Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the effect(s) of syntactic knowledge and syntactic awareness on adolescents' reading comprehension. Method: One hundred and seventy-nine, 9th and 10th grade students' syntactic awareness, syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension skills were assessed. In addition, other known contributors to…

Reports the results of a study of 10th grade students that showed their comprehension improved when slash marks were used to divide the text into meaningful phrases. (AEA)

Examines the effects of prior topic knowledge and vocabulary knowledge on tenth graders' recall of different aspects of passage content in a magazine article about a baseball ceremony. Finds that domain knowledge and vocabulary have independent effects on comprehension and that these effects are on what is comprehended as well as how much is…

Examines the effect of repatterning representative passages from a tenth grade social studies text upon the average sophomore's comprehension. (RB)

Relates an experiment in which relaxation techniques and visual image training enhanced poor readers' comprehension and literal recall of narrative prose. (HOD)

Investigates the effects which thematic preorganizers might have on secondary students' comprehension of prose fiction. Finds that the thematic preorganizers did not significantly affect secondary students' comprehension of narrative prose materials as measured over time by equivalent tests. (MG)

Examines degree to which three types of tasks affect the selection of main points in instructional texts. Finds, on average, type of task did affect the number and kind of selected text fragments, but the variation between the students was large. Suggests findings provide more insight into three ways of identifying main points. (RS)

Reveals that the cloze and comprehension test scores correlated at significant levels, thus supporting the predictive validity of the cloze procedure. (RB)

Identifies strategies used by 24 tenth grade students to comprehend a short story, and relates the strategies to ability, interest, and writing style. (AA)

Describes an endeavor to develop typographical and spatial cues that would improve learning and memory of a lengthy excerpt from a tenth grade biology textbook. (HOD)

A study investigated the ability of above average and average high school students to use text structure to identify main ideas and write a summary. Schema possession of 388 sophomores was assessed by measuring their ability to organize the components of a scrambled passage. Only 10 students in the above average and 20 in the average ability…

This study investigated the efficacy of compressed speech with ninth and tenth grade students having reading problems. Thirty-eight ninth and tenth grade students who were reading at least one year below grade level, had an IQ between 85 and 115, and had no known gross auditory or visual defect were chosen as subjects. Three one-hour sessions were…

A study was conducted to determine if instruction in the cloze procedure could affect standardized reading comprehension test scores. Subjects were 33 high school sophomores enrolled in two separate remedial reading classes. One intact class served as the experimental group, the other as the control. All subjects were given the Gates MacGinitie…

A study was conducted to investigate the compensatory effects of graphic organizers on text organization. Subjects were 114 tenth grade students who read two versions of an expository passage containing identical information but differing in top level structure. The version organized to show opposing views (comparison/contrast) was considered…

In this study the freely written responses of tenth grade students to four short stories written by black American writers were collected and analyzed. Specific purposes of the study included comparing (1) the racial attitudes of a black literature reading group and a control group, (2) black and white students' level of comprehension, and (3)…