This study investigated the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach expository text comprehension during guided reading. Participants included 72 second graders in six classrooms, organized into four guided reading groups in each class (n = 24). The six classes were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Text Structure,…

Students are often asked to integrate information derived from reading multiple documents into a consistent story or model. Based on models of comprehending individual text, we predict that the structure and accessibility of earlier texts should influence one's ability to integrate a new text with previously learned material. In two experiments,…

This study investigates the effectiveness of an instructional program designed to teach 2nd graders how to comprehend compare-contrast expository text. Along with introducing new content (animal classification), the program emphasizes text structure via clue words, a sequence of questions, and a graphic organizer, and via the close analysis of…

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of American music, lyrics, vocabulary definitions, and song explanations during online music study on listening comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, and lifestyle literacy in Taiwanese ESL learners. One-hundred-eight ESL learners from 2 large comprehensive universities in Taiwan…

o complementary experiments analyzed the acquisition of text content linearization in writing, in French-speaking participants from third to ninth grades. In both experiments, a scrambled text paradigm was used: eleven ideas presented in random order had to be rearranged coherently so as to compose a text. Linearization was analyzed on the basis…

Curriculum-based measurement is a system for monitoring students' progress and formatively evaluating instruction backed by 25 years of validation research. Most of this research has been conducted in elementary schools. In middle and high school classrooms, where there is an emphasis on mastering content knowledge, elementary-level measurements…

The paper examines co-occurrences of the major theme types with the various lateral verbs, as outlined in G. Kress and R. Hodge (1979), primarily unmarked/participant themes, other (non-participant) noun group themes, and marked themes. The data consist of 60 editorials from 2 major British newspapers, "The Times" and "The…

This study measured the analysis of verbal flows by means of volume-elasticity measures and the analysis of information flow structures and their representations in the form of a metaphysical cube. A special purpose system of computer programs (PERTEX) was used to establish the language space in which the textual flow patterns occurred containing…

Anticipating a possible future method of multimedia newspaper design and delivery, a study examined the interface among people, modality (paper, computer, multimedia), and three types of news story (news, sports, entertainment). Subjects, 55 undergraduate students enrolled in journalism classes and 20 university library employees considered as…

This paper proposes a systematic method of measuring subjects' free recall from printed hard news stories, based on schema theories of cognition. Citing literature that demonstrates the role of text structures and text schemas in the recall of written text, the paper suggests incorporating these processes into the assessment of recall of news. In…

A study explored the effects of bimodal (concurrent auditory and visual stimulus modes) versus unimodal reading on 8 poor readers between the ages of 9 and 12 years. An alternating treatments design was used to compare student performance on 12 passages, 45 in each of 3 presentations modes: bimodal, visual, and auditory. Session measures included…

One way of helping learners to develop knowledge, skills, and predispositions essential for independent learning is by teaching reading in content areas to help learners acquire the necessary strategies to use reading and writing to gain new knowledge. Conent area texts pose differing demands because each body of knowledge has its own framework…

Two experiments investigated the role of capacity in children's comprehension of relative clause sentences. Sentences varied in number of participant roles, focus (object, subject), and embeddedness (center-embedded, right-branching). Center-embeddedness and object-focus were expected to constrain individuals toward assigning more nouns to their…

A study determined the effect of three types of text structures (attribution, comparison, and collection) on fifth graders' reading comprehension. Subjects, 71 students from 3 classrooms in 1 public elementary school in southern California, were randomly assigned to 1 of those 3 conditions. There was no instruction given. Students read…

The fundamental differences between traditional print and hypertext are likely to cause a shift in pedagogy. Hypertext radically alters traditional hierarchical structures both within writing systems and between author and reader. Hypertext engages users in qualitatively different activities than traditional print. Also, hypertext has been called…