Strengthening and changing the curriculum to meet the needs of the inner-city child must be done by recognizing both the cultural aspects of the child's environment and the actual problems that he faces rather than by imposing traditional middle-class values, activities, and language. Steps suggested to both the teacher and the parent for…

In our concern to improve the quality of reading, we have neglected vocabulary development; in our zeal to teach children to pronounce words, we have neglected teaching them word meanings. Vocabulary can be developed by using all the communication processes: reading, writing, speaking, listening, visualizing, and observing; and vocabulary deserves…

Suggests a variety of class activities using word banks. (MKM)

Describes "Easy Steps to Reading Independence" (ESTRI), a new phonics-linguistics approach. Provides field study data that show statistically significant advantages for ESTRI in eight out of fourteen cases. (RL)

Shows that fingerspelling makes learning the task of separating the word into its parts fun as well as easier for some students. (FL)

This book is designed to communicate findings of a research synthesis investigating the bases of reading failure and the curricular and instructional basics to help guide the design and advancement of children's reading performance. It provides in-depth analyses and discussion of six areas of reading, summarizing what the research tells about…

The study was undertaken to determine whether this particular melding of two independently successful programs, Project Read and Guided Reading, could complement each other as intervention strategies in helping at-risk students develop literacy skills. Subjects were 11 first-grade students identified as "at-risk" of learning to read by…

Nineteen first grade children were randomly assigned to two experimental reading instruction conditions lasting 12 weeks. Both conditions used the language experience approach to teaching beginning language. In the experimental stage, the language experience approach was augmented by a total of six hours of individualized word-bank activities.…

Practical suggestions from teachers include activities for defining new English words, using free association and writing, stocking the sustained silent reading library, and using the compare/contrast strategy for word recognition. (MKM)

Notes that teaching techniques used to "build" vocabulary are not based on the ways most people acquire vocabulary. Discusses the problems and possibilities of expanding students' language usage. (RL)

Discusses studies of German students using "CyberBuch," a hypermedia application for reading German texts that contains annotations for words in the form of text, pictures, and video. The article examines incidental vocabulary learning, the effectiveness of different types of annotations for vocabulary acquisition, and the effect of…

Six children were visited in their homes every 2 weeks for 18 months from the age of 6 months to observe their developing comprehension and production of words. Results showed both similarities and individual differences in patterns of early comprehension. A close relationship was noted between early production and comprehension of words;…

Semantic context and keyword treatment conditions facilitated recall of a German word to fit a German context sentence on immediate and delayed tests for 140 University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students taking first- or second-year German. For second-year students, context treatment facilitated recall of an English word when given the German word.…