The efforts to develop and study the effects of a microcomputer program to enhance children's decoding and word recognition skills are described in this paper. The first section of the paper discusses theory and research in the area of cognitive psychology upon which the program, "Construct a Word," is based. The second section describes…

This paper examines the relationship between strategies for recall of verbal material and the reading ability of 10-to-13-year-old children. Sixty-five fifth and sixth graders, whose reading levels were determined by the Gates-MacGinitie Comprehension Test (1964), were given an orally presented word-string repetition task. While performance on…

Forty-six first-grade teachers' manuals and workbooks from three basal reading series published in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1970s were examined for differences in the amount of material devoted to word-attack skills. Word-attack skills were defined as the use of phonic and structural analysis for successfully attacking unrecognized words. Results…

This study compared the rapid word processing abilities of groups of students in college, fourth grade, second grade, and kindergarten to see if there is a developmental pattern in such skill development, and to see if phonics training should emphasize either letters and the orthographic rules that create words or letter clusters (common words)…

An instructional program that teaches decoding skills to learning disabled children was developed to serve as a supplement to whatever reading program is used in the classroom. As a result of task analysis, the program's instructional sequence begins with auditory tasks analyzing syllables and short words into phonemes, then blending these…

This paper discusses a research project carried out to study and compare the reading processes of native and second language speakers of English. The procedure developed for the observation and description of the reading process and related language experience included initial diagnostic testing and taped inventories, a sequence of tutorial…

Teachers were trained in either or both of two versions of Effective Classroom Management--Junior High (ECM). In the second year of the study, teachers were taught techniques in discipline, communication, and self-esteem enhancement. The goals of the in-service training were to make teachers more responsive to students' affective and cognitive…

The reaction times (RTs) of 48 elementary school students in two word identification tasks were recorded to gauge the effects of orthographic and phonic structures. The subjects, high ability and low ability students from grades four and five and from grades two and three, either matched a word to one of two pictures on display or decided if a…

Several researchers have attempted to measure sequencing and integration in the decoding process in an effort to isolate some independent variables that may contribute to reading retardation, but most have measured the ability of children to manipulate nonverbal material. It is unclear whether nonverbal tests measure the same processes involved in…

A study was conducted to examine (1) the type of instruction most likely to help both normal and learning disabled readers use the analogy strategy in reading novel words, and (2) how fifth grade disabled readers compared with normal second and fifth grade readers. Analogy strategies, the most abstract of the reading strategies, are generally…

When two adults read eleven paragraphs, assigned a meaning to the target word in each paragrah, and answered questions about their strategies for dealing with the difficult/unknown words, they exhibited four strategies, outside of actual definition, that skilled readers use to deal with such words. The most often used strategy is paragraph…

The described teacher education course is designed for elementary school teachers seeking to develop skills for building decoding ability in their beginning reading students and students who need remedial help. An outline of the scope and sequence of topics is given as well as a description of activities and resources involved in the course.…

The intensive reading instructional centers in Hartford, Connecticut, provide reading services to over 500 pupils in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Reading teams consist of a reading consultant, two master teachers with strong backgrounds in reading, and a part-time clerk-typist. Instruction takes place in eleven-week cycles. Each teacher…

Developed and coordinated by the Bureau of Reading Education of the New York State Education Department, Project Alert is a statewide inservice program to facilitate instituting or improving the diagnostic-prescriptive approach to reading instruction. As part of this program, a reading resource kit was prepared by the bureau to give structure and…

The problem of the panel on semantics, concepts, and culture, sponsored by the National Institute of Education Conference on Studies in Reading, was to determine how lexical, semantic, conceptual, and cultural factors contribute to reading comprehension. The contents of the document include the following: "Word Recognition Skills," which…