An approach to testing reading comprehension among Dutch speaking university students of German for academic purposes is described. The test items were designed to reflect the most typical comprehension errors made by speakers of Dutch when reading German academic discourse. The most frequent errors were due to vocabulary and declension…

A study examined the effects of pictorial and verbal illustrations on the initial learning and long term retention of written instruction. Subjects were eighth and ninth grade students randomly assigned to one of two text conditions (literal or analogous instructions) under one of four pictorial conditions (no picture, functional drawing,…

An experimental program was undertaken to determine the effects of attitude and reading achievement on writing, to ascertain if intervention could improve writing achievement and attitude, and to predict success in the program on the basis of an attitude inventory that measured need for structure and tolerance of ambiguity. Subjects were 15 boys…

An index identifying factors leading to unusual response patterns by students, the modified caution index, was computed for the reading comprehension and study skills items of Booklet 5 from the 1979 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading achievement survey given to the 9-, 13- and 17-year-old samples. The analyses focused on…

The functions of blocking text with horizontal rules and providing headings of different types are discussed. Headings may be encoded or function as access structures, while blocking segments text and provides retrieval cues. These issues were tested in two experiments. College students read a 2000-word passage. In the first experiment, no…

The "Test Development Notebook" is a resource designed for the preparation of tests of literal comprehension for students in grades 1 through 12. This volume contains 100 multiple-choice cloze exercises taken from consumer magazines, catalogs, instructions, advertisements, and contracts; and the accompanying answer key. Each exercise…

A study was conducted to evaluate the effect of background knowledge on overall comprehension and comprehension of new information in adult beginning readers. In the study, 40 Adult Basic Education (ABE) students, enrolled in six classes in two instructional sites (one urban and one rural), were presented with two selections about unfamiliar…

Based on the premise that what students know before they read an assignment will strongly influence what they learn by reading that assignment, this booklet provides strategies that teachers can use to evoke and enhance students' background knowledge in relation to content area reading. Following a foreword and preface, the first major section of…

The process of interrupting the reading of a text in order to predict what is to come is a well-established reading instructional technique known as Directed Reading/Thinking Activities (DRTA). Predictive intervention, a classroom structure based on this technique, is more frequently productive of creative revision than either teacher advice or…

The influence on learning of visuals accompanying self-paced text materials was investigated for students of varied reading comprehension ability levels. The use of varied degrees of realism and media presentation formats in facilitating learning on specific tasks was examined in order to clarify previous research, and to provide specific…

Preservice teachers can be taught skills in questioning techniques through a three-stage process of modeling, practicing, and evaluation. In a methods course taught by the authors, education students were confused by the variety of questioning techniques available, and would not adopt effective and efficient approaches to questioning. A…

Part of a research project designed to develop a theory of the cognitive processes involved in skilled reading by the analysis of the location and duration of eye fixations, this paper concentrates on how eye fixations can be used to determine when encoding, lexical access, parsing, and integration processes are executed and how they are affected…

This report summarizes research performed at the Universtiy of Kansas that involved several topics related to reading and learning to read, including the development of automatic word recognition processes, reading for comprehension, and the development of new computer technologies designed to facilitate the reading process. The first section…

The Regents Competency Program has two basic purposes: (1) to assure the early identification of students who need help in developing reading, writing, and mathematics skills and (2) to assure that students have acquired adequate competency in these skills before receiving a high school diploma. The New York State Preliminary Competency Test in…

Contained in this yearbook are the proceedings of the fourth annual Arizona State University Reading Conference. This edition reflects an emphasis on bilingual/bicultural aspects of reading, as well as on content area instruction. Following a foreword, the articles discuss the following: (1) matching materials and strategies for comprehension, (2)…