Even though reading is a complex process, cognitive psychologists generally agree that reading is an active thinking process. Four aspects of the interactive view of reading can help define this process: (1) readers use both what they know and information from the text to construct meaning; (2) readers elaborate what and how they read; (3) readers…

If, by looking more closely at word identification, knowledge of word meanings, and reading comprehension, some interesting similarities and differences are found between children and adults who are learning to read, then the approaches that work best with each group can be identified. When children learn to read, fluency of word identification…

Forty 4th and 5th grade remedial reading students from two schools participated in a study that investigated whether providing remedial readers with information on the value of using a particular strategy would influence their self-efficacy and comprehension. In addition, the study explored the effects of emphasizing the general or the…

A study investigated the development of metacognitive strategy instruction on standardized reading comprehension measures with fourth grade students. Forty-one subjects were assigned to one of three criterion reading groups, based on pretest scores using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT) and the Wide Range Achievement Test: (1)…

The concept of autonomy can help secondary reading teachers help their students to become better readers and users of text. Research indicates that many students in content areas do not know how metacognitive strategies can be implemented so that students can become autonomous. Practical suggestions for helping readers become autonomous include…

A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a text, and how that influences what they recall from the text. Subjects, 46 sixth graders from 3 elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were tape recorded as they thought aloud while reading either a passage on "sugar" or a passage on…

A descriptive study examined reading errors of emergent at-risk readers to determine which cueing system(s) they used initially, and whether or not there were changes over time in cues they used during reading. Running records of 30 first-grade children (participating in Reading Recovery programs at urban or suburban public elementary schools in…

A study investigated the impact of a procedure called Thesis Analysis and Synthesis Key (TASK), which was embedded in a curriculum designed to help high school students read and write arguments. Subjects, 120 11th-graders in San Francisco were instructed in argumentation under 3 conditions. Their gains in the ability to read arguments were…

A study was conducted to evaluate reading strategies by contrasting regression results of 10 fast versus 10 slow readers. At the word level the lag effect was evaluated. At the text level, the few-argument strategy versus the many-argument strategy and the physical and the syntactic strategies were evaluated. The absolute proportion of the lag…

A study examined the effect of amount of intervening text on the detection of semantic inconsistencies and use of strategic backtracking, by competent and less competent college readers. Data were elicited from 40 undergraduate students (selected on the basis of their high or low scores on a variety of instruments) enrolled in an introductory…

A study examined the effect of headings and adjunct questions embedded in an expository test on the delayed multiple-choice test performance of 88 undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses. The subject of the passage read by the students was the settling of Anglo America; the subheadings in the passage listed names of major subtopics…

What whole language is and is not, what whole language instruction is and is not, and whether "subskills" can be integrated into a whole language approach are topics worthy of consideration. Whole language is natural language within a given context and in relation to a given situation. Isolated bits of language used for exercise rather…

A study conducted three experiments focusing on understanding the information processes children use in learning to read Chinese, evaluating the learning differences between skilled and unskilled readers. To understand the strategies of character identification children use, participants in experiment 1, 10 Taiwanese elementary students (five…

A study sought to acquire new insights into cross-linguistic processing strategies of native English (NE) readers and native Spanish (NS) readers after they read informational texts organized according to preferred writing styles in Spanish. Previous studies suggest that: NS readers will be more efficient processors of embeddedness than NE…

One of the main differences between the whole language position and the more traditional views lies in the epistemological base upon which whole language is rooted. Although whole language proponents may not have clearly put forth an epistemology upon which their views of reading acquisition and the reading process are based, still a careful…