Describes how textbook activity guides that emphasize active student involvement through cooperative learning and a self monitoring component can help students become active, flexible, more effective readers of textbook materials. (HOD)

Reports a study designed to answer the question of whether English as a second language (ESL) reading can be facilitated by explicit teaching of text structure. Results indicate that training on the top-level rhetorical organization of expository texts significantly increased the amount of information that 25 intermediate-level ESL students could…

Current theory and research into the oral-written relationship are reviewed. Three models of reading comprehension based on oral-written language skills are reviewed as representative and their implications for reading instruction in grades 4-12 and in bilingual-bicultural classrooms are determined. The mingling of oral and literate strategies, in…

Reports on research showing that the use of a process-oriented writing program did not improve students' reading ability. (DF)

Compares the processing of English words by Chinese-English bilinguals with that of monolingual English speakers. Subjects read and rated English words for their contribution to sentence structure and meaning. It was found that bilinguals generally rated English words as contributing more to sentence structure and meaning than did monolinguals.…

Describes the Vocabulary Self-Collection Strategy, a strategy that differs from traditional instruction through its use of student generated word lists and its emphasis on students' personal experience and world knowledge. (HOD)

Examines the relations among general language competency factors such as word knowledge, comprehension, and paradigmatic/syntagmatic reasoning, and college developmental readers' ability to interpret two text formats designed to elicit either a literal or figurative interpretation. (DF)

Discusses cognitive processes readers engage in when comprehending instructional text and identifies familiar devices utilized by authors of instructional materials to support each of these processes. Included are appropriate vocabulary and sentence syntax use for intended audience; listing instructional objectives; and use of hierarchical…

Compared comprehension of kindergarten-age precocious readers (who read at the third-grade level) with second- and third-grade-age children. Results on measures of letter, scrambled word, and text reading times indicated that, for precocious readers, efficiency in lower-order tasks is not a prerequisite for rapid text reading and good…

Replicates a 1977 study and reaches similar conclusions: specifically, that schematic interpretations have a high relationship to prior knowledge. (FL)

Analyzes the research on how readers use text patterns to understand writing and identifies five text patterns found in both school texts and work texts. (HOD)

Reports on a study that compared the use of the cloze procedure with an oral reading test to assess students' reading abilities, concluding that teachers could use cloze to place students in content area textbooks.(HOD)

Concludes that teachers' questions influence both the sorts of inferences fifth-grade students draw from a text and how well they integrate the new information with what they already know. Argues that they learn best the things they are asked about. (FL)

Two procedures for correcting oral reading errors, word supply and word drill, were examined to determine their effects on measures of word recognition and comprehension with 17 learning disabled elementary school students. (Author/SW)

Discusses details for establishing and evaluating student directed reading groups. (HOD)