Investigates existence or otherwise of group level effects on progress in reading. Combines administrative data to give two primary age cohorts, each of the order of 2500 pupils, in one Local Education Authority (LEA) in southeast England. Finds mean score and pupil turnover were the most important aggregated group level effects. (BT)

Discusses the value of studying the history of literacy. Offers a short history of historiography. Analyzes past methodologies of researching the history of literacy. Discusses literacy history and the reading research community. Outlines undertaking historical research in literacy. Suggests the time is long overdue for historical research in…

Investigates the contributions of visual orthographic (analogy) and phonological processes in mediating nonword reading in children with dyslexia. Finds that children with dyslexia were the least likely to regularize nonword pronunciation and secondly, that all groups displayed an overall preference for words that were phonologically manipulated.…

Describes three experiments that examined the trade-off between text-based and task-based importance. Defines text-based and task-based importance. Concludes that undergraduate subjects spontaneously adopted an interactive, compensatory strategy in which task-based importance superseded the role of text-based importance. Discusses implications for…

Investigates the role of phonetics for children learning to read Chinese. Reveals that children name phonetically regular Chinese characters more accurately than irregular ones; phonetic-related errors were the most dominant type. Suggests Chinese youngsters rely on phonetics for sound cues in naming Chinese characters; phonological awareness…

Presents two studies using Verstaen et al.'s method that occasionally replicates null phonemic masking effects, but challenges their interpretation. Reflects an inherent instability in the perception of homophones. Demonstrates that this instability is directly due to reliance on phonology, rather than to its control. (SG)

Tests the Phonological Completeness Hypothesis of Brown and Watson, which proposes that early acquired words are recognized and produced faster than late acquired words because they have less fragmented phonological representations. Indicates that the results of the segmentation task failed to provide any support for Brown and Watson's (1987)…

Claims that behavior of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in the production and dissemination of its National Reading Panel (NRP) report is scandalous. Provides several reasons for this assertion. (Conains 11 references.) (PKP)

Cites 20 documents, books, and journals from the ERIC database which focus on the training of reading teachers and offer teaching suggestions and methodology, discussions of teacher and student needs, and research related to teacher training in the field of reading. (SR)

Examines the issue of what makes information important by examining the influences of three factors--category membership, normative relative importance, and goal-relatedness. Finds that all three factors influenced the perceived importance of information to some extent; however, normative relative importance influenced writing tasks more strongly…

Notes a lack of consensus about what standards should apply to research on reading. Suggests that any general standards for reading research must be broad and ecumenically applied and that the reading research community should take up a serious discussion of standards. (RS)

Reanalyzes data collected in a 1990 study on factors in reading ability to see whether the three individual difference factors advanced in rauding theory were also detectable in the data from the earlier study. Finds support for the three rauding ability factors. (SR)

Shares the nominations of the authors choices for influential, significant, or memorable articles that have been published in 40 years of "The Reading Teacher." (MG)

Raises issues about research into the teaching of reading. Encourages readers to use the journal as a forum to pool their experiences and discoveries on this topic. (MG)

Documents growth in reading fluency and answers persistent questions on fluency. Illustrates fluent reading and the changes in fluency that occur during the school year through a classroom research project and the collection of more than 2,800 1-minute oral-reading samples.(MG)