A study was conducted to assess the effect of contrasting mastery learning procedures on the reading achievement of high and low ability students. Subjects were 48 high and 40 low ability first grade students randomly assigned to either a typical commercial basal reading series mastery treatment or an alternative mastery learning treatment that…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 25 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of reading ability, mode of presentation, and passage familiarity on the general and precise comprehension of expository text; (2) a constructivist…

Intended for teachers and administrators, this book examines systematic observation of reading behaviors and reading recovery procedures to help children with reading problems. Part one deals with systematic observation, beginning with a discussion of the reading process and reading programs. Following that, it describes the use of the diagnostic…

Explores issues arising from a research project which studied ways of meeting the reading needs of trainee primary school teachers (from Malawi and Tanzania) of English as a foreign language. Topics discussed include: the classroom teaching situation; teaching "quality"; and integration of materials and methods. (CB)

The article recommends assessment techniques and teaching strategies in the area of reading and language arts for the visually impaired student with learning disabilities. Appropriate reading and language tests are cited. Reading approaches, practical strategies for teaching reading comprehension and spelling, and suggestions for organizing the…

Examines the strategies first grade students use when reading two types of materials--basal and student-authored. Finds that children used more efficient strategies and had better comprehension when reading student-authored stories. (MM)

An innovative foreign language methodology, " Read-and-Speak," was tried in a year-long pilot section of beginning French. The method involves: (1) massive easy readings assigned from the outset; (2) speaking the foreign language from the start; (3) delaying formal grammar instruction until April, when an entire introductory text is…

Describes the lack of substantial knowledge base about the nature of adult reading schemata and adult skill acquisition processes, posits reasons for the lack, and points out areas in adult reading that need to be addressed by researchers, such as materials, programs, and instructional methods. (SKC)

Explores opposing theoretical views on the effects of text underlining and reports on a study of 67 college freshmen. Finds that the subjects who generated their own underlining did not perform significantly better than those who were given experimenter-generated marking. (SKC)

Describes a variety of simple, structured techniques that reading teachers might recommend to parents who want to help their children. (ARH)

Adult native English speakers (N=20) and foreign students (N=44; most of them Japanese) enrolled in English as a second language (ESL) courses and completed a reading task and a cloze test to determine reading proficiency and prediction ability. While advanced ESL students made fewer total errors than beginning students, error patterns of all ESL…

Visualized braille was presented on closed circuit television (CCTV) to six blind tactile braille reading subjects (ages 12-50). Results supported cross-modal transfer of learning from tactile to visual modality. After intensive visual training, these subjects could discriminate visual forms and read ordinary print using the CCTV. (Author/BS)

Presents a method for improving reading comprehension through direct instruction of inductive reasoning. Students gather clues to personality of characters as play progresses and from these arrive at an overall generalization concerning the complexities of the character. (SRT)

Evaluates the report of the Commission on Reading, "Becoming a Nation of Readers," which focuses on giving attention to classroom teaching, testing, and teacher education. It gives recommendations for changes in the way reading is taught and includes the list of 17 recommmendations from the report. (MD)

Concludes that underachieving readers appeared to make significantly less use of the phonemic, graphic, and grammatical features of text when providing miscue responses to cohesive items than they did when making miscue responses to the text as a whole. In addition, they often lost the meaning relationships conveyed by the text when providing…