A study investigated whether or not the global structure of a text influences its readability and how that influence might be related to the already recognized influences of vocabulary and sentence length. The subjects, 250 fourth-grade students in Quebec, each read four texts representing four different structures, four subjects, and two levels…

Two main types of schemata exist for reading: content schema, representing existing knowledge of objects and events; and textual schema, including knowledge of discourse structure and conventions. There are at least six major schema functions important to reading comprehension: (1) schemata provide slots for assimilating additional knowledge; (2)…

A study investigated the effects of training in the use of graphic organizers on the summarization strategies of disabled readers. Subjects, 21 disabled readers (with a mean age of 13 years, 7 months) from a reading clinic, received 5 hours of training in the use of graphic organizers to map expository passages. Instruction included training in…

Reading is best understood as a dialectic process where the influence of reader and text are constantly merging to create a jointly produced and evolving understanding. What occurs as the reader and text come together during reading is similar in form to a dialogue, a model for the reader-text relationship that has not been explored in the reader…

This paper describes an experiment in which 30 students, classified according to high and low analytical performance, were given a reading and text production test to determine their sensibility to the structure of an Icelandic saga. This material was used because of its extreme simplicity on the textual surface level, a property suited for…

Presents a new application for retrieving news from a large electronic bank of newspapers that is intended to manage past issues of newspapers. Highlights include a data model for newspapers, including metadata and metaclasses; document definition language; document retrieval language; and memory organization and indexes. (Author/LRW)

Reports on a study of genre and register that reaches the following conclusions concerning the teaching of language and literature: (1) teaching should concentrate on the move structure of genres and the concomitant move registers rather than the general register of a genre as a whole; and (2) the teaching of reading and writing should be…

Reports on the Multilingual Resources for Children Project at Reading University, United Kingdom, which examines the problems of relating and controlling dual language texts so that the reader perceives the two texts as equally important. States that the project encompassed five languages: Chinese, Gujarati, Bengali, Urdu, and Panjabi--the most…

Investigates the influence of four types of predictions on the story understanding of sixth graders. Asks prediction questions, prediction plus justification questions, prediction plus review questions, or no questions. Analyzes retellings to determine information percentage included from original story. Indicates that differences in what students…

States that as electronic media increasingly begins to dominate narratives for children, the very nature of narrative is changing. Explains that the future of children's literature depends upon the application of understanding intellectual changes, at least through a revision of the meanings of literate and good reader. (CMK)

Community college remedial reading students composed an informational report from sources. Productivity, use of source text, reproductions, accuracy, and inclusion of key ideas were analyzed as a function of text density and domain (health, business), and prior knowledge and general literacy skill. Text density interacted with literacy skill for…

Presents a single framework for conducting topic analysis that performs both topic identification and text segmentation. Key characteristics of the framework are: representing a topic by means of a cluster of words closely related to the topic; and employing a stochastic model, called a finite mixture model, to represent a word distribution within…

Measured the effects of specific white space features on undergraduates' learning from instructional Web materials and investigated learners' beliefs regarding Web-based instruction. Achievement results indicated that if overall content and structure are sound, minor differences regarding table borders and vertical spacing in text do not hinder…

Reviews research on the effects of world knowledge and text structure variables on reading comprehension. Concludes that text structure variables exert influence only when the subject matter is moderately unfamiliar and are redundant in reading familiar or very difficult material. Suggests knowledge and structure variables should be manipulated…

Suggests that each type of literature presented to young readers serves two important functions: to develop a schema for that literary genre; and to encourage the application of thinking skills in a variety of literary engagements. Presents four related resources from the ERIC database. (MG)