This study compared the effectiveness of two computer-based techniques for improving word recognition automaticity in children with mild reading difficulties. One of the techniques provided practice in identifying individual words out of context, while the other technique, referred to as repeated reading, provided practice reading specific words…

Previous studies on emergent literacy have shown that since young children learn a lot about writing and reading before they attend school, teachers can build on this knowledge in an integrated instructional program. But just how reading and writing are intertwined in the learning process has not been clearly defined. This study investigated the…

The proceedings of the sixth annual meeting of the College Reading Association included the following papers: (1) "President's Report: Retrospect and Prospect" (Mrs. H. E. Ketcham); (2) "Can Reading Instruction Meet the Present Academic Challenge?" (P. D. Leedy); (3) "Hereditary Factors in Certain Reading…

The proceedings of the eighth annual meeting of the College Reading Association consisted of the following papers: "President's Report" (M. J. Weiss); "What Constitutes a Minimal Program for Clinical Diagnosis of Reading Disabilities?" (G. L. Bond); "Problems in Establishing Developmental Reading Programs in Junior…

The proceedings of the thirteenth annual meeting of the College Reading Association consisted of the following papers: (1) "President's Address" (U. Price); (2) "Critical Reading-Critical Thinking and College Reading" (J. Follman); (3) "Cloze Procedure as a Predictor of Comprehension in Secondary Social Studies…

Designed to improve underachieving high school students' reading and communication skills, the Secondary Developmental Reading Program served 741 ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders in 13 Columbus, Ohio, public schools. Funding was made available through the Ohio Disadvantaged Pupil Program Fund (DPPF). Fourteen teachers participated in the 1987-88…

A study was conducted to determine if a teacher-constructed cloze procedure correlated significantly with two standardized tests of reading achievement, thereby testing G.D. Spache's claim that most teachers are unable to design valid and reliable assessment materials. Subjects were 60 fourth and sixth grade students who were administered the…

A study investigated whether semantic feature analysis (SFA) significantly improves the content related vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension of adolescent, learning disabled readers. SFA is a set of vocabulary development activities designed to help students categorize vocabulary words and compare related ideas. Subjects, 62 learning…

Sixteen third grade students, 16 college students, and 16 older adults performed a lexical decision (word-nonword) task to determine age-related differences in the magnitude of contextual priming effects. Context length and target quality (intact versus degraded) were within subject manipulations. A significant Age X Context Length X…

Addressing the question of why some children manage to continue successfully through the later stages of literacy acquisition while others are unable to meet the challenges presented by fourth and fifth grade reading tasks, an 18-month, in-depth study was conducted of the home environment factors influencing the reading comprehension of second,…

A review of several classroom observation and survey studies of comprehension instruction, content area reading for homework, and aspects of reading assignments raises the question of whether enough is being done in Irish schools to develop critical reading competency. It appears from these studies that many students are being left to their own…

The purpose of this book on reading instruction in the elementary school is twofold: firstly, to share with colleagues some of the significant works of research and theory that suggest answers to important questions about reading instruction, and secondly, to describe specific teaching strategies implied by these answers. The book assumes that…

To evaluate the 1987 Compensatory Language Experiences and Reading (CLEAR)-Reading Recovery Summer Project undertaken in the Columbus, Ohio Public Schools, data on reading improvement of 59 first grade pupils from Douglas Alternative School were collected. The objective of the 5-week, 3-hour-per-day-program was to give students enough instruction…

Noting that parents have considerable influence on their children's learning during the process of general socialization, this paper reviews literature from primary and post primary schools about involving parents with their children's reading development. Following an introduction which summarizes the pertinent literature, the first section…

In analyzing the issue of the extent to which speaking a nonstandard dialect of English affects a child's ability to learn to read, this paper reviews linguistic and reading research from the 1960s to the present and notes how that research has changed and developed. Based on this research, the paper argues that (1) there is no direct causal…