To weigh the negative effects of "primerese" against its supposedly improved readability, a study compared the reading of controlled basal stories with that of the same stories minimally rewritten into more natural language. Participants were 64 white, lower middle class first grade students selected from five classrooms (all with basal…

The difficulties children face as they are learning to read is the focus of this book, which is a collection of children's work (drawings and handwriting), with statements exploring their implications. The introduction discusses the relationship between early writing and early reading, individual differences, the question of age norms, questions…

Based on the thesis that reading is not a passive process by which readers soak up words and information from the page, but an active process by which they predict, sample, and confirm or correct their hypotheses about the written text, this book is an introduction to the theories of the psycholinguistic nature of the reading process and reading…

This paper argues that literature-centered reading programs, based on the perspective that reading is the process of bringing meaning to print, are in the best interest of the language minority students in the nation's elementary schools. After a review of basal reading systems and language-centered reading programs, the paper describes the…

Designed to be scholarly in content and grounded in research and at the same time be practical and usable for day care workers, classroom teachers, and curriculum specialists, this book discusses various aspects of the view that children's literacy development is a continuous process beginning in infancy with exposure to oral language, written…

Intended for teachers and prospective teachers, the purpose of this book is to provide information about reading instruction from kindergarten through the elementary grades. Part 1 deals with "Background Information" and includes chapters on: (1) The Reading Process; (2) Silent or Oral Reading? and (3) Reading Instruction. Part 2 discusses…

An annual compilation, this report contains summaries of more than 1,000 reading related studies. The summaries are arranged in five categories: teacher preparation and practice, the sociology of reading, the physiology and psychology of reading, reading instruction, and the reading of atypical readers. Specific topics covered in the summaries…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 16 titles deal with the following topics: effects of focus of prescription on remedial readers' reading achievement; a parent tutorial reading skills packet; effects of leadership training for Right to Read directors; methods for…

Free speech samples and aural cloze test scores were collected from 24 Spanish-surnamed children at the beginning of first grade. The children were members of two classrooms, and each class received instruction from a Spanish-speaking bilingual teacher and an English-speaking monolingual teacher. The children were learning to read in Spanish and…

Designed to supplement the day-to-day planning, teaching, and evaluation activities of reading teachers at all educational levels, this compilation contains 689 citations of documents that appeared in "Resources in Education" from 1966 to 1980. The classification scheme reflected in the table of contents, developed from staff recommendations and…

To assist Cree-speaking native Canadian students in English language acquisition, the Mighty Moose Reading Project was initiated with a threefold aim: to develop program materials designed specifically as supplementary beginning reading materials for native students; to determine the effectiveness of the materials in improving reading skills, oral…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: semantic constructivity in children's comprehension; text-based inferences generated by children in reading written discourse; a review of reading comprehension…

This handbook brings together leading authorities to provide a comprehensive account of current knowledge in the early literacy field. The chapters are: (1)"Introduction" (Neuman and Dickinson); (2) "Emergent Literacy: Development from Prereaders to Readers" (Whitehurst and Lonigan); (3) "A Sociocultural Perspective on…

Four issues of this newsletter published by Project ACTT (Activating Children Through Technology), an Early Education Program for Children with Disabilities Outreach Project on educational technology, include the following major articles: "Computer Applications and Young Children with Disabilities: Positive Outcomes" (Patricia Hutinger); "Project…

Children develop language-related abilities simultaneously from infancy onward, and the conditions that promote first language learning are the same conditions that promote total literacy development: a social context involving immersion, approximation, opportunity to practice, feedback, and modeling. Intended for teachers, reading specialists,…