Millions of U.S. adults lack the literacy skills needed for most living-wage jobs. We investigated one particular comprehension process for these adults: generating predictive inferences. If a sentence says that someone falls from a 14th-story roof, a reader should infer almost certain death. On any test of comprehension, there are two dependent…

Instructors of the visually impaired need efficient braille-training methods. This study conducted a preliminary evaluation of a computer-based program intended to teach the relation between braille characters and English letters using a matching-to-sample format with 4 sighted college students. Each participant mastered matching visual depictions…

For over 30 years, teachers have used miscue analysis as a tool to assess and evaluate the reading abilities of hearing students in elementary and middle schools and to design effective literacy programs. More recently, teachers of deaf and hard-of-hearing students have also reported its usefulness for diagnosing word- and phrase-level reading…

Examining deficits in the development of adolescent literacy, this article explores conceptions of literacy not as a "simple" exercise that merely requires layperson understandings of words, but rather, as research shows, as a deeper action that requires disciplinary knowledge and standing. Vygotsky's distinction between tool users vs.…

In order to systemically improve student achievement in elementary literacy, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to develop a model for high-quality professional development that hopefully would result in long-term changes in teachers' literacy instructional/practices. Schools were selected based on their Adequate…

"Reading in Asian Languages" is rich with information about how literacy works in the non-alphabetic writing systems (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) used by hundreds of millions of people and refutes the common Western belief that such systems are hard to learn or to use. The contributors share a comprehensive view of reading as construction…

The author works as an academic adviser and adjunct instructor at a small, public, four-year university that provides the usual spread of bachelor's degree programs, as well as several master's degrees. He has done similar work at a private liberal arts college and at a branch campus of a large state school. He brings to this work not only a PhD…

This article describes a questionnaire survey of 747 students enrolled in a graduate school of education, who are currently teachers or prospective teachers. The Literacy Habits Questionnaire, developed by Applegate and Applegate, was administered in September 2006. Findings suggest a high prevalence of aliteracy, the ability to read but a…

National assessments of U.S. high school students' writing and other verbal abilities do not show that literacy has declined substantially in recent years. In fact, scores have been relatively stable since the 1980s. The proportion of students with solid writing and reading abilities has held fairly steady but remained small during the past 25…

Systematic observation is a foundational skill teachers use in order to document children's reading development and plan developmentally appropriate instruction. However, a variety of challenges make it difficult for teacher educators to help preservice teachers develop systematic observation skills. The purpose of this study is to tell two…

Over the last two decades it has become clear that there is a strong relationship between literacy and health. It is known, for example, that people who are less literate are more likely to have poorer mental and physical health than those who are more literate. It is also known that people with lower levels of literacy have difficulty reading…

The results of a multistep process to begin identifying best practices in deaf education are presented. To identify current practices, a survey was conducted of the literature, the Web sites of professional organizations, and states' education Web sites, which yielded a number of commonly discussed practices. Ten of the more highly cited practices…

This publication offers the 57th Yearbook of the National Reading Conference (NRC). This Yearbook begins with a preface and presents profiles of two awardees, John E. McEneaney and Scott G. Paris. Included in this Yearbook are the following papers: (1) The Education of African-American Students: Voicing the Debates, Controversies, and Solutions…