Because teachers are asking for specific suggestions to help students apply comprehension skills and read content material, a mechanism that assists students in acquiring and applying specific comprehension skills as they read content texts is being investigated. The mechanism is called marginal gloss because learning activities are placed in the margins of the text. Direction and support for developing marginal gloss have come from numerous areas of related research. One such area is A. A. Smirnov's work in memory development, in which Smirnov emphasized that the active involvement of the learner and active, meaningful, and varied repetition are important in learning from text. In addition, five activities were found to characterize effective learners: (1) developing a plan in which the material is divided into meaningful parts, (2) correlating new content with prior knowledge, (3) relating content from various parts of the text, (4) using imaging as a strategy for remembering, and (5) paraphrasing the content of texts in one's own words. Many students are not able to organize their activity or vary their repetition independently, so marginal gloss may provide a specific technique teachers can use to help students organize their learning and use positive repetition. A four-page list of references is included. (HTH)