This word list includes more than 43,000 items, each identified by a simple word meaning. For each item, the list provides a grade level (4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, or 16) and a percentage score that indicates what percentage of students at that grade level understand the word. Each word-familiarity score was obtained by administering a three-choice…

The extent to which intralist similarity affects kindergarten pupils' rate of acquisition, word recognition skills, and tendency to generalize responses to similar words was investigated. The subjects were 54 children from a semirural elementary school who had had no formal training in letter recognition. Three acquisition lists were used to…

Reports research results suggesting that teachers need to assess several facets of reading comprehension, such as vocabulary, comprehension of passages, and speed of reading, in order to obtain an adequate picture of students' reading skills. (AEA)

This study reveals that children from the age of four to six years are unable to segment meaningful sentences into component words. The experiment investigated three hypotheses of performance on a word-learning task for beginning readers and prereaders. Readers and prereaders were taught five words as oral responses, each word paired with a…

A study examined th phonics instruction that five basal reader series provide from kindergarten through grade six. The five basal programs (designated as Series A through E) that were examined are both similar and dissimilar in the recommendations they make for phonics. One series covers as many as 129 letter-sound correspondences; another covers…

The following assumptions motivated this monograph's analysis of commercial based reading programs: (1) basals represent the state of the art in reading instruction; (2) to offer suggestions for improvement of instruction, existing practices must be understood in detail; and (3) information about instruction contained in the literature at large or…

Describes some of the mismatches that can occur between child knowledge and the controlled "primerese" language of texts. Finds ways in which children bring their linguistic knowledge to bear on the reading process. Indicates that the controls and distinctive features of primerese text are counterproductive. (MG)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 22 titles deal with the following topics: computer-assisted instruction; school characteristics and reading achievement; the process of reading acquisition; on-task behavior, teacher involvement, and reading achievement; the…