Too often teachers ask students to forget their personal experiences in relation to a literary work when they come into the classroom. Many classroom practices (selection of materials, book report/test syndrome, and ineffective assignments) can be detrimental to the pleasure in reading and the building of a desire for continued interest in books.…

This paper discusses the rationale for designing better literacy assessment for elementary school children. The "Literacy Profile" is a literacy assessment procedure designed to collect data about groups of elementary students and track literacy development more effectively than current standardized tests. It assumes that literacy…

Reading is an area of the curriculum that contains many opportunities for students to develop self-esteem. Three common procedures used in the classroom, however, are likely to threaten students' self-esteem: required oral reading; team selection and the aspect of competing and declaring winners and losers; and question and answer procedures.…

To discover the strategies good and poor readers employ at grades two, three, and four, a case study focused on the oral reading of four students (two good readers and two poor readers) in their second, third, and fourth grade years. Data were examined and interpreted. All four children either increased their ability to make use of cuing systems…

A study was carried out to ascertain whether language instructors or naive judges were more reliable in judging oral proficiency. Fifteen students were chosen from the ESL (English as a second language) center at Southern Illinois University to record a tape while reading passages in English. The tape and a questionnaire were administered to 70…

Recent discoveries about the whole brain seem to call for a holistic approach to learning, one in which educators would teach the whole person, including physical and emotional states as well as cognitive abilities. Three holistic techniques are particularly relevant to education: (1) biofeedback; (2) yoga; and (3) the Lozanov method. Biofeedback…

Descriptions of language learning and reading behaviors are presented, in this paper, within the context of a model of cognitive processing that reflects a continuum for the logical procession of language skills in human maturation and learning. Portions of the paper differentiate silent and oral reading in terms of cognitive load, which is a…

The ability to communicate the imagery of a literary selection is difficult for beginning students in undergraduate oral interpretation classes. Awareness of indirect sensory images must begin with direct awareness of self. The sensory self-description of how one looks, sounds, smells, tastes, feels, and moves is a means of stimulating…

The purpose of this paper is to report progress on the development of an observation instrument useful in characterizing the communication between teacher and student during oral reading instruction. The paper is divided into five major sections: (1) an overview of oral reading instruction at primary levels, (2) a theoretical perspective for…

A sample of 48 second grade and fifth grade children, containing equal numbers of high and low ability readers, participated in a study that explored the degree to which oral and silent reading represented the same cognitive process for different age and ability level children. Their reading rates and comprehension scores for both oral and silent…

The strategy presented in this paper for evaluating students' reading behavior is an adaptation of the methods used in Yetta Goodman and Carolyn Burke's "Reading Miscue Inventory." Five major steps in evaluating reading behavior are described: (1) select appropriate materials; (2) prepare an outline of the major components of the text, against…

This two-part paper emphasizes the importance of language enrichment and active listening skills as a basis for reading pleasure. While acknowledging the need for developing fundamental decoding skills, the first section advocates that adults read aloud to children from books reflecting the adult's reading interests, containing creative language,…

Publishers of basal reading series claim that beginning reading materials must contain primarily high frequency words and that new words must be introduced gradually. Inherent in their argument is the position that reading is based on the student's ability to recognize words and that short, phonetically regular words are easier to read. To examine…

To compare the effect of remedial reading instruction over time on reading error patterns of at risk readers further classified as "learning disabled" (LD) with non-LD failing readers, a study examined 60 randomly selected children from a population of low achieving first graders in urban, suburban, and rural elementary schools…

The reading and writing behavior of seven mildly mentally retarded and 12 moderately retarded adolescents was analyzed. Data were collected in the classroom on 11 language tasks, including drawing, forming letters and numbers, and performing general print production. Ss were also asked to answer historical/experiential questions and…