Seventy-five fifth grade students were administered an interest inventory to determine their attitudes toward reading and the kinds of reading materials they preferred. In addition, an observer completed reading behavior checklists for each student, and the students completed a second inventory to discover the amount of reading they did as opposed…

A study investigated whether basal reading instruction combined with whole language development instruction would help a group of sixth graders improve in reading skills as measured by the Metropolitan Reading Test. Subjects, 82 students from a metropolitan area in the Southwest, were given pretests and posttests which measured performance in word…

To determine whether story mapping would improve reading comprehension, five intermediate grade students with mild learning handicaps and poor comprehension were prepared to use story mapping procedures as a schema-building technique. As they were reading, students learned to identify the setting, problem, goal, action, and outcome of narrative…

This study examined the effects of the need to achieve, as measured by a behavioral checklist, on reading achievement. Subjects were 96 students enrolled in a southwestern Mississippi school district; 32 students were randomly selected from each of the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades. Each subject was then tested in reading achievement, IQ, and…

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of ninth-grade slow readers with ninth-grade good readers and with sixth grade readers on a test of syntactic comprehension. The significant difference between the ninth-grade good readers' and the ninth-grade slow readers' performance on A Test of Sentence Meaning (ATSM), developed by…

Previous research has indicated that children comprehend more of material of high interest than material of low interest, when each child is given a mixture of both types. In the present study of fifth-grade children, each child received either all high-interest material or all low-interest material. Interests were assessed using a picture-rating…

Describes some of the research being done by the Center for the Study of Reading, a federally sponsored center established to pursue research into the processes underlying the development of reading comprehension by children in grades three through eight. (MKM)

Reveals high awareness of comparison/contrast structure and low awareness of causation structure. Supports the hypothesis that structure-aware students are more likely to use a structural strategy when reading than unaware students. Reveals that sixth graders have some text structure knowledge and may be promising candidates for instruction in how…

Reports on a study designed to determine the effects of preteaching vocabulary of differing levels of importance to a text using two different methods of instruction on children's comprehension of basal stories. Concludes that, in general, the results supported the growing evidence for the "direct effect" of instruction on children's text…

Compares the vocabulary learning effectiveness of the mnemonic keyword method and two semantic-based approaches (semantic mapping and contextual analysis). Concludes, among other things, that the keyword method is superior to the other two strategies with respect to students' ability to recall word definitions. (FL)

Investigates whether the use of the computer to mediate text affects reading comprehension and concludes that computer-mediated text can influence reading comprehension and that comprehension was most consistently increased when manipulations of the text were under computer control. (HOD)

Concludes that reading interests of children were similar across achievement levels. Offers tips to help low-achievers choose recreational reading materials. (FL)

Finds that a story mapping procedure significantly improved fifth-grade students' comprehension, but finds no difference between a typical basal lesson using a discussion of oral and written questions as a review and a story map as a review to improve comprehension. (FL)

Given the existing literature on text summarization that documents what learners, particularly younger learners, cannot do, a study was designed to assess what fifth-grade students can do. (HOD)

Concludes that intermediate grade students were better able to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words when (1) contextual clues were provided, (2) students were older, (3) the clues were in synonym rather than inference form, and (4) the contextual clues were closer to the unfamiliar words. (FL)