Concludes that subjects are misled by errors they make on earlier items in cloze tests. (RL)

Examined spelling errors in the spontaneous writing of 12-year-old children (N=56). Results showed one set of errors related more to incorrect articulation than to poor spelling. A second set indicated the role of morphemic factors in the spelling of inflected words. (JAC)

This study confirmed that young Spanish-speaking readers use contextual clues when they read in Spanish. (HOD)

The Reading Recovery Program offers individual reading lessons. Students are dismissed from the program when they reach a certain level of proficiency. A study of the errors made at entry reveals learning-disabled children rely on visual information and ignore supportive language, while other at-risk children utilize both. (VM)

The reading responses of 80 second grade students to words in context and words in isolation were analyzed. The children were tested individually with four oral reading selections (kindergarten through third grade levels), a set of comprehension questions, and a word list. The children recognized fewer words in isolation than in context. The…

In a study with seventh- and eighth-graders, Spanish-English bilinguals (n=41) and English monolinguals (n=48) used brief English contexts to choose among possible meanings for unfamiliar words. Two types of errors were compared: transfer errors, which were answers consistent with Spanish but not English syntax, and non-transfer errors, which were…

This study investigated the relative ability of literate (n=24), semi-literate (n=45), and non-literate (n=21) adults to erase the initial consonant or vowel from non-words and pronounce the remaining phonemes. It was hypothesized that difficulty in removing the initial consonant from the vowel with which it coarticulates is due not only to…

This study explores how children indicate that a new character or object is being introduced into a written text and how they tell their readers that a particular word refers to something which has appeared in the text before. In particular, the study focuses on information represented by noun phrases in written narrative texts. To investigate how…

A study investigated the ability of socially handicapped Israeli students to determine a word's meaning from its linguistic context. The results and their implications for second language instruction are examined in light of current theories of context. (MSE)

Concludes that in the first stage of reading, students appear to make relatively few nonsense errors on familiar words, whether they are taught with a meaning-based or phonics approach. However, if initial instruction emphasizes phonics, real word substitutions tend to be graphically constrained; with initial meaning-emphasis instruction,…

The technique individuals use to narrow the possible responses in "solicits" (demands, requests, or questions requiring a response) in and outside the classroom often helps to avoid miscommunication and can be a useful tool for classroom teachers. A narrowing exercise was completed by 35 classes of native English and English as a second language…

A study with 181 beginning-level college students of French investigated the effects of sentence-level native-language (L1) translations on retention of second-language (L2) vocabulary presented in a context designed to promote inference rather than word-to-word translation. Research was conducted to address the specific design of software for…

Second grade good readers (N=46) and fourth grade good and poor readers (N=46; N=48) were subjects in a study that examined linguistic cue usage by good and poor readers in a Southern metropolitan area. A secondary purpose was to compare the standard and phoneme cloze procedures with oral miscue analysis. The subjects were identified as good or…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: effects of methods of study, cognitive style, pre-information on the construction of written material, gender of generic pronouns, and study questions interspersed…