A study investigated the effects of induced mental imagery upon the comprehension of oral versus written discourse for above and below average readers. A secondary purpose of the study was to determine, through a follow-up interview, the students' ability to induce mental imagery. Sixty-three sixth grade students with above or below average…

A study was conducted to explore the effect of systematically modifying story structure propositions and pronoun antecedents on monolingual, English-speaking students. The study was a replication of earlier work that had involved bilingual students. Thirty fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of three groups. Those in the first…

The comparative achievement effects of three types of worksheets across reading ability was investigated in fifth grade students of varying reading ability. Based on reading achievement scores, the students were divided equally into three levels (high, middle, and low) and assigned to worksheet treatment groups. The worksheets were designed to…

In a study concerned with the function of test wiseness in competency testing and with the impact of question stem structure within a reading competency test, 43 fourth grade students and 38 sixth grade students were administered one form each of the experimental material. This material consisted of ten questions presented in the stylized language…

The effectiveness of parallel lessons in listening and silent reading was compared to a traditional basal approach to reading comprehension skills instruction. One hundred seventy-four fifth graders from sixteen randomly selected classrooms were divided into experimental and control groups. A pretest on four measures of comprehension was…

A new, computerized readability assessment program was developed to verify the reading levels of stories, as designated by publishers in current sixth grade reading texts. The Spache, Harris-Jacobson, Dale-Chall, Flesch, and Fry readability formulas were incorporated into one computer-based program designed for rapid calculation and comparative…

A study was conducted to investigate the facilitation of learning word pairs (paired associate learning) using connected text rather than the unrelated, simple sentences of previous research. Each of 64 fifth graders, classified as either a high or a low reading achiever, was assigned to one of four presentation conditions: (1) hear sentences/read…

This study was designed to determine the difference, if any, in reading scores of disadvantaged fourth and fifth grade reading students when administered the Stanford Reading Tests (form W and Y) by either standard procedure or by tape. Fifty-three disadvantaged students of the Pawhuska (Oklahoma) elementary School were divided at random into two…

If in reading a sentence a reader finds something unfamiliar in lexical meaning or grammatical structures, the meaning of the written material may be ambiguous to him. Sometimes the context will help to clarify the meaning of an unfamiliar element, but often it won't. Understanding what is read involves not only the process of reasoning, but also…

The effects of modeling procedures on the reading selections of gifted and nongifted students were examined in a group of ten gifted sixth graders, eight gifted fifth graders, and eight nongifted fifth graders. Both adult and combined peer/adult modeling procedures were investigated. Data on selections from the 150 books available in the classroom…

Raises questions about the readability criteria used by publishers and editors of reading textbooks in selecting and assembling materials for middle grade reading texts. (RL)

Reports on an interdisciplinary unit of study for British second-year junior students dealing with trees. Claims the unit developed the appreciation and fascination that reading materials can offer and demonstrated the multifarious uses for which reading can be employed. (SKC)

Concludes that a cloze strategy, which induced students to integrate text information with prior knowledge, yielded superior gains in comprehension compared to treatments that did not include the strategy. (FL)

Concludes that there is a relationship between imagery level and comprehension and that imagery level of text can be determined "a priori" of pupils reading text. (FL)