A re-analysis of data from a previous study was undertaken to determine if student essays catagorized as dealing with group-phenomenon events differed in quality and syntactic complexity from essays categorized as dealing with individually experienced events. The essays of 44 college freshmen in basic writing classes were catagorized as dealing…

A nonequivalent control group design study, with a math unit on ratio and proportion as the treatment, was conducted to examine the validity of some written tasks as a measure of formal reasoning. Subjects in the study were 68 fifth grade students who enrolled in two classes in a small urban school. The experimental group learned a 12-lesson math…

Responding to recent advances in developmental and cognitive science research on knowledge acquisition, this report presents a theoretical framework for analyzing cognitive development as a process of learning. The first section summarizes three developmental characteristics recognized in both the Piagetian and the quantita experimental tradition:…

A study was conducted to determine the effects of exposure to the topics included on the comprehension subtest of the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (ND), Form F, on college freshmen's performance on the test. In addition, the study investigated whether those students with background information would indicate their awareness of this knowledge on a…

This study is the sixth in a series of reports from the Reading-to-Write Project, a collaborative study of students' cognitive processes at one critical point of entry into academic performance. This report provides an in-depth look at how students use elaboration (bringing prior knowledge to a task), how much value elaborative material adds, and…

This manual provides the policies and procedures for an individualized diploma program that offers adults an alternative approach toward earning a high school diploma. It presents information on time and location, eligibility, diploma requirements, admission to the program (student intake), resources, and a flowchart showing pathways to a diploma.…

Eighteen naval fire technicians served as subjects in a study using scenarios to simulate a real world task for assessing the readability of general technical texts. The scenario asked subjects to read a segment of text and to explain to a colleague how the particular component described in the passage functioned. Subjects' summaries were assessed…

Three previous investigations of the effects of students' metacognitive awareness of question-answer relationships on reading comprehension led to the development of a four-session question-answer relationship (QAR) training program which can be used as a supplement to a regular reading program. The QAR in the proposed training program is based on…

Working on the assumption that an adequate model of comprehension must also deal with its connotative aspect (the aspect that concerns the feeling, mood, or "tone" of the text), this paper examines the concept of contextual tone. After defining tone according to its various senses and synonymous forms (voice, attitude, style, mood, and…

Case studies of eight graduate students were designed to seek indirect evidence for the role of explicit and tacit knowledge in interpreting a series of reading selections. The general hypothesis was that formal schooling would be used in nonschool and postschool situations in the following ways: (1) replicative--a situation that elicits a school…

The concept of knowledge gap (the discrepancy in the amount of information acquired by different groups of people reached by mass communication) can be critically examined to consider its theoretical and practical implications in the context of using communication to bring about changes in society. Some causes of knowledge gap include differences…

Based on the theory that learning takes place if the learner is able to relate new knowledge to something already known, the course of study described in this booklet consists of recording stories dictated by individual students and using these stories as a basis for teaching reading and creative writing to students from preschool through adult…

The Regents External Degree is a New York State program offering a college degree to individuals, whether by earned college credit or knowledge acquired in other experience areas. The external degree and the College Proficiency Examinations are administered by the University of the State of New York, which has no campus or courses but accepts…

The procedures described in this report are designed to help students both develop and apply effective behaviors for understanding expository text by means of gloss--a technique that involves the use of marginal notes and other intratext notations to direct readers' attention to places in the text where the application of specific skills and…

The effect of the amount of prior knowledge on the long-term retrieval of information is examined. In two studies, seventh and eighth grade students of average or above average reading ability learned passages to simulate materials from history textbooks (factual), from reading textbooks (narrative), and from science textbooks (conceptual).…