A year-long study examined how phonics or whole word instruction affected first graders' progress in reading and spelling words. Subjects, 80 Houston, Texas students of average reading and intellectual abilities from three classrooms receiving phonics instruction and three classrooms receiving whole word instruction, were administered a phonemic…

A study examined growth in oral reading fluency in second, third, and fourth grade students after a treatment of intensive instruction. The 53 subjects were assigned to either an experimental or a control group, and all were administered form A of the Diagnostic Screening Test: Reading, to determine their independent reading level, instructional…

A study examined the effects of teacher feedback on the oral reading performance of nine low-ability second grade readers. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment sequence conditions. A single-subject format was incorporated by using a Latin Square design for presenting the three treatment conditions--graphophonemic immediate,…

Teacher verbal behaviors following oral reading errors of primary grade children were the focus of this study. The incidence, location, and type of verbal interruption behaviors that occured during classroom reading instruction were contrasted for high-and low-ability readers. Results for 20 teachers indicated that they were more likely to…

Eighty-four students in a graduate course on methods and materials for reading in the elementary school participated in a study of the effects of black dialect syntactical features on teacher judgements of reader ability. Each person listened to four tape recordings of the same 255-word passage. The recordings varied by race of reader, number of…

The current movement toward observing both the process of reading in other languages and the areas of language interference is an important element in the education task. In a study which examined and described the observable process of oral reading by six bilingual children whose first and dominant language was Yiddish, the Reading Miscue…

To assess the success of third grade readers in segmenting written text into the ideational groupings judged appropriate by adult readers, 22 students were given two prose selections and told to mark each location where a good reader might pause or take a breath while reading a story out loud. Their pausal locations were then compared to those…

A study investigated the relationship between phonological features in the oral reading of black West Indians and their reading comprehension. Subjects were 54 college students at the College of the Virgin Islands, St. Thomas. Each subject was recorded reading two passages and completed two cloze tests. The tapes then were analyzed for nine…

A study examined shared reading discourses as part of an ongoing research project seeking to understand the sociolinguistic complexity of literacy practices at home and school for a number of specific families. Subjects included three socially and culturally diverse families who shared story reading events, constructed meanings about literacy, and…

To develop a historical perspective on the sources of the controversy over the appropriate place of oral reading in formal reading instruction, this paper presents a brief history of oral reading instruction as used in American schools from 1880 to the present. The paper describes in detail both classroom and clinical practices that rely on oral…

Repetitions in children's oral reading are typically thought of as disruptive, signalling the kind of careless reading symptomatic of random eye movement or inattention to context. This perspective, however, runs contrary to clinical experiences, which have revealed that many repetitions are deliberate and benefit the reader by serving at least…

Reading aloud is a rhetorical act. Its purpose is always to communicate, which is a transactional form involving the oral reader and at least one real or imaginary listener. Whenever a person reads aloud, the reader has some intent of reading to someone. In all such situations, readers interpret orally for the mood and meaning that seem…

Operant magical thinking (belief that thought can significantly alter reality) and reading comprehension were examined in samples of Pupils 7 to 13 years old identified as either gifted, normal, or emotionally disturbed. Sixty-eight children were sampled in a school for gifted children, in a regular suburban elementary school, and in an in-patient…

A one year descriptive study investigated the strategies used by a group of competent beginning readers who were learning to read in a program in which text reading was the main instructional task. Subjects included 52 six-year-old children attending 20 randomly selected schools in Auckland, New Zealand. Strategy usage in oral reading was related…

Intended for elementary school language arts and reading teachers, this paper presents classroom activities using poetry to encourage divergent thinking and to give children the chance to play with language and to practice English language conventions in order to be effective readers and writers. The 12 activities are (1) combining poetry and…