Many adolescent readers experience difficulties comprehending informational text, which may result from underlying difficulties with foundational skills (e.g., word recognition and fluency), knowledge demands (e.g., background, text structure, and vocabulary), and/or reading motivation. Supplemental interventions for adolescents targeting only…

The Institute for Education Sciences identifies main idea and summarization instruction as effective practices for improving adolescent students' reading comprehension. Main idea generation is a higher-level comprehension skill that requires students to read the text, connect information across the paragraph or section, determine the most…

The present case study illustrates the use of explicit text structure intervention for expository reading comprehension with three adolescents with language learning disabilities (LLD). We investigated whether it was feasible to provide direct instruction on the identification of signal words that denote compare-contrast relations between…

This systematic review article summarizes the effects of explicit text structure instruction on expository text comprehension for adolescents with learning disabilities or at risk for reading failure. A thorough literature search with four databases and backward citation search identified nine studies published in the past 22 years for inclusion…

The present study focused on examining how individuals make adaptations while reading non-linear graphic text by examining the role of executive functioning, as well as identifying and describing the reading processes individuals use while reading. Sixty-seven students in Grades 9 through 12 engaged in verbal reporting while reading graphic text,…

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine how skilled adolescent readers draw on their prior knowledge of multimodality and narrative text structure when navigating an intentionally designed digital narrative text. We know that skilled middle-school readers have been taught narrative text structure and that adolescents who use the…

Most studies on narrative competence have focused on monolingual subjects, and there are very few studies which address this issue in bilingual subjects dealing with two language systems. In the present case study we analyzed and compared the textual and narrative written skills of three deaf and three hearing adolescents attending eighth grade at…

Teachers of reading in secondary schools know how important it is for low-attaining readers to read whole narratives but time to do this in a crowded curriculum is limited and progress is more easily measured through reading smaller parts of texts. This paper reports on a longitudinal critical action research project in which three English…

We evaluated the narrative and expository writing samples of 12 adolescents with language-learning disabilities (LLD) in Grades 6 to 12 for elements of microstructure (e.g., productivity, grammatical complexity) and macrostructure (genre-specific text structure elements) using an experimental measure. Writing samples were elicited with…

Preliminary efficacy data are reported for a research-based reading intervention designed for struggling readers in high school. PHAST PACES teaches (a) word identification strategies, (b) knowledge of text structures, and (c) reading comprehension strategies. In a quasi-experimental design, 268 intervention and 83 waiting list control students…

The theme for the 62nd annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Educating for a Just Society. Connie Briggs, previous Program Chair, reminded us that, "Education has always been the foundation of a democratic nation. It is important that our students understand the principles upon which our nation was…

Over the past twenty years much work has been done by teachers of secondary English to describe and make explicit the semiotic resources used to access and critique the discourses of powerful institutions such as schooling. At the same time, however, there has been a growing recognition that the rhetorical resources needed for adolescents to…

The textbook holds the potential to serve as an instructional resource, to provide directives on how to effectively teach reading comprehension strategies. In this capacity, the textbook becomes a tool in the teacher's toolkit. With this tool in hand, teachers may be better prepared to face their mission--to improve adolescents' literacy. This…

Mostly low-income African American and Hispanic teens (N = 192) were tested in (a) passage comprehension, (b) vocabulary ability, (c) cloze task performance, and (d) listening comprehension in the spring and vocabulary in the fall. Students were surveyed about reading (a) narrative, (b) expository, (c) teen culture, and (d) online texts.…

Students learned a strategy for planning, writing, and evaluating compare-contrast essays. Instruction followed the principles of self-regulated strategy development, which aims to improve knowledge about writing, strategic writing processes, self-regulation, and motivation. Six adolescent students, 3 with learning disabilities in writing and 3…