The study found that an interactive vocabulary instructional strategy, semantic-feature analysis, significantly improved the social studies content area text comprehension of 25 learning disabled adolescents. Prior to reading the text, students receiving the experimental instruction completed a relationship chart relating important ideas to key…

The ability of 54 learning-disabled high-school students to monitor their comprehension was compared under three prereading conditions: self-questions only, structured overviews and self-questions, and a control condition. Subjects receiving both the overviews and self-questions were best able to detect errors during reading. (Author/DB)

This study investigated the effects of advance organizers on the English reading comprehension of six bilingual fifth and sixth grade learning disabled students whose primary language was Spanish. An alternating treatment design was implemented. Following each treatment, the students read an expository text written in English and answered eight…

Of 21 studies on the effect that question placement had on reading comprehension, ten favored and eleven opposed the use of prequestions. A review of these studies suggests that the issue is not whether prequestions or postquestions produce greater gains in reading comprehension. What remains to be examined is the change in reading comprehension…

A discussion of pre-reading exercises in second language reading instruction looks at the theoretical justification for advance organizers in particular, examines the types of background knowledge that fluid reading requires, and gives models for exercises designed to activate this knowledge. Examples are from French texts. (MSE)

The study found that instructing 13 learning-disabled junior high students in the necessary prior knowledge (information and vocabulary concepts) led to superior reading comprehension performance. Textually explicit text structure also improved reading comprehension. (DB)

Explores ways people learn from text. Content overlap between a text and the reader's prior knowledge is identified as one factor. Methods are proposed to identify whether a text is suitable for readers with a specific background. The usefulness of coherence gaps that stimulate constructive activities is discussed. (SLD)

"Adapting Instructional Techniques" was developed at Indiana University to improve the performance of teachers in classrooms equipped for interactive audio or video in a distance education setting. The formative evaluation of this videotape is described. The tape suggested modifications for five common instructional techniques used in…

Effects of Advance Organizer (AO) lessons presenting high-order math concepts relating to set building, matching and between sets, and counting objects within sets were evaluated for rural preschoolers in comparison to traditional instruction. A pre-test/post-test assessment indicated a significant sequential transfer effect from the AO lessons.…

Theory and research suggest three ways grammar instruction might assist second-language acquisition. These include the following: as an advance organizer; as a meaning-form focus in communication activities where there are many examples of a single meaning-form relationship; and through monitoring, if learners can acquire their own input. (41…

Students in an educational psychology course were offered the opportunity to earn a grade bonus by writing test items on content to be covered the following week. Results show both internal (student) and external (manipulable) factors had considerable influence on effort and persistence. A classroom procedure to enhance student motivation is…

In these studies, the structured content overview positively affected students' upper and lower level comprehension scores as compared to either vocabulary preteaching or control (no prereading) treatments. Vocabulary preteaching appeared to be more important with science than with history materials. (Author/SJL)

Reviews literature on instructional organizers and provides a comparative analysis of their effectiveness with computer-based instruction (CBI). Topics include a description of instructional organizers; research on advance organizers and graphic organizers; instructional organizers with CBI; and the generative learning hypothesis. (81 references)…

To investigate differences in achievement in foreign language listening comprehension, 61 students in a Foreign Language in an Elementary School (FLES) program were studied during instruction using video clips from authentic Chinese TV broadcasts in two advance organizer conditions. The first type of advance organizer consisted of written words…

The first year of California State University's program to improve university students' critical reading of introductory texts had two objectives: to develop professors' available repertoire of strategies for guiding students' independent learning from texts and to develop students' facility in learning from texts with adjunct guide materials…