Over the past few decades, reading assessment has been pushed to the forefront of the national discussion about education. The most recent reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (1994, 2001) made assessment a priority as administrators and teachers are attempting to meet increasing accountability standards, but measuring…

Suggests that books written for English-speaking children can be used effectively in the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom. The teacher may choose one particular text to use effectively in many different ways. (CFM)

Cognitive neuropsychological studies of bilingual patients with aphasia have contributed to our understanding of how the brain processes different languages. The question we asked is whether differences in script have any impact on language processing in bilingual aphasic patients who speak languages with different writing systems: Chinese and…

Offers techniques teachers can use to incorporate questioning into reading instruction. (FL)

Describes the use of oral reading, journal writing, and sharing of ideas in a seventh grade class to promote an active interest in literature and thereby increase the literacy level of the students. (SRT)

A paper dealing with the comprehension of metaphor and a second paper addressing the ramifications of the first paper's ideas for teaching practices are contained in this report. The opening section of the first paper explains why language theorists and scholars in a number of disciplines are interested in metaphor. Its next section deals with…

The psychological process of segmenting sentences into meaningful units or "chunks" is believed to be an important aspect of text comprehension processes. The most characteristic type of parsing task elicits perceptions of text structure indirectly by asking individuals to make judgments about pause placement in sentences. In four…

Reading aloud is a rhetorical act. Its purpose is always to communicate, which is a transactional form involving the oral reader and at least one real or imaginary listener. Whenever a person reads aloud, the reader has some intent of reading to someone. In all such situations, readers interpret orally for the mood and meaning that seem…

A recent study of reading rates of first grade students in Israel and America indicates that increased reading speed may improve comprehension and oral reading. Based on this finding, activities to help students read faster (and better) are suggested. (JL)

The tenth anniversary issue of this journal contains eight articles on English teaching approaches and cross cultural communication. The articles address the following topics: textual cohesion devices, English negation, reading instruction, discourse intonation as an approach to teaching pronunciation, interpretive oral reading as a learning…

Errors in reading and speaking are not the result of failure to comprehend or communicate. Rather, such errors are "miscues," which show the effects of psycholinguistic processes that have taken unexpected turns. The nature of these miscues reveals the underlying cognitive schema that guide a person's comprehension and verbalization. (Author/SJL)

Reading aloud can help students who have problems comprehending social studies subject matter. Teachers, parents, and volunteers can all serve as effective oral readers. Teachers and principals should list goals for volunteers to achieve when reading aloud. In addition, to vary the oral reading approach, students can take turns reading aloud.…

Describes two programs that involved teachers using closed-captioned television materials to develop skills in the areas of reading comprehension, vocabulary, and oral reading fluency with hearing, remedial readers. (FL)

Argues that J. R. Kendall and J. Hood have not clearly demonstrated that contextual strategies play a significant role in the ability of some disabled readers to understand passages, as well as or better than other students, although they read with less word recognition accuracy. (HOD)

While several of M. W. Sadow's arguments in the previous article convince the authors that poor contextual processing ability cannot account for the subjects' poor reading ability, they reject her argument that good contextual processing ability provides evidence of satisfactory passage understanding. (HOD)