The hypothesis of this study was that stories created by a dialectical subgroup of third grade Negro children might be more comprehensible to other members of that group than the usual instructional materials. A random sample of third graders was asked to tell stories in response to four pictures. The stories were tape recorded and then…

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…

Publishers of basal reading series claim that beginning reading materials must contain primarily high frequency words and that new words must be introduced gradually. Inherent in their argument is the position that reading is based on the student's ability to recognize words and that short, phonetically regular words are easier to read. To examine…

Undergraduate education students can often discuss the language experience approach intelligently, listing advantages and disadvantages with ease, but express bewilderment when it comes time in a reading practicum class to actually use the approach with a child. A teaching guide can serve as an aid to those students who have previously studied the…

This journal issue contains six articles related to language-centered reading instruction, integrated language arts, and reading comprehension. The first article discusses the language experience approach (LEA) to developing comprehension skills in adult beginning readers. The second article describes examples of uses of LEA in such content areas…