High-stakes reading tests significantly influence one's future success, leading many second language learners to engage in intensive test preparation. This study examines nine TOEFL reading preparation lectures from two popular cram schools, or [foreign characters omitted] "hagwons," in Korea, with a total duration of five hours and…

This article highlights the complexity of becoming a reader in public school classrooms, by describing the ways students' reading bodies constituted the sites and discursive means for the performance of diverse reader identities. Drawing on sociocultural literacy and post-structural performance theories to suggest the notion of embodied…

Tests require a special kind of savvy, a kind of critical thinking and knowledge application that is not always a part of classroom reading experiences. Who better to teach you how to prepare your students for reading tests than someone who has written them? Charles Fuhrken has spent years working with several major testing companies and…

Since No Child Left Behind was enacted, school districts have felt forced to focus on testing. Almost every curriculum decision is based on raising test scores. Under pressure to raise test scores, teachers are encouraged to implement strategies in their classrooms to prepare their students for the PSSA. No Child Left Behind has left school…

By viewing standardized reading tests as a unique genre that could be taught, the author designed a two-week genre study for her reading workshop. The article describes how she planned, taught, and reflected on the unit. This genre study resolved some of the dilemmas she faced around preparing students for mandated testing. (Contains 1 table and 2…

Suggests techniques for teaching students to comprehend test questions in a manner that requires them to think about both what is in the question and what could be in the passage. (HOD)

What can teachers do in their classrooms to help students prepare for a high-stakes, standardized, multiple-choice reading test without sacrificing what they know to be best practice? Decreasing class sizes or other solutions that require substantial changes in school finance are not usually realistic options. This article outlines five…

Describes research about and teaching techniques for test-taking skills. (MKM)

This Digest lists some of the common mistakes made by young readers and suggests teaching strategies that may be useful to teachers who are preparing their classes to take standardized tests. Children must learn to use the text to pick the answer, rather than relying on memory, especially when the story is a familiar one. Teachers can help…

Discusses test-taking skills and their application to tests of reading achievement. Presents a rationale for teaching these skills, lists a comprehensive set of skills relevant to standardized reading tests, and offers suggestions for teaching the skills and helping children use them. (FL)

Successful instructional strategies for enhancing the reading comprehension and comprehension test performance of learning disabled students are described. Students are taught to self-monitor their comprehension of expository materials and stories through recognition and analysis of recurrent elements and problem passages, content summarization,…

The eight articles in this publication focus on different approaches to reading instruction. Specific topics discussed include reading and the gifted child, teaching reading in a youth shelter, children's attitudes toward reading, teaching reading at the secondary level, secondary reading programs in Indiana, teaching test-taking strategies, the…

Issued twice yearly, this journal focuses on materials of interest to teachers of reading at the college level. The five articles in this issue deal with the following topics: basic skills instruction, judging the success of college reading programs, the effect of copying or paraphrasing structurally-cued topic sentences on passage comprehension,…

Five essays for reading instructors at two-year colleges are provided in this issue of "Forum for Reading." First, Kent Smith notes the increased recruitment of underprepared students and argues that colleges are responsible for assuring that admissions personnel, administrators, and faculty know the types of students they can and cannot…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of modality-based instruction in test taking skills upon young children's performance on standardized reading tests; (2) the effects of five…