Argues that differences in instruction influence differences in students' reading abilities as much as do variations in individual learning styles or aptitudes. Suggests ideas for enhancing instruction of poor readers. (RH)

A set of four experiments investigates the relationship between phonological coding and reading ability, using a picture-word interference task and a decoding task. Results with regard to both adults and children suggest that while poor readers possess weak decoding skills, good and poor readers show equivalent evidence of direct semantic and…

Use of contextual information in reading was examined by subjecting pupils to a cloze task (inserting missing words in texts) and an error-detection task (recognizing graphemic, syntactic, or semantic errors in texts). Children in higher grades and good readers (versus poor readers) demonstrated greater use of graphemic, syntactic, and semantic…

Argues that health educators must learn to predict readability levels of textbooks to be sure that they are challenging and understandable to the student. Concludes that this can be accomplished through the use of readability formulas. (FL)

A discrete-trial reaction time methodology was employed measuring speeds of skilled and less skilled readers in naming colors, pictures, numbers, letters, and words. Less skilled nondyslexic children don't exhibit a general name retrieval deficit; rather, research shows phonological analysis skills are integral in early reading acquisition.…

Study conducted to determine whether Black English speakers are likely to encounter problems in reading standard English. Results indicate no relationship between the use of Black English and subjects' grade level or reading performance. (Author/JLF)

The McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA) was administered to 80 urban black preschoolers. Five years later, 68 of these children were retested. This investigation demonstrated the predictive validity of the MSCA for urban black children against several criterion measures, including scores on elementary school reading tests. (Author/GK)

Miscue analysis patterns of second, fourth, and sixth grade students of high and low reading ability show that miscues acceptable in context increase by grade level and ability. (CJ)

Investigates the use of graphic and contextual information by average and below-average readers when reading with equal rates of miscues. (HOD)

Investigates the relationship between cognitive synthesis abilities and reading abilities in kindergarten children. (HOD)

Concludes that a systematically organized program of group counseling and tutoring did not produce significant changes in the attitudes, reading ability, and grade point averages of academically deficient students who had returned to college after military service. (FL)

Suggests using readability formulas, a skills inventory, an introspective report, and diagnostic approaches based on models of comprehension as informal evaluations of students' content reading ability. (MKM)

Discusses the dependency relation between oral language and reading in bilingual children. Based on a review of literature, proposes a model of monolingual versus bilingual reading and presents the results of an experiment designed to test the model on Chinese speaking students. (Author/GC)

A perceptual-recognition task was used to assess whether utilization of orthographic structure in letter recognition varies with reading ability. Good and poor college readers showed equally large effects of orthographic structure on task accuracy, whereas poor sixth-grade readers did not. (Author/GK)

Comparing 9-12-year-old readers with college student readers, two experiments were conducted to determine how youngsters differ from adults in their ability to identify meaningful units in a written passage, how they are affected by sentences of increasing difficulty, and whether they are aided by either shorter sentences or meaningful…