Examines and rejects two traditional assumptions about fluent reading: that identification of letters is necessary to identify words; and that identification of words is necessary to comprehend. Proposes that identification and comprehension are two separate tasks and that a reader comprehends because he reads for meaning in the first place. (MB)

This article discusses the role of phonological and morphological processing in learning to read and spell. Studies on the effect of morphological processing on reading and spelling are outlined. It is suggested that the trend is toward a cross-linguistic framework and studies of psycholinguistic and neurocognitive levels of reading processes.…

Provides a humorous look at remedial reading strategies by proposing a method of upside-down reading for remedial reading teachers to use with poor readers. (MG)

Composite measures of reading performance and symbol-processing speed were analyzed in a total of 105 reading-disabled children (age 7-12) and 97 controls over an interval of 4-8 years. Rates of change in reading performance were highly similar for subjects and controls, but differences in symbol-processing speed increased as a function of age.…

Argues that most pupils need some help as the reading curriculum widens to include books of varied linguistic complexity. Maintains that increasing awareness of the register patterning of different genres is a basis for continued teaching of reading across the curriculum throughout pupils' school careers. (RS)

Evaluates the hypothesis that dyslexic children have a specific deficit in phonological reading processes to elucidate the characteristics of developmental dyslexics' reading skills. Finds no evidence for distinct subtypes of dyslexia, although recent conceptualizations of reading development provide a better framework in which to investigate…

The "Critical Thinking and the Art of Close Reading" series (which includes this column and three others) focuses on some of the most basic understandings necessary for close reading (Paul & Elder, 2003). To read well, in addition to having these understandings, students must be able to identify the big picture within a text, to determine the key…

A study used a primed lexical decision task to explore readers' use of "onset" and "rime" units in processing words. Onset segments include the initial consonant or consonant cluster of a syllable, while rime segments consist of the pronounced vowel group and any final consonants. Subjects were 32 fifth graders and 27 college…

A study was conducted for additional support of the view that bridging--drawing inferences to relate a sentence to a preceding sentence--occurs during reading rather than at the time of testing. Subjects were 88 third and 67 fifth grade students whose reading proficiency was measured by performance on the Metropolitan Achievement Test. The…

Pronouns, substitutes, elipses, conjunctions, synonyms, antonyms, superordinates and subordinates, and part-whole relations all provide cohesive ties that help a reader understand text. A study at Britain's Open University (England) has revealed the way in which the perception of cohesive ties is achieved as children's reading ability grows.…

Sixty tenth graders participated in this study of relationships between eye/voice span, phrase and clause boundaries, reading ability, and sentence structure. Results indicated that sentences apparently are "chunked" into surface constituents during processing. Better tenth grade readers had longer eye/voice spans than did poorer readers and…

This study examines the stages of information processing during a single eye fixation, by overloading or disrupting short-term memory. Ten navy enlistees identified tones that were emitted at sporadic times, while they read general-interest passages through an eye view monitor. Each trial ended with a ten-item test to ensure that all subjects…

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…

Recent research in text structure and comprehension has several important implications for readability theory and practice. First, text-level factors such as coherence and organization must be considered along with word-level and sentence-level factors when evaluating the readability of a specific set of materials or when attempting to construct…

The purpose of this research project was to investigate the assumption of equivalent evaluative skills in good and poor readers. The first goal was to test whether in fact good and poor readers were equivalent in their evaluative skills when not constrained by the reading process. The second intent was to provide a reading condition in which good…