Reports the results of a study designed to determine the extent to which fourth-grade students had difficulty answering literal comprehension questions. Suggests that expository passages of social studies content are more difficult to comprehend than narrative passages. (AEA)

Five contributors separately discuss (1) a formula for describing the anticipatory process in reading; (2) a combined reading, writing, and comprehension exercise that proved popular with rehabilitation students; (3) an adult education project involving reports on recreational reading; (4) limitations of the Fry Readability Graph; and (5) a method…

Describes the "Illinois Valley Community College Catalog and Career Decision Guide, 1979-1980," which provides vocational outlook information and codes curricular areas to correspond to the results of vocational interest inventories. Discusses counselor responses to the catalog, as well as cost and readability factors. (JP)

The readability level of material recommended for consumer health collections in public libraries is analyzed. All medical and lay items examined were found to exceed the standard reading skills of the general public. Discussion includes the relevance and appropriateness of sources, information needs and information-seeking behaviors, and a review…

Evaluates four commercial reading programs at the second, fourth, and sixth grade levels with respect to main idea instructional practices and readability of text. Evaluates the type of main idea tasks and main idea statements, as well as placement of explicit main idea statements in the text. Discusses implications for practitioners meeting…

Investigated the effect of causal structure revisions to school texts on the comprehension of more- and less- skilled undergraduates. Found that readers at both skill levels benefited from the revisions but only for the difficult text. (JPB)

Reviews evidence related to the readability and comprehensibility of material in primary school science textbooks, which shows that texts are often too difficult for children, particularly in developing countries where pupils are learning through English as the medium of instruction. (69 references) (Author/CK)

Describes and compares four computerized reading incentive programs that quiz students on their reading comprehension of self-selected books and award points for their efforts. Topics include price, hardware requirements, reading level, training, and recommendations. (LRW)

Examinations are conventionally used to measure candidates' achievement in a limited time period. However, the influence of text layout on performance may compromise the construct validity of the examination. An experimental study looked at the effects of the text layout on the speed and accuracy of a reading task in an examination-type situation.…

This article discusses methods for evaluating students' content-area literacy skills. Four specific factors that affect content-area literacy are described: vocabulary knowledge, topic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and textbook readability, along with methods of evaluating each of the factors. Most of these methods have not yet been…

Clustered Trade & Industrial Occupations Reading Strategies is one of four instructional guides developed to assist teachers working with students considered disadvantaged because of reading deficiency. Section 1 concerns readability and gives procedures and guidelines for collecting samples. Section 2 briefly describes the Cloze procedure and its…

Clustered Health Occupations Reading Strategies is one of four instructional guides developed to assist teachers working with students considered disadvantaged because of reading deficiency. Section 1 concerns readability and gives procedures and guidelines for collecting samples. Section 2 briefly describes the Cloze procedure and its usefulness…

A study examined 52 stories for grades 1-6, randomly chosen from 10 American and Canadian literature-based reading series containing well-known selections by well-known authors. The study compared the reading series selection to the original story cited in the series acknowledgments, seeking patterns of difference in wording, paragraph structure,…

A study investigated whether lowering the reading level of a health education pamphlet would increase comprehension by adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) readers. The reading level of a general pharmacy education handout was lowered by changing vocabulary, sentence structure, and organization, by highlighting the main idea of each point, and…