Those interested in textbook research, theory, and practice need to identify the independent or context variables that influence the making of a textbook--the intervening variables that come into play as textbooks are conceived, developed, and designed--and to show how these impact on the textbook, or dependent variable. To begin, critics and…

A study tested the effects of hedges (which signal writers' tentative assessment of referential information) on readers' learning. Subjects, 145 ninth-grade students from three middle class junior high schools in a midwestern city who were ranked on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, participated in the experiment--74 were randomly assigned to an…

For a potential drop-out who had difficulty comprehending what she had read because she could not recognize a word, even though she often knew its meaning, a methodology for teaching word decoding provided an effective technique for achieving systematic early gains. Lessons for the eighth-grade girl followed this methodology: (1) decoding the…

Provided are an introductory family day care correspondence course, a trainer's resource manual, and information packets for trainees. The introductory course is organized into 12 topic units plus an introductory unit and covers various aspects of quality family day care. The course materials are organized in two sections: (1) general instructions…

A study was conducted to examine learning from textbook sentences that provide examples. It was predicted that an example written succinctly and with a word order that emphasized its parallel semantic relations with the exemplified principle, such as "animals have parasites; dogs have fleas," would have a positive effect on idea comprehension. It…

This study examined the effect of two ways of question phrasing as related to three styles of expository writing on the test performance of elementary school children. Multiple-choice questions were developed for sets of passages which were written using three different syntactic structures; and which had different levels of difficulty. The…

In response to the assessed need for improving the basic academic skills of United States Navy personnel, a project was undertaken to develop a relevant remedial reading workbook for Navy recruit training commands (RTCs). The workbook was designed to augment existing commercial nonmilitary oriented remedial reading materials that were being used…

This report compares a typical newspaper account of an event with other possible ways of narrating the event. It argues that journlists' beliefs about the appropriate format, style, and content for a news story work in concert to obscure the structure of the story and the relations among subparts, and thus serve to thwart their presumed goal in…

In this issue, articles deal with various aspects of the relationship between reading and the English teacher. Titles include "Literary Humor" by Wilmer Lamar and "200 Adolescent Novels Worth Reading" by Ken Donelson; both suggest reading materials. Practical teaching tips are provided in "Comprehension Is Comprehension, Is . . ." by Jerry Walker,…

This book is conceived as a definitive expose and practitioner's manual of readability measurement, with special reference to French language readability. Proceeding from a detailed outline of research on readability from 1923 to the present, the book confronts such issues as external criteria used for validation of readability formulas, choice of…

Examines the nature and prevalence of author-provided cues to effective processing of introductory college textbooks in psychology and biology. Concludes that the authors of the texts chose cues that would be effective even with relatively passive learners and rarely chose cues that demanded much activity from readers. (SKC)

This article introduces and discusses some aspects of the complex problem of textbook reform, and suggests what the future holds for textbooks. (DCS)

The 338 14-year-olds who participated in a study to determine effects of pictures on readability of science topics completed a cloze test during the study and an objective items recognition test afterwards. Posttest scores showed pictures made topic easier to remember although they had little effect on cloze test results. (MBR)

Supplementing a guide published in 1995, this annotated bibliography contains 80 one-page listings of books for adult learners in adult basic education (ABE) and General Educational Development (GED) programs. Arranged in alphabetical order by author, each listing includes the following: title, author's name, illustrator's name, date of…

Describes some of the mismatches that can occur between child knowledge and the controlled "primerese" language of texts. Finds ways in which children bring their linguistic knowledge to bear on the reading process. Indicates that the controls and distinctive features of primerese text are counterproductive. (MG)