This article reports the effect of short films as an advance organizer on the development of students' reading skills. The current study aimed to investigate how short films affect the comprehension and reading self-efficacy perception of students from different socioeconomic levels. The participants included 204 fifth grade students from three…

Argues that the use of semantic webs (a means of organizing a subject visually) can help students focus on the social issues in their reading and discussions of literature. (Author/FL)

Suggests classroom activities to prepare students for reading. (DD)

Offers suggestions on teaching students to find the answers in a passage by asking questions before reading the material. (RB)

The existing literature on reading comprehension instruction is organized and reviewed. The authors question whether explicit training to improve comprehension or monitoring strategies should be offered, since these behaviors improve with maturity and experience and in the absence of any apparent training, but conclude that it is possible that…

Reviews the guidelines for the construction of an advance organizer as proposed by David Ausubel and examines why the term has so many possible definitions. (FL)

Explains how a teacher taught his class the value of skimming in developing reading comprehension. (FL)

Contrary to expectation, subjects given a passage with neither paragraph cues nor an advance organizer recalled better than subjects given paragraph cues but no advance organizer. (RB)

Notes that after 20 years of research on advance organizers there is little unequivocal evidence regarding their efficacy and optimal use. Discusses two aspects of this research that are probably responsible for these findings: lack of scientifically objective advance organizer construction and definition and the lack of objective and valid…

Presents a rationale and suggests methods for teaching reading in college social science courses. Urges instructors to stress vocabulary and purpose when making reading assignments. Discusses ways of passage-marking; the skim, question, read, record, and review (SQ3R) method; and assignment mapping. (AYC)

A study investigated the effect on reading comprehension of using semantic impressions as a previewing activity to provide an overall impression of a story's structure. Subjects, 31 eighth grade remedial reading students from a suburban junior high school, were divided into two groups: a treatment group that received semantic impressions as a…

After expanding on the definition of advance organizers as proposed by David Ausubel, this paper offers possible reasons for the lack of strong empirical support for the use of the strategy. It then cites examples of the successful use of advance organizers with learners from nursery school through college and in a variety of disciplines. The…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of reader generated questions while studying textbook-type material. One hundred and eight college students were assigned to one of the following treatment conditions: experimenter presented questions before reading, reader generated questions before reading, experimenter presented questions…

Structured overviews can help students and teachers to clarify objectives in content reading. (KS)

Thirty-six learning disabled children (9-12 years old) participated in a modified Directed Reading Activity, a modified Concept Analysis Activity, and a Worksheet Activity (control). Results indicate that evaluative reading comprehension was more affected by both the modified Concept Analysis Activity and the modified Directed Reading Activity…