A study was undertaken to explore the processes underlying the relationship between television viewing and reading achievement. Subjects were 580 second, third, and sixth grade students from nine schools in four different geographical regions in order to provide a cross-section of students in terms of socioeconomic status (SES), urban/rural…

This guide provides a description of a mastery learning reading program based on a language approach to teaching reading. All suggested activities stress the use of skills to obtain meaning from reading as the main goal of instruction. Sections include a discussion of the elements of this mastery learning instructional program that notes the need…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 53 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) instructional procedures for teaching word meanings; (2) readability; (3) reading acquisition; (4) the relation of word deprivation to reading in elementary…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) electrodermal responses and informal reading criteria; (2) a comparison of standardized reading test scores, informal reading inventory results, and miscue…

Twenty English-Japanese bilingual subjects were given the following reading tasks: timed, silent reading of passages in English and Japanese followed by comprehension tests and recognition of tachistoscopic presentations of twenty words in each language. The amount of reading the subjects had done in English and Japanese was assessed in an…

Advancing the thesis that a student develops a schema for reading in the same manner as schemata for other classes of things, events, and situations are developed, this paper contends that knowledge of "what reading is" should have a potent influence on how and when a person utilizes reading skills and strategies to extract information…

This study was designed to select and explore a research battery which, when administered at the beginning of the school year, more adequately predicts end of year reading achievement than have previously-used tests and test batteries. The tests used were perceptual-motor and cognitive-intellectual, with the most adequate predictor tests…

A study evaluated the Instructional Assistant Program that served 2,123 pupils in kindergarten and first grade by providing direct instructional service to selected underachieving pupils in the classroom setting. The program emphasized activities which would increase oral and written language and reading skills needed to be successful in school.…

To determine the factors accounting for children's growth in decoding skill, a study examined school entering characteristics--age, sex, ethnicity, and developmental abilities--and school-influenced skills and characteristics--phonemic awareness, letter-name knowledge, basal text, and place in series--of approximately 100 grade one students.…

In implementing a districtwide reading project emphasizing staff development for middle school level teachers, the Moore County, North Carolina district conducted a study to determine whether middle school children could exceed their prior reading growth rates over a three-year period. Students from grades four through eight were pretested in the…

Since an author does not provide all critical information, a text is never fully explicit; it demands that the reader/listener supply missing elements in order to form a coherent and logical whole. A study was conducted to explore both the types of responses urban first grade students made when asked to predict a narrative ending and differences…

A study investigated the development of information processing as it relates to the development of reading skills by studying how good readers and poor readers utilized orthographic information. Subjects, 90 good and poor readers from grades 2, 4, and 6, participated in four 30-minute sessions in which they were required to make a same/different…

During the last 20 years, the relationship between reading instruction and assessment has been framed by the logic of mastery learning. The ultimate goal of mastery learning is assuring a given achievement outcome across students by varying input characteristics such as the amount and kind of instruction and practice, or the attention paid to…

Noting that elementary school teachers in a large school near a major U.S. city often had difficulty motivating non-native students and increasing their language arts abilities due to lack of information concerning the students' home environments and cultural values, this practicum examined the need to address differences in cultures and values…

First presented as papers in a symposium on literacy conducted at the University of Alabama, essays in this volume explore three areas of human literacy--law, linguistics, and the English language; testing; and literacy's relation with culture and human consciousness. Following an introduction examining literacy as a human problem, the following…