Urges English for academic purposes programs to devise more holistic, task- and text-specific, strategy-oriented approaches for reading instruction. Recommendations are given for selecting reading materials, defining criterion tasks, and providing strategy instruction in reading strategies. The promotion of learner independence and use of content…

Shares the results of two studies on the Possible Sentences strategy which indicate that the strategy can be as effective, if not more so, than semantic mapping in teaching vocabulary and fostering recall information. (MG)

Examines the effectiveness of pairing a development reading class with an introductory psychology course as a means of facilitating students' success in the psychology course while improving their reading skills. (PAA)

Confronts the issue of K-12 public school teachers' existing knowledge of, use of, and desire to learn content-reading strategies. Finds that fewer than one-half of the teachers surveyed were familiar with popularly identified strategies, and many who were familiar with these strategies did not use them. (SC)

This interview with Dr. Candace Bos, a professor of special education at the University of Arizona, discusses the need for informed, flexible teaching when working with students with learning disabilities, and the importance of addressing phonological awareness, decoding and fluency, comprehension, and content area reading. (CR)

Describes procedures for teaching Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), in which students of mixed reading and achievement levels work in small, cooperative groups to assist one another in applying reading strategies to facilitate their comprehension of content-area text. Discusses whole-class instruction of CSR strategies, implementing CSR in…

Describes Reading Apprenticeship, an approach to adolescent reading improvement in which teachers apprentice students into the strategies skilled readers use. Demonstrates the program at work in one seventh and eighth grade classroom. Discusses four key dimensions of classroom life: social (building community); personal (connecting to reading);…

In this personal essay, the author describes her development as a teacher over a quarter of a century. Specifically, she discusses how, from her originally negative attitude toward content reading strategies, she grew to embrace the concept in her science classes. Drawing on her experiences, she provides examples of how her teaching has changed…

This article reviews research to examine how teaching and learning are improved with the use of narrative story materials. Stories help to focus the reader's attention and build personal connection, resulting in better retention and deeper subject-matter understanding. Four key advantages of narratives cited by D. T. Willingham are discussed. The…

A study examined the effects of adjunct questions on learning. Subjects, 93 male and 78 female sixth-grade students from two junior high schools in small towns located in a largely agricultural region in the Midwest and whose mean grade equivalency on the reading sub-test of the Stanford Achievement Test was 10.2, were monitored by video cameras…

To be effective learners, students should know about the state or level of their learning and the success of the strategies they are using, so that when they misunderstand a concept they can do additional reading or consult outside sources. Traditionally, textbook study has been taught through the use of so-called formula techniques, where the…

Intended to make teachers aware of various tactics that will move students toward strategies for independent learning, this paper describes several work-study skills, which--once mastered--can be integrated into the set of tactics the life-long learner might use in his or her independent mastery of text and lecture. The first part of the paper…

Two experiments were conducted to examine the possibility that varying college students' methods of encoding advance organizers would influence the memorability of the organizers and subsequent reading materials. Results indicated that students dealing with the semantic base of organizers had significantly greater memory for the organizers and…

Describes how textbook activity guides that emphasize active student involvement through cooperative learning and a self monitoring component can help students become active, flexible, more effective readers of textbook materials. (HOD)

Analyzes the research on how readers use text patterns to understand writing and identifies five text patterns found in both school texts and work texts. (HOD)