A mapping strategy for improving critical thinking about expository text was employed in a study designed to help six high school students with difficulties in reading comprehension. Subjects were four sophomores in a remedial reading program and two juniors in a special education program for the mildly retarded. Subjects read passages from an…

Four six-year-olds and their mothers were observed during the summer prior to starting first grade in a study designed to expand knowledge of the nature of verbal interactions during book reading. All of the children had some knowledge of letters and were making satisfactory progress in reading. The seven or eight observation sessions were taped…

Research and observation have indicated that there is a connection between reading and writing. This connection has been confirmed through the research of D. Graves, L. Calkins, G. Bissex, and M. Baghban. Cognitive theorists believe that reading and writing involve similar schema or structures. Much of the pedagogy and research suggest that the…

Commercially developed basal reading programs are used in most elementary school classrooms in the United States. Yet often neither the publishers developing these programs nor the members of textbook adoption committees selecting programs are able to take advantage of the best available knowledge about the reading process and reading instruction.…

Focusing on the importance of the search for meaning in reading, the essays in this book address critical reading and the confusion about the place of skill development in the search for meaning. The following works are included: "Introduction to the 50th Yearbook" (M. P. Douglass); "The Quest for Meaning" (M. Poplin);…

In response to recommendations by a National Institute of Education (NIE) planning group to the effect that NIE should support efforts to understand the cognitive processes involved in acquiring basic reading skills and in comprehending linguistic messages, this book summarizes what has been learned about reading comprehension in the decade since…

A study examined the use of lookback strategy (selective rereading of text material to clarify inconsistent information) employed by good and poor readers attempting to monitor their own reading comprehension. Using microcomputers, narrative and expository texts containing inconsistencies were presented one line at a time on a "page" of…

The details of a 6-year investigation entitled the Education Testing Service (ETS) Collaborative Research Project on Reading, which brought researchers and educators together in classroom studies of young children learning to read, are presented in this book. The first four chapters of the book describe the theoretical rationale, design, and…

Written from a psycholinguistic perspective to assist teachers-in-training to prepare for reading instruction in grades one through eight, this book can clarify basic issues in reading as well as supplement current knowledge. The three major parts into which this book is divided examine reading in the "human context," the "teaching context," and…

Prompted by the growing interest in the role of reader-related and text-related variables in reading comprehension, a study compared 30 sixth grade students in regular classrooms to 30 language impaired students. The purpose was to assess the relationship of (1) text structure manipulations for simple and complex sentence structure, (2) discourse…

The purpose of this book is to show how teaching reading involves all teachers. The book first explains how decades of change in Britain have affected school organization, knowledge, teacher education, and the concept of reading. Chapter 2 examines an expanded concept of reading, while chapter 3 explores language development and reading, including…

Some researchers estimate that 99 percent of occupations require some ability to read. Yet, illiteracy is a present and growing problem for many businesses. Some researchers contend that the basic educational system does not prepare workers to read on the job. Many teachers consider reading an elementary skill and do not focus on it in higher…

To understand better how readers learn and recall text information, a study examined one prose learning approach--the selective attention strategy (SAS)--in which text elements are processed, given various degrees of attention, and learned according to their perceived importance. Fifty sixth grade students from an inner city school in a large…

Literacy should be viewed as the ability to enlist a repertoire of discourse forms to explore and extend thinking and learning. In this view of literacy and literacy learning, various forms of reading and writing are seen as distinct ways of knowing and acquiring knowledge for ones' own purposes. Supporting this view of literacy are theoretical…

Teachers should be making every effort to use approaches for teaching literature that encourage students to discover the meaning of a text for themselves, using the language of the text and without unnecessary teacher intervention. Therefore, rather than having the students be led by the teacher/interpreter through a work they encounter the first…