Fifty severely to profoundly deaf students (grades 4-8) were given a forced-choice picture selection test to investigate the effects of context on comprehension of difficult sentences. For one-half of the items, students matched pictures to isolated active, passive, or relative-clause sentences; for the other half, students performed the same task…

The regulations that emerge from governmental departments have been framed in legal language by lawyers to withstand onslaught in case by case determinations. From a judicial context, lawyers may rightfully contend that the concepts of the law are bound up in legal terms, and therefore the technical language of the profession should remain…

The ability to follow directions is a survival skill in today's society, but because many teachers have received little training in how to give clear directions they tend to provide little classroom instruction in how to follow directions. There appear to be four major hindrances to following directions: (1) the directions were either not read or…

Conventional wisdom has suggested that the rate at which a reader processes text matters little as long as the reader can read with accuracy and comprehension. This paper makes the case that reading rate is an essential component of proficient reading, and is significantly correlated with other measures of proficient reading, such as standardized…

Conducted a regression analysis to assess the contributions of passage and no-passage factors to item variance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test reading comprehension task. Results show that no-passage factors play a larger role than do passage factors, accounting for as much as three-fourths of systematic variance in item difficulty and more than…

Using an experimental research design, this project investigated the effects of teacher read-alouds when students did, and did not, have access to companion texts. Based on Connectionist theory, the researchers hypothesized that students in the Companion Text group would outperform students in the Listen Only group on the three examined variables:…

A total of 42 language-deficient second- through fourth-grade children participated in an experiment investigating the effects on children's skills and self-efficacy of strategy self-verbalization during listening comprehension instruction. An equal number of boys and girls who had been placed in remedial classes received didactic instruction in…

The propositions and inferences in a narrative story can be classified into two sets: the structurally explicit are those concerned with the central theme or structure of the story, and the incidentally explicit deal with information peripheral to this theme. This study compared readers and listeners from grades three and five in their…

To assess and then compare stages of language acquisition in disabled readers with those identified by Chomsky in a study of normal readers, a study examined (1) whether the order of emergence of certain syntactic structures is the same for six to ten-year old disabled readers as it was for Chomsky's normal readers, (2) whether there are…

A study was undertaken to determine (1) the relationship between listening and reading (the receptive language mode) and (2) the relationship of listening and reading to speaking and writing (the generative mode), intellectual ability, self-concept, impulsivity/reflectivity, and socioeconomic status (SES). Sixty grade six students were…

The testing of a number of hypotheses about the effect of hearing a prior context sentence on immediate processing of a subsequent target sentence is described. According to the standard deep structure model, higher level processing (e.g. semantic interpretation, integration of context-tarqet information) does not occur immediately as speech is…

This qualitative case study considers factors such as difficulty of understanding mathematics and poor mathematics practicing strategy under academic factors and lack of family support under social factors as those that contribute to the failure. Many students entering community college have deficiencies in mathematics background and are required…

A study examined the ability of 16 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4 to draw inferences based on the content of a narrative passage and to recognize inferences as derived from, rather than given by, text. An inference task, developed to assess the ability to make and recognize appropriate inferences, consisted of four orally presented…

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

This paper offers a detailed discussion of materials developed for the Chicago Mastery Learning Reading with Learning Strategies (CMLR/LS) program, an upper elementary program in which appropriate learning strategy instructions are embedded within the text for each assigned task. Its purpose is to provide researchers and educators with a…