Investigates the effects of purpose for reading and frequency of encounters with unknown words in written context on learning from context tasks performed by 119 sixth grade good and poor reading comprehenders. Finds no significant interactions, resulting at least partial support for Robert Sternberg's model of verbal comprehension. (MG)

Documents a model that resulted from an analysis of context clues to determine which were amenable to instruction and what pedagogical approach should be used. (DD)

Syntactic and semantic cueing were examined as used in oral reading by 30 college freshmen, half of whom were higher in vocabulary on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and half of whom were higher in comprehension scores on the same test. The subjects were selected from 168 freshmen, all of whom were poor readers and spoke predominantly English. All…

Globally, knowledge of word meanings is related to reading comprehension. R. C. Anderson and P. Freebody's (1981) seminal paper on vocabulary set forth three hypotheses to explain this relationship--an "instrumentalist" hypothesis suggesting that knowledge of word meanings directly causes reading comprehension, and "general…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 22 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: a remedial reading program for Marine recruits; methods for improving reading flexibility and rate, spelling ability, vocabulary comprehension, and study skills in…