A study investigated the use of visualizing in remembering or understanding difficult abstract prose. Subjects, 40 students in two freshman developmental reading classes in a state college in North Carolina, received either instruction in drawing out images or in writing paraphrases as they read difficult material. Posttests of abstract reading…

The purpose of the case study reported in this paper was to investigate the level of self-knowledge and strategic awareness of above average college students and to determine whether students could benefit from instruction in learning and study strategies. Subjects, 11 students with a mean combined Scholastic Aptitude Test score of 1,100 attending…

Investigates whether readers who consider context and note the interrelationship of words, actions, and ideas understand more than students who do not use this text-level strategy. The strategy-use section and questionnaire utilized to elicit perceived strategy use are included in the appendices. (LMO)

Identifies the "goal frame" as a method of text analysis which calls upon students to establish a purpose for reading. Provides an example in which students read a passage about Alexander the Great to determine his goals, plans, actions, and results. Concludes that this approach allows students to develop better comprehension and organizational…

If students are to become educated readers, they will need to include sentence appreciation in their repertoire of skills. The differences and interrelationships between sentences with conceptual and aesthetic order are examined. Implications for classroom practice are also discussed. (RM)

Calls into question the assumptions (1) that those who read unfamiliar text use analytic processing more than do those who read familiar text and (2) that introspective reporting interferes with comprehension. (FL)

Describes two microcomputer games developed to teach prejournalism students how to locate and evaluate information used in mass media messages. (HTH)

Notes that college students read and later answered questions about information in two sets of four fictitious biographical passages that differed in terms of the presence of thematic connections (with theme or without theme). Explores metacognitive awareness of theme and its relationship to recall, recall prediction, and strategy use. Finds the…

Examines the tongue-twister effect to help determine the role of phonological information during silent reading. Concludes that the tongue-twister effect results from phonetic rather than visual confusion, and that the locus of the effect is within working memory. (MG)

Examines the influence of prior knowledge on expert readers' strategies to identify and state a text's main idea. Identifies three methods of constructing the main idea: automatic construction; draft-and-revision; and topic/comment. Concludes that expert readers' construction of the main idea is often a mediated, strategic task. (RS)

Examines factors related to efficiency in a textbook search task. Finds that time and accuracy involved distinct processes and that accuracy was related to verbal competence. Finds further that measures of planning and extracting information accounted for 59% of the variance in search efficiency. Suggests that both accuracy and rate need to be…

Tests undergraduate students on efficiencies of lexical access, semantic memory access, verbal working memory span, contextual priming, and efficiency with which anaphors are resolved. Finds that none of the reading subcomponent measures correlated with comprehension when subjects were not under a time pressure, but a number of these measures…

Highlights Canadian writer George Bowering's view of reading as metaphor and process (shaping both his fiction and his developing sense of interpretation as a political act) by focusing on two of his books, "Burning Water" and "Caprice." (SR)

Asserts that students should be encouraged to be risk takers and derive their own meaning from expository text. Discusses the impact of several reading strategies on the reading attitudes and classroom performance of college-level developmental readers. (PRA)

Presents an inventory intended to make junior high through college students think about what they do while reading and help them become aware of metacognitive strategies. Suggests that the inventory may provide teachers with at least some basic ideas of what their students know with respect to achieving higher levels of comprehension. (RS)