Sixty grade four pupils of the Philippine Normal College Laboratory were involved in a study to determine the effect of language of material, type of material, and ability level on their reading comprehension. The materials were either unilingual English (E/E), unilingual Pilipino (P/P), or consisted of a text in English followed by questions in…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) effects of graphic organizers, textual organization, and reading comprehension level on recall of expository prose; (2) the effect of metaphor on the reading…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the language in a Spanish bilingual reading classroom; (2) the early stages of language acquisition of black children; (3) the dependency relation between oral…

This evaluation study assessed the effectiveness of an Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) funded Secondary Reading Project (SRP) in aiding secondary students to overcome a lack of developmental skills in reading. General procedures and specific techniques used in the evaluation are outlined and discussed. During the 1973-74 school year ESAA-funded…

This paper outlines an Australian bilingual education program for aboriginal children, and describes the role of linguists in such programs. The program consists of four stages, roughly coinciding with the first four elementary grades. During the first stage, the child becomes literate in the vernacular, is exposed to beginning content material,…

This paper examines a didactic model of teaching-learning which underlies the approach of many teachers and linguists, and proposes an organic interaction model, which recognizes children's individual needs and characteristics, instead. Problems in interpreting test results in areas of primary or oral language and in the secondary language skills…

The benefits of family literacy programs for children were examined in a 1997 follow-up study in which 154 parents and 237 children who had participated in a family literacy demonstration program in 1994-1995 were interviewed along with the teachers of a subsample of the children and the demonstration program coordinators. The demonstration…

Effectively teaching low-achieving and learning disabled students is challenging. Concept-based instruction is recognized as a particularly effective technique for helping students in these populations attain high levels of achievement (Tindal, Nolet, & Blake, 1992). The maze (a reading selection where certain words have been deleted and…

University professors gave inservice workshops for intermediate grade teachers and continued to support teachers by modeling reading instruction techniques and monitoring implementation of reading strategies in the teachers' classrooms. Results for 82 fifth and sixth graders showed significant gains in Metropolitan Achievement Test reading scores…

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) was a collaborative effort by seven governments and three intergovernmental organizations to describe and compare the literacy skills of people from Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. Each country drew a probability sample from which results…

A project was undertaken at Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC), in Charlotte, North Carolina, to develop, field test, and validate reading courseware for adults that takes into account individual learning styles. Two literacy products were developed and evaluated. The first, the Learning Style Survey (LSS), is an interactive videodisc…

This study was conducted during 2 school years, involving one teacher and one classroom from each of four elementary (grades 1-2) and secondary schools. The study included writing activities on the word processor, videoconferencing, and World Wide Web use. The main data source was a series of videotapes of the above mentioned activities.…

This study examined the child-rearing practices of 28 mothers of at-risk, school-based competent kindergarten students. The study investigated the role of home curriculum and learning in the success of the at-risk children. The mothers were interviewed regarding the nature of the home learning environment, the quantity of television viewed, the…

A small college in Iowa (Westmar College) undertook an experimental program to determine an experimental program to determine reading skills of underprepared students. Subjects were 20 students reading below the 12th grade level, of whom 9 were chosen randomly and offered a beginning German course instead of remedial reading. All elected to take…

A study examined the relationship of learning style, reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, and aptitude for learning to achievement in the self-paced and computer-assisted instructional (CAI) modes of the Yeoman "A" School at the Naval Technical Training Center in Meridian, Mississippi. To gather data for the study, researchers…