In this study the author charts the trajectory of an adolescent student's identity, from being a struggling reader to a competent reader and successful young actor. The author argues that reading is central to our ability to make sense of both our inner selves and our surroundings, and that it is therefore imperative that unskilled readers are…

Offers a brief history of college level reading programs from the 1920s to the present. Concludes that, despite past trials and errors, most established college reading programs appear to be in firm ground. (PRA)

Presents an inventory intended to make junior high through college students think about what they do while reading and help them become aware of metacognitive strategies. Suggests that the inventory may provide teachers with at least some basic ideas of what their students know with respect to achieving higher levels of comprehension. (RS)

Finds that using discipline-based texts (in this case, psychology texts) in college English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) reading instruction increases ESL students' reading comprehension significantly, even if they are not psychology students. Suggests that such texts encourage students to construct schemata, increase metacognition of the reading…

Analyzes students enrolled in a college developmental reading class and their use of critical literacy techniques to improve reading and writing skills. Considers three areas of students' progress: reading and writing connections, language and vocabulary, and purposes for reading. Stresses the importance of introduction and mastery of these areas…

Describes a five-week intervention to improve reading comprehension of four college students, focusing on expert reading strategies, metacognitive awareness, and enhancing self-efficacy. Finds that all participants improved on the targeted reading strategies, made significant gains in reading comprehension, and reported high satisfaction with the…

One reason that university students fail to achieve optimally in course work is their lack of reading skills. The higher education student needs to achieve skills appropriate to the involved task in reading. Through diagnosis, it is possible to ascertain weak links in the reading achievement of students. For students to achieve optimally from…

This book provides a review of the theoretical, empirical, and instructional issues in the field of college reading and study strategies through a careful and systematic examination of the relevant literature. The articles and their authors are, as follows: (1) "Vocabulary Acquisition and the College Student" (Michele L. Simpson and…

Presents a strategy training framework called SCROL (Survey the headings, Connect, Read the text, Outline, and Look back) for helping at-risk college-age students use text headings to improve comprehension. (SR)

Presents a framework for teaching the use of context clues in reading which contains 15 strategies (6 syntactic clues and 9 semantic clues). Notes teaching suggestions. (SR)

Two studies examined the reading comprehension and strategy use of 46 deaf college students. Results indicated that students with higher reading ability improved comprehension as a result of strategy training but students with lower reading ability did not. Results also suggest that deaf students profess a better reading comprehension than they…

Prereading activities, analogous to prewriting activities, can draw on the reader's prior knowledge of the subject and make the student's reading of literature more proficient, raise the comprehension level, and make class discussions more meaningful. Some suggested prereading activities for the literature classroom include (1) making students…

Discusses a descriptive study of reading strategies used by lawyers and law professors, and reports on an experimental study where law students were taught the strategies. Finds that the strategies significantly improved comprehension, especially of beginning law students. (SKC)

Using a developed structural schema specifying the categories of knowledge important to understanding a scientific theory, two experiments involving 82 undergraduates were conducted to assess the effects of structural schema training and text organization on the comprehension and recall of scientific prose. (Author/PN)

Describes teaching an approach to clarifying relationships among ideas in texts (based on S. Toulmin's model of argument analysis) which helps students move from teacher-directed classroom reading to independent self-monitored comprehension. (SR)