schemes. Telegraphic prose refers to an abbreviated writing style similar to that found in…

The major problem investigated was the effectiveness of cloze procedure as a predictor of a student's ability to comprehend social studies materials when compared with I.Q. scores, previous social studies grades, and standardized reading test scores. As a secondary purpose, the effectiveness of rewritten social studies materials as a means of…

Presented in this publication are the findings from a selected group of 52 studies conducted by graduate students at the University of Kansas. Undertaken as research for masters' and doctoral degrees, these studies are limited to problems occupying public school teachers of grades 7-13. Specific areas of the research are grammar and usage (6…