Two experiments were conducted to determine whether a meaning emphasis or a word identification emphasis would give better results in a third grade reading lesson. The results investigated more than 30 factors and their two-way interactions. In the first experiment, 259 children were placed into reading groups arranged either homogeneously or…

Three experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that a paragraph composed of sentences with identical or closely related topics would be easier to read than one whose sentence topics were only remotely related. The first experiment involved subjective judgments by 131 high school students on the readability of two paragraphs identical in…

Noting that medical consent forms traditionally have been so full of medical and legal jargon that they have been impossible for even the educated layperson to understand, this paper presents a model for revising medical consent forms to make them more comprehensible. After describing the model, the paper explains each step involved in using it,…

A study was conducted to examine the relationship between reading achievement levels and writing ability, and to determine the extent to which writing ability in one language transfers to another language. Subjects were 21 high school students in advanced placement Spanish classes, all of whom had learned Spanish in the classroom. The Stanford…

Middle-school students, called "transescent learners," are at an age during which they undergo physical and intellectual changes that affect them emotionally and socially, causing confused thinking and insecure feelings. This paper offers seven guidelines to help the middle-school teacher select and present reading materials that enhance learning…

After considering various estimates of the extent to which there is a "literacy problem" in the United States, this paper develops an econometric model of the literacy program. Defining the volume of literacy as the total amount of information that people exchange through the materials they want or need to use, the volume of literacy is seen to be…

Designed to provide high interest reading materials for late-adolescent- and adult-elementary-level readers, this kit contains reading exercises with a difficulty of fourth-grade-and-below readability. The kit includes thirty-five reading exercises developed from unedited stories dictated by students (the Learning Experience Approach). Following…

Designed to provide high interest reading materials for late-adolescent- and adult-elementary-level readers, this kit contains reading exercises with a difficulty of approximately fifth-grade readability. The kit includes forty-six reading exercises developed from unedited stories dictated by students (the Learning Experience Approach). Following…

Designed to provide high interest reading materials for late-adolescent- and adult-elementary-level readers, this kit contains reading exercises with a difficulty oF approximately sixth-to-eighth-grade readability. The kit includes forty-two reading exercises developed from unedited stories dictated by students (the Learning Experience Approach).…

Designed to provide high interest reading materials for late-adolescent- and adult-elementary-level readers, this kit contains reading exercises with a difficulty of eighth-grade-and-above readability. The kit includes twenty reading exercises developed from unedited stories dictated by students (the Learning Experience Approach). Following each…

Testing the assumption that textbooks were getting harder while students' abilities have been declining over the years, a study was conducted to determine the readability levels of six college reading textbooks across three editions to see if they were equal or the same in readability. The study also sought to determine whether these texts were…

Divided into five sections, this review and synthesis paper provides vocational educators with an overview of issues involved in the relationship between basic reading skills and vocational education. The introduction discusses reading in vocational education as both a curricular or educational issue and as an occupational or employment-skill…

This monograph is the third in a series of semiannual reports of research related to reading in secondary schools. The first section of the monograph is made up of three research studies on the validation of teaching procedures to facilitate students' comprehension of content area texts, the graph-reading abilities of seventh grade students, and a…

Community college professors have a responsibility as teachers to help students learn the many new words which must be added to their high school vocabularies if they are to be successful. While some instructors provide students with a list of jargon words relevant to a particular course, most ignore the problem posed by new words encountered in…

A study was conducted using standard open-ended cloze testing to establish a criterion for the utility of content reading passages for students in grades four, seven, and ten in the subject areas of language arts and social studies. Passages were selected from books, novels, and textbooks required in these courses. It was found that most of the…