The purpose of this study was to investigate effects on comprehension of content material in the three subject areas of science, social studies, and literature. Sixty-nine eighth grade students from the same school served as subjects. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test, Survey E, Form 1M, Comprehension subtest, was used to group students into above…

Describes a study designed to compare a program for teaching reading skills in the content area (instituted at the Exemplary Center for Reading Instruction) with the regular type of content presentation and carried out with two heterogenous eighth grade social studies classes. (JM)

The effectiveness of mapping for middle school students was tested, using 11 eighth graders who were taught to map short expository prose passages during approximately 12 hours of instruction. Mapping is an innovative reading comprehension strategy in which students identify the important relationships defining the text structure and re-represent…

A study was conducted to determine the effects of the "Cherry Hill Study Skills Program" on eighth grade students' reading comprehension and study skills. The "Cherry Hill Study Skills Program" is a process oriented course dealing with the sequential development of nine specific skills deemed essential to the retrieval and retention of information…

Concludes that a combination of two techniques--cloze and study guides--was a better instructional treatment than cloze instruction alone to improve inferential reading comprehension of content area materials, regardless of teacher or student achievement level. (FL)

A study combined a simple mnemonic counting system with the keyword method to determine whether the keyword vocabulary methods can be effectively combined with other mnemonic strategies to facilitate coding of numerically ordered information. This system was then taught to 48 eighth-grade students in the context of learning the names and numbers…

A study investigated the effect of underlining, naturally occurring prior knowledge, induced prior knowledge, and placement order of text information on students' immediate and delayed recall of unfamiliar text. Two reading passages of approximately 800 words were generated on the topic of computers, each with sections of information judged…

Using evidence drawn from classroom observations of grades eight and 11, the article addresses the question: If content area teachers are not implementing the methods that reading educators suggest, what are the characteristics of existing instruction? (HOD)

A study examined the use of context clues in identifying unknown words embedded in three types of text (fiction, exposition, and science). Subjects were 24 eighth grade students who read three passages at the fifth grade level, each with four content words deleted from them and replaced with pseudowords. Context clues for these pseudowords were…

The fourth in a series concerning some implications of a learner's cognitive style for the development of reading competence, this paper reports on a study of the oral reading miscues of field dependent and field independent above-average eighth grade readers on content area materials. Results reported indicate that field dependent below-average…

Explains how teaching study skills using real content area materials was accomplished in an eighth-grade remedial reading class. Investigates student performance in social studies and science classes. Finds that students improved both the self-report of study habits and their grades in social studies and science classes. (RS)

A study explored whether teaching the comprehension skills of inference, drawing conclusions, sequencing, and cause and effect would increase student achievement in reading and language while at the same time imparting social science content. Subjects, 197 eighth grade students in the experimental group and 192 eighth grade students in the control…

This study compares the critical-reading strategies of 83 good and 72 poor sixth-grade readers and 96 good and 67 poor eighth-grade readers. After reading seven brief passages on social studies and science topics, the students responded to 42 statements that required either the ability to pull facts together and make conclusions based on unstated…

Reports on the various ways teachers use textbooks to make assignments for discussion and offers a checklist for teachers interested in analyzing their own use of text in discussion. (HOD)

For a potential drop-out who had difficulty comprehending what she had read because she could not recognize a word, even though she often knew its meaning, a methodology for teaching word decoding provided an effective technique for achieving systematic early gains. Lessons for the eighth-grade girl followed this methodology: (1) decoding the…