There is no shortage of surveys on children's and young adults' leisure time reading interests, stretching as far back as 1888 in Great Britain and 1897 in the United States. The most comprehensive research undertaken in Great Britain was a study conducted by the Schools Council, published by Macmillan in 1975 as "Children and Their…

Research and descriptive studies of the active reader (one who starts reading early in life with a broad range of interests and continues this behavior) are of particular interest, because they identify salient characteristics and acquired traits of people who like to read. For example, the mature reader has been characterized as being able to…

Investigating the reading habits of adults in Egypt, East Africa, a study examined 294 Egyptians (233 males and 61 females) in post-secondary education in Cairo, and in the industrial cities of Shopra El-Khema, and Impapa, El-Giza. Marital status, sex, and occupation were used to group the subjects. Subjects completed a 29-item questionnaire…

A study of the effect of regular sustained silent reading (SSR) periods on the reading comprehension and vocabulary of a group of adult students of English as a second language is reported. Sixteen foreign students from 10 countries enrolled at the University of South Florida participated in one of three groups. One group engaged in SSR for ten…

To investigate adolescent reading habits and interests, a reading interest survey was administered to 103 male and 133 female sophomore English students from two high schools with similar socioeconomic backgrounds but different individualized reading programs. In the first school, students read and made book reports on three novels of their own…

A total of 59 Senegalese adult and college students filled out a questionnaire in a study designed to gather data about their reading habits. The 15-item instrument, written in English and French, required yes or no responses to questions that described students' satisfaction with reading ability, types of materials read, perceptions of reading…

This study explores the changing role of the book in the future. The report draws on interviews with authors, publishers, booksellers, computer experts, librarians, scientists, educators, and scholars and on the experience of the Library of Congress staff. The first part, "The Culture of the Book: Today and Tomorrow," includes sections…

The items in this book were drawn from a symposium intended to (1) recommend priorities in national educational policy relating to reading; (2) focus attention on the essential role of an active two-way, family-school partnership in encouraging reading as a lifetime habit; and (3) help various organizations concerned with literacy and reading…

A cyclical plan for studying that takes into account information processing strategies and their effective management by students consists of (1) specifying study purposes, (2) previewing the materials, (3) proceeding through the task incrementally, and (4) connecting the content to be learned to other knowledge about the material studied. Setting…

Social studies teachers must take a role in promoting long-term literacy as part of schoolwide efforts in all subject areas to motivate students' independent reading. This may be accomplished by: (1) including literature as part of the instructional program, to support recurring themes in history (such as "in quest of freedom") or to…

A 2-year study examined the leisure reading of 60 13- to 15-year-old students in England. Each subject was interviewed once a term for five terms, and was asked to keep a "reading diary" containing information about books read. Results indicated that young people do read, probably more than teachers think. Specific findings showed that…

Papers on national library services and activities which were presented at the 1984 IFLA general conference, include: (1) "The Role of National Libraries of the Soviet Union in Reading Promotion" (N. S. Kartashov, USSR); (2) "Regional Library Cooperation in East and Southeast Asia--A Japanese Overview" (Takayasu Miyakawa,…

What's the hardest part of history? Heads of Year 9 at options time seem depressingly clear--"Don't do history, there's too much writing." David Hellier and Helen Richards show that at The Green School it is reading that used to be the problem. At every level students found it difficult to assimilate, transform and use information by…

A study was conducted to describe factors influencing the acquisition of facilitating and inhibiting reading strategies by adult beginning readers (ABRs) in order to generate potential guidelines for instruction. Using an adapted form of the Goodman and Burke taxonomy of oral reading miscues as initial framework, the investigators described ABRs'…

A number of assessment measures are available for measuring affective growth in reading. Among the factors involved in affective response to reading are attitude toward reading, interest in reading, and attitude toward specific reading programs. The most commonly used of the reactive measures of affective reading growth (those in which…