This study was conducted to examine the factors that influence informational text comprehension and to determine how these vary for students with higher and lower component skills. The sample included 177 students in grades 3-5. Regression analyses were used to predict informational text comprehension with decoding efficiency, vocabulary…

The purpose of this study was to compare the word processing and reading comprehension skilled in and less skilled readers. Forty-nine, 2nd graders (26 skilled and 23 less skilled readers) participated in this study. They were tested with two experiments assessing their processing of isolated real word and pseudoword pairs as well as their reading…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) mathematics assessment measures students' knowledge and skills in mathematics and students' ability to apply their knowledge in problem-solving situations. At each grade, students responded to questions designed to measure what they know and can do across five mathematics content areas: number…

A survey addressing critical skills for business students was developed and disseminated. Sixteen critical skills (such as critical thinking and time management) were identified as skills that need to be acquired in order for business students to be successful in their advanced courses and careers. The survey was disseminated and taken by several…

The goal of this study was to compare the literacy skills of adult native English and native Spanish ABE speakers. Participants were 169 native English speakers and 124 native Spanish speakers recruited from five prior research projects. The results showed that the native Spanish speakers were less skilled on morphology and passage comprehension…

High literacy and numeracy demands in career and technical education (CTE) compared to low skill levels among many students prompted calls for academic infusion into training curricula. Research on CTE academic curriculum integration implicitly assumes that students' reading and math skills are like those described by models of typical academic…

Seven- and eight-year-old skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were compared on a sentence recognition task in two conditions varying in memory load and retention interval. Integration of story information during comprehension was indexed by inflated recognition errors of foils that had been constructed by integrating information across original…

Suggests specific reading strategies for college level learners based on a thorough analysis of how successful college readers handle difficult text. (AEA)

Developmental differences in summaries of expository texts were examined for fourth and sixth grade students in two experiments. Experiment 1 used texts that had a description content structure whereas Experiment 2 texts had a thesis/evidence content structure. Manipulation of the presence or absence of the topic sentence allowed the examination…

The Learning Activities Questionnaire (LAQ) was designed and developed to identify which of the following learning strategies were used by individuals in a variety of academic and training environments: rote (passive and active); physical; elaboration; and grouping. After undergoing two pilot tests, the final version of the LAQ was administered to…

A study examined student abilities to integrate semantically related propositions; and identified sources of comprehension difficulty for the unskilled reader. It also examined the influence of two types of relations (causal and adversative) and two types of connectives (conjunctions and verbs) on readers' comprehension, on-line integration of…

Used as an integral part of the migrant student skills system operated by the Migrant Student Record Transfer System (MSRTS), the reading skills list contains a catalog of reading skills typical of the K-12 grade range. This catalog includes a sample of the MSRTS transmittal record which permits teachers to report the reading skills being worked…

Reading ability of fourth- and eighth-grade Hungarians was assessed as part of the national CTD-80 (Curriculum Theory Department) survey. The texts used in the reading tests are analyzed, as are the reading tasks involved. Resulting achievement test results are presented and described in terms of the text characteristics. (GDC)

A method is presented for using a restricted latent class model--a binary skills model--to determine skills required by a set of test items. Results from the method's application to reading achievement data for about 63,000 fourth graders indicate that the model offers useful information on test structure and examinee ability. (TJH)

As the result of an analysis and synthesis of reading comprehension skills studies, it was suggested that teachers attempt to simplify comprehension questions by recognizing two basic types: literal and nonliteral. It was noted that a student's success in obtaining meaning depends on (1) his competency in determining word meaning, (2) his…