Secondary schools--be they middle schools or high schools--are reading-rich environments. Secondary schools provide contexts in which students must regularly read and write competently to demonstrate their literacy achievement. In any given semester, there are short stories and novels to read, comprehend, and analyze; civics and science texts…

A technique for measuring comprehension of lengthy prose is presented. The "textual segmentation" procedure requires subjects to partition text into complete, meaningful units such as paragraphs, chapters, and books. Potential applications of textual segmentation include measurement of reading comprehension, readability, and criteria for…

Finds that some high school students benefited from explicit instruction in summarization skills, including greater strategic knowledge about the structure of summaries and modest achievement gains. (RS)

Indicates that standardized reading tests vary widely in terms of the number of skills measured and in terms of the relative emphasis on each skill in studies done at the high school level. (RB)

Investigates whether using an advance organizer along with metacognitive strategies helps high school students learn content material. Finds that using metacognitive strategies leads to significantly higher reading scores than the use of advance organizers alone or merely reading an introductory passage. Finds that the benefits increase as the…

A study with 18 deaf high school students found that skills that actually contribute to reading proficiency included use of prior text information, prior knowledge, reading speed and consistency, use of active memory for function words and inflections, and correct processing of relative clauses and the passive voice. Instructional implications are…

To determine whether poor readers can predict as well as good readers when they read easy material and to determine the effect of material difficulty on predictive ability, a study involving 140 tenth and eleventh graders was conducted. The subjects were randomly selected, with 70 good readers chosen from students who scored at stanines 7, 8, or 9…

Only recently has there been much discussion of reading beyond the third grade, the years when students will increasingly "read to learn" as part of their continuing development as readers. All too often what has been lost is a depiction of reading as a complex set of skills--over, above, and just as essential as the ability to decode.…

A serendipitous observation resulted in an examination of the effectiveness of using a computer aided design course to improve high school student's strategic reading skills. Conducted in a 3 month semester period, the study relied on teacher observations, student questionnaires, and personal interviews. More than 75% of the students in the…

Reveals that female high school seniors in a group of poor readers were significantly more external in locus of control than males in the group, but that no significant differences existed between females and males in a group of above-average readers. (FL)

Offers a theoretical argument for the efficacy of a culturally based cognitive apprenticeship. Investigates the benefits of using ethnically diverse literature with ethnically diverse students, and how to make explicit in instruction some of the important comprehension strategies needed to interpret complex fiction independently. Notes that…

A study investigated the relationship between attendance and reading ability and the difference in attendance or reading ability attributed to gender or race. The measuring instrument was the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests. An interracial group comprised of 33 students, 18 males and 15 females, was placed in a semester-long reading improvement…

This study reports the results of a program focused on the amelioration of reading comprehension deficits in a sample of rural children. The results suggest that spatial skills operate causally on subsequent verbal acquisitions, and may be central to remediation of reading difficulties in children of low socioeconomic status. (Author/KC)

Examines the task of locating information in textbook chapters (text search). Finds differences between more efficient and less efficient searchers in how they distribute their time across various aspects of the task. Discovers that as task complexity increases, efficient searchers allocate relatively more search time to initial stages of text…

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…