Four studies investigated when children became able to detect that the words of a story could support multiple interpretations. Each subject saw two eight-sentence stories of each of four types (no-cause, unbiased, biased-proximal, and biased-distal), designed to support multiple interpretations. After reading or hearing each story, the children…

This paper examines some of the theoretical and practical problems associated with the use of hypertext as a medium for teaching, and explores the positive role that it may be able to play in teaching materials. Hypertext is conventionally described as non-linear, and this aspect of non-linearity is interpreted as endowing it with many attractive…

Elaborating on Emile Durkheim's claim that major debates about pedagogy are always an indicator of underlying social change, this book charts the enormous impact computers are having on how people read and write, how reading and writing are taught, and how literacy is defined. The larger concern of the book is how technology generally affects not…

Revealing something of the vast changes in intellectual life that are likely to follow the rapid expansion in the power and availability of computers, the essays in this book represent a serious effort to redefine the parameters of literacy debates of the 1980s. Discussions at the end of each of the five sections of the book represent an attempt…

A review of current research in writing to learn in the content areas provides a basis for focusing on instructional strategies, use of text structure frames, and metacognitive writing strategies. Students can use writing to comprehend to learn content area text in a variety of ways based on their particular learning objectives for that particular…

A study was undertaken to identify the prerequisite relations (or hierarchies among the items) existing in the item responses of a sample of 86 foreign students who took the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) vocabulary and reading comprehension test, Form 3JTF1. The form contains 30 vocabulary items and 30 reading comprehension items.…

These instructor's materials consist of a handbook directed to the teacher and 33 worksheets teachers can use with adult students in order to use the cloze procedure to assess how readily they can read materials of differing complexity. The handbook introduces the materials by considering such questions as What is meant by reading?, How could…

Written for researchers and graduate students, this book--a collection of essays by cognitive scientists, socio- and psycholinguists, and English, reading, and language arts educators--explores theoretical and research questions associated with the relationships among oral and written language, listening and reading, and speaking and writing. The…

A review of the literature was conducted to summarize how characteristics of individual readers help to determine the nature and quality of their comprehension of specific texts and to discuss how this knowledge might be used by teachers to promote effective reading in their classes. Three dimensions of readers were identified as being causally…

Reflecting the concerns of researchers and practitioners about children's text comprehension, this book defines and provides examples of narrative and expository text and describes research-based strategies for helping children comprehend these two types of text. The book contains the following chapters: (1) "Research on Stories: Implications…

Two studies (which followed up a 4-year longitudinal study) examined the impact of hypertext on students' learning in science and English classes. The first study compared the impact of HyperCard stacks and regular textbook presentations of ideas in biology on ninth-grade students assigned to study these materials. Students in the second study, 10…

A list of grievances comprises the longest portion of the Declaration of Independence, but the source of the document's power is its firm philosophic foundation. In this unit, the teacher can capitalize on the propensity to complain to increase student awareness of the precedents behind the Declaration of Independence. The unit can help students…

This article is based on the hypothesis that Reading Recovery teachers sometimes mistakenly reduce or withdraw their support once children have developed strategic processing capabilities and gained higher levels of text reading. It discusses structural characteristics of higher level texts and considers several types of processing demands…

Describes challenges for teacher educators who want to help students move beyond talk about text that recalls facts to talk that supports interpretation and crafting of text. A case study describes how one teacher candidate struggled to reconcile what she thought teaching was with new ways of talking about text. (SM)

This article discusses how text variables interact with reader, strategy, and task variables to affect readability, including text coherence, text organization, signaling, and text structure. It considers how classic readability formulas, in concert with consideration of text, text reader, and strategy variables, can be used to match texts to…