Used class discussions to explore the influence of gender on beginning readers in a Grade 1 classroom. Found that although children's mothers read the most often, both parents did read to their children. Familiarity, genre, and challenge influenced children's reading selections. Also found gender differences in book preferences and reading…

Korean people are among the most passionate about reading. The number of new book titles published in South Korea in 2003 was 35,371 and the total number of printed copies was 111,450,224. Its publishing market reached $2.3 billion. To encourage the publishing and printing movement, the Korean government developed a draft law to revitalize the…

This paper describes a program intended to motivate elementary students to read for recreational purposes. The targeted population consists of first-, second-, and third-grade students in a growing middle class community located in the south suburban area of Chicago, Illinois. The problem of students' attitudes toward recreational reading was…

This booklet presents a collection of seven practitioner research reports conducted by individuals employed through adult basic education (ABE), Graduate Equivalency Diploma (GED), and English as a second language (ESL) programs and funded by the Iowa State Staff Development Committee. The practitioner research presented in the collection gives…

A study investigated how students felt about the "extra" reading activities and opportunities offered to them through an after-school recreational reading program. Ten fifth-grade students who were deemed most critically in need in terms of academic progress were observed in the after-school reading activities and were interviewed. Six…

The purpose of this study was to measure how learning disabled (LD) children perceive reading and libraries. No similar studies were found during the literature search undertaken for this project. Twenty-three fourth and fifth grade students identified as learning disabled by their school system were interviewed to collect information on their…

A study examined teachers' reading habits and attitudes. Subjects, 204 educators who were enrolled in classes or a for-credit reading workshop in the northern Illinois area, completed a 32-item survey to determine their reading habits. Respondents were primarily elementary teachers who had earned at least a bachelor's degree and who had six or…

A study sought to determine if there were significant relationships among preservice teachers' learning style, attitude toward reading, composite score on the American College Test (ACT), declared major, high school grade point average, vocabulary score, and reading comprehension score in predicting performance in a basic skills course in reading…

The papers in this collection represent a wide spectrum of approaches, philosophies, and viewpoints of scholarly endeavor in their treatment of reading theories, research, and processes. The collection begins with an address by the president of the National Reading Conference concerning the tools for reading researchers. The remaining 53 articles…

In order to structure reading class activities that would motivate secondary school students, a questionnaire was developed and administered to students in two urban junior high school reading programs. The questionnaire elicited student opinions about the reading class activities they liked and disliked, their reading skills, the materials they…

The final report and a general summary of a research project that assessed the developmental differences in children's use of constructive reading strategies are presented in this paper. The five chapters of the final report offer descriptions of separate studies conducted in the following areas: children's metacognitive knowledge about reading;…

A study of third- and fifth-grade students found that monolingual students use different reading strategies than do bilingual students reading in their second language. (FL)

Concludes that students involved in a peer-interaction model and an individual teacher-student conference model of recreational reading instruction obtained higher scores on a reading attitude measure than students in a sustained silent reading and a control model. Students involved in the peer-interaction model received significantly higher…

A study focused on 41 eighth-grade students from a south Texas middle school who read self-selected books for 30-minute periods 5 times weekly from October 1996 to May 1997 to determine if increased reading time and book self-selection would improve their reading achievement. The study also sought to determine the students' attitudes towards…

This report describes the design, implementation, and impact of a book loan program in an inner-city preschool where books were freely and easily available to low-income primarily Spanish-speaking families, most of whom are recent immigrants. Data collected included check-out frequency, book titles, student participation, and field notes of the…