Uniting two areas of current interest in educational research, a project tested the effectiveness of computer software in observing the process of comprehension monitoring. Passages with embedded comprehension obstacles were presented to two groups of fifth grade students. Identical in content to those of the controls, the experimental subjects'…

Developmental reading instructors bear the responsibility for preparing students to handle the challenge of difficult college reading. Reading is thinking, re-thinking, and coming to a conclusion that takes into account all the various parts of the text. An excellent tool for helping students with the demands of college-level reading, the journal…

In the 1970s and 1980s the white Australian author Patricia Wrightson's cross-cultural fantasies concerning the conflict of White characters with Aboriginal folk spirits struck a chord with many adolescent and adult readers who judged these novels to be outstandingly successful. A classroom-based study examined the responses of a class of seventh…

Spanning the annual meetings of the North Central Reading Association from 1971 to 1974, this yearbook presents papers dealing with programs and centers, materials and techniques, a new research field, and in honor of Roger S. Pepper. Papers include: "Attitudinal Factors among Marginal Admission Students" (Roger S. Pepper and John A. Drexler,…

Two experiments investigated whether elementary school children's difficulties in detecting inconsistencies in text are related to their failure (1) to represent each of two inconsistent propositions in memory or (2) to compare the representations of the inconsistent propositions to each other once each has been represented in memory. Overall,…

The development of the Alberta Diagnostic Reading Program (ADRP) was based on a current psycholinguistic theory that describes reading as a process in which the reader uses background information to communicate with the author. To ensure its usefulness and effectiveness, the developers of the ADRP sought the advice and direct involvement of many…

Employing measures of attributional styles and metacognitive reading behaviors, a study investigated whether a relationship exists between passive reading behaviors and extreme attributional styles (learned helplessness) in college students on academic probation. Attributional style and metacognitive strategies exhibited while reading college text…

Effective teaching strategies must be developed to help students bridge the gap between concrete operational thinking and full formal thinking in the content areas. Reading for meaning requires readers to categorize subjects, recognize relationships, develop and maintain a sequence of thought, recognize and understand inferences, and draw…

A cognitive developmental theory of reading was proposed and tested in a longitudinal study that (1) compared the development of conceptual reasoning (Piaget's "operativity") and oral language (vocabulary and grammar closure) of 148 Australian children during the first 5 years of school and (2) traced the relationship of these variables to reading…

A study examined variables that affect the acquisition of automaticity of verbal skills. Among the variables examined were practice, novelty or familiarity of a word or word category, the speed and efficiency with which persons acquire automaticity, reaction time, and number of tasks performed concurrently. Subjects, 30 sixth and seventh grade…

Noting that a major issue in education today is the concern about students' ability to read critically and to solve problems, this paper describes an analysis of five texts focusing on reading and learning in the content areas to determine what they had to say about critical reading and strategies for teaching critical reading--specifically,…

Because they have difficulty in processing textual material, learning disabled, limited English speaking students, and reading deficient students create special problems for all teachers. Content area teachers can help these students by using a simple three-step strategy. The first phase, labeled TALK, involves prereading, with the readers…

Written by teachers, linguists, psychologists, and reading specialists, this book elucidates the relationship between reading and language, and explains why reading should be regarded as a language-based process. The book is divided into eight sections, each of which includes an introduction and sources for further reading. The essays for each…

Both writers and readers experience auditory imagery of intonations, accents, and hesitations in written language, and some aspects of this "written language prosody" are made partially overt through punctuation. Two studies explored the relationship between written language prosody and punctuation. The first study asked people to read…

With the use of verbal report strategies, a study was conducted to examine (1) the types of comprehension strategies readers use to process familiar and less familiar texts and (2) the differential use of think aloud strategies by average and below average readers. Subjects were 15 tenth grade male students in upstate New York. Two weeks prior to…