A study involving 111 secondary students with learning disabilities investigated differential reading performance on narrative versus expository text. Students had more difficulty with expository text than with narrative text in terms of reading fluency and comprehension. However, effects for comprehension were mediated by the type of question…

In this study, we investigated the impact of a student-reads-aloud accommodation on the performance of middle school and high school students with and without learning disabilities (LD) on a test of reading comprehension. Data for the analyses came from 311 students (n = 230 with LD) who took alternate forms of a reading test in a standard and an…

The issue of identifying reading difficulties and disabilities in English language learners (ELLs) is a complex one. It is an area that draws on the diverse disciplines of first- and second-language acquisition, literacy, English language learning, and reading, including differences and disabilities research. This literature review aims to…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of teaching eight secondary students with disabilities, including seven with learning disabilities, a strategy for answering a variety of inferential questions. A multiple-baseline across-subjects design was employed. Outcome measures included scores on researcher-devised comprehension…

This conference paper provides examples of reading comprehension strategies that can be used with students with learning disabilities or reading comprehension difficulties. Before reading, during reading, and after reading strategies are presented. The before reading strategies, which activate the students' background knowledge and attention,…

This study investigated the effects of advance organizers on the English reading comprehension of six bilingual fifth and sixth grade learning disabled students whose primary language was Spanish. An alternating treatment design was implemented. Following each treatment, the students read an expository text written in English and answered eight…

The study reported in this paper investigated the effects of a frequently recommended study technique on the comprehension of expository text by high-school students having learning disabilities. The instructional procedure studied was "Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review" (SQ3R). Six experiments were conducted over a 3-year period,…

To determine whether story mapping would improve reading comprehension, five intermediate grade students with mild learning handicaps and poor comprehension were prepared to use story mapping procedures as a schema-building technique. As they were reading, students learned to identify the setting, problem, goal, action, and outcome of narrative…

Using a definition of metacognition that distinguishes between knowledge about cognition and regulation of cognition, this paper discusses the role of metacognition in the identification and categorizing of students with learning problems. Following this discussion, the paper describes three types of cognitive skills training studies--blind,…

Daily measures of reading comprehension were obtained for three learning disabled fourth and fifth grade boys in two settings--their regular classrooms and a special remedial setting. (Author)

A teacher describes the teaching techniques she uses in an eight-grade English class composed of learning-disabled students. (JD)

Elementary learning disabled students (N=32) were assigned to a control group or to an experimental group trained to use a comprehension monitoring strategy wherein important paragraph ideas were restated as they read. Restatement training improved comprehension not only under conditions matching the training task, but also those demanding…

The following two changes in conceptualizing learning difficulties are occurring: (1) a shift from identifying deficits to focusing on assessing knowledge and (2) the use of diagnoses that are more dynamic and domain specific. This article illustrates how these changes relate to knowledge of the learning process and to better instruction.…

Evaluated the effectiveness of oral reading for improving reading comprehension of 11 educable mentally handicapped or severe learning disabled adolescents who answered comprehension questions from a short factual article. Oral reading appeared to improve comprehension among the poorer readers but not for readers with moderately high ability. (JAC)