This article summarizes the findings of research studies designed to improve the comprehension of expository text for students with learning disabilities. Twenty-nine studies were located that met the inclusion criteria. Interventions gleaned from the review were categorized as content enhancement (i.e., advance and graphic organizers, visual…

Ways to succeed in school and advice on reading books and textbooks are covered in four essays. The analogy of playing the "game of school" and preparing for and playing a sport is developed by Charles I. Brown in two essays. Study activities that are designed to be done before, during, and after class are suggested to help the student maximize…

The effects of cursory preliminary directions on the use of numerical tables, bar graphs, and line graphs by 288 fourth and sixth graders were investigated. Participants received no directions, written directions only, or written directions with assistance where necessary. The undirected table and bar graph users performed moderately well. Their…

Contrary to expectation, subjects given a passage with neither paragraph cues nor an advance organizer recalled better than subjects given paragraph cues but no advance organizer. (RB)

Research was conducted concerning the efficacy of advance organizers and structured overviews in aiding student recall. The research was modeled on a process described by J.R. Platt that involves refining experiments and testing alternative hypotheses. Four studies that gradually refined experimental error were conducted on the effects of advance…

The effects of instructions for using advance organizers upon the learning and retention of new information were examined. The special instructions explained an organizer's function and directed students to use the advance organizer. An advance organizer treatment, an advance organizer with special instruction treatment, and a no advance organizer…

An experiment was conducted to test the effects of isolating and identifying generalities and instances in written prose instruction on student performance. Eighty college students were given either a typical chapter from a college textbook that included a summary, the same chapter with the summary removed, a modified version of the chapter in…

Four different methods for attending to a lecture were studied: listening, listening with an outline, note-taking, and note-taking with an outline. Each method was designed to influence the learner's level of processing and, therefore, to effect the encoding and retrieval of information from a lecture. In addition, the effects of no review or…

High school juniors and seniors participated in three studies of the effects of a thematic organizer on passage comprehension. Comprehension was measured using a cloze procedure in the first study and using a passage-reproduction task in the second and third studies. A thematic organizer (material presented to provide a context for the passage)…

The effect of preparation and organization of studies on learning is examined in this article. Research that has been done in this area is reviewed and compared according to variables such as grade level, subject area, and student ability. (DEP)

Advance organizers may fail to promote learning even though they are approximately related to the main learning experience and internally meaningful and logical. If they are to optimize the likelihood that new materials will be readily and properly subsumed, they must also be constructed to conform to the cognitive preparedness and scholastic…

Tests Ausubel's (1960) subsumption theory of learning in the context of children's use of causal and logical connectives. Predicts that the acquisition of prior cognitive structure organizers would facilitate the learning and retention of subsequently presented concepts and logical operations and lead to a decrease of syncretic reasoning and…

In the generative model of learning with understanding, reading comprehension occurs when readers actively construct meaning for text. On two experiments with 488 sixth graders, learning time was held constant across all treatments. The combination of inserted paragraph headings and instructions to generate sentences about paragraphs approximately…

Subjects read a textual passage encompassing hierarchically related topics. A structural outline presented in advance of reading the text facilitated reproductive recall of facts. The recall of specific facts was superior to that of general facts, implying an experimental demand to be precise in learning and recalling specific factual material.…

The study examined the use of advance organizers by seven regular secondary teachers with seven learning disabled students. Advance organizers did positively affect students' retention of information, but only after students were taught to attend to and use the advance organizers. (Author/DB)