The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of reducing the size of first grade classes on students' achievement. Four groups of first grade students who had participated in Indiana's Project PRIME TIME (average class size of l8 or fewer) for 1 year were compared to one class of first grade students who had received first grade…

Noting that children evaluate their reading comprehension more effectively when they are informed about the standards of evaluation they should use, a study examined whether training in the use of certain standards would show generalization from one level of processing to the other, and also maintenance of standard use. The study also examined…

A practicum was implemented to improve the sight-word vocabulary and attitudes toward reading among 22 second-grade students reading below grade level. The program took approximately 45 minutes a day, 2 days a week. The language experience approach was used in conjunction with word processors. The different types of activities included dictated…

A study was designed to improve fifth-graders' limited use of comprehension monitoring processes during reading through a self-instructional approach. Thirty-nine average and superior comprehenders were tested on their ability to detect inconsistencies contained in short essays prior to, immediately after, and one week after participation in one…

While previous studies have investigated children's awareness of two units within words--syllables and phonemes, there is experimental evidence that children are also aware of intrasyllabic units (units intermediate in size between the syllable and the phoneme), and that these units may be useful for teaching phonological awareness and reading.…

To examine the role of phonetic code in memory, a study investigated the use of phonetic recoding strategies in fifth and sixth graders identified as good and poor readers. Subjects--120 students with IQ scores in the average range--were divided evenly between both grades. Thirty subjects from each grade who scored above the 50th percentile on the…

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…

To assess the compatibility of miscue analysis and recall analysis as independent elements in a theory of reading comprehension, a study was performed that operationalized each theory and separated its components into measurable units to allow empirical testing. A cueing strategy model was estimated, but the discourse processing model was broken…

Psychometric and ethnographic frameworks were used to explore the relationships among adults' uses for reading and their demonstrated competencies with related domains of tasks. Information regarding frequently occurring reading tasks was gathered from 42 adults in both work and leisure settings by means of questionnaires, interviews, and…

In this research report, the influences of handedness, hand position while writing, and familial sinistrality (presence of left-handed relatives) on children's intellectual, reading, and visual-motor performance were investigated. Forty left- and right-handed children between the ages of 7 and 10 served as subjects. To assess hand positions, an…

A three-year study was conducted at a California junior college to determine the number of college freshmen who needed assistance/counseling in reading achievement. In the first phase of the study (1974-1975), all entering freshmen were administered the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, Form C. The same instrument was used during the second phase of the…

The language of 29 Canadian children was sampled during the first two years of schooling in free conversations and in more formal school-like tasks as part of a three-year longitudinal study of the properties of oral language and their relation to other measures of cognitive, linguistic, and reading performance. The language samples were subjected…

Two experiments examined the effects of definition and synonym as context clues embedded in three types of text (fiction, exposition, and science). It was predicted that (1) type of text would influence clue usage; (2) difficulty of the text, based on increasingly more detailed complex information, would interfere with the use of clues; (3) clue…

The many studies comparing good and poor readers have yielded few conclusive findings as a result of a number of problems. The first set of problems has to do with the choice of tests or tasks. There are many differences in the cognitive demands of reading and listening tasks children encounter in school. In listening, prosodic cues facilitate…

An ethnographic study of small group reading instruction was conducted to learn how teachers' judgments of students' abilities influenced the way they grouped students for reading instruction and the effects of these grouping practices on teachers' planning and instructional behaviors. Two teachers and 20 students were observed over the course of…