Shows how having students write journals about their learning experiences was an effective teaching technique in the primary grades. (RL)

Cognitive confusion is the common state of young persons in regard to concepts of units of writing. In the past 10 years, research has accumulated to show that all children pass through the important stage of initial cognitive confusion in learning to read. Children often confuse "writing" with "drawing,""letter" with "number," and so on.…

First, second, and third grade students were asked to draw inferences after reading stories written by themselves, by peers, and by adults. The 70 subjects were divided into groups of slow-inaccurate, slow-accurate, and fast-accurate readers. After reading each type of story, they responded to six questions requiring text-based inferences.…

A review of the research stresses the importance of language skills to beginning reading. (JH)

Discusses the relationship of cognitive development or thinking skills to language development and beginning reading. (MKM)

Reading instruction is on the verge of a shift to a new paradigm that will be based on a new understanding of cognitive processes and will include five important tenets: (1) the best way to promote the emergence of reading behavior is to use interesting story books; (2) the primary cause of reading problems is too much instruction, too much…

The primary focus of this paper is on black children and the relationship between their productive and receptive language competencies. The solutions which have been proposed to solve the dilemma of black pupils' poor reading achievement are discussed. It is noted that none of the proposed solutions has the unqualified support provided by a mass…

By relating research on cognition, child development, and teaching, the author describes the theoretical background of the language experience approach to teaching reading. The close relationship between spoken language and reading and writing skills is discussed. The author lists and describes specific practices for teaching and learning in a…

This report describes a project that used children's literature to introduce 6- and 7-year-old children (n=25) in the United States to other languages to arouse their interest in finding out more about language. Most of the children were monolingual and spoke English; two boys spoke some Spanish. The study was conducted to see if young children's…

A study was conducted to determine whether students comprehend student-authored material more easily than the material of published authors. The Fry Readability Graph was used to estimate the readability of 8 published passages of 200-270 words, which varied from grade 5 through grade 10. The topic of each passage was listed and used in a 2-day…

Examination of cognitive prerequisites for the acquisition of reading skills identified two kinds of conceptual representations of language activities--functional and technical concepts. English-as-a-second-language students can transfer these concepts to second-language literacy, but attention must be given to orthographic coding principles of…