Guidelines for the selection and use of commercially prepared informal reading inventories (IRIs) with deaf students are offered. Modifications for deaf students pertain to: selection of the passage to begin testing, the criteria for oral and silent reading levels, and procedures for estimating students' readng potential levels. (SW)

Develomental patterns in the reading and aural skills of 45 preschool, kindergarten, and first grade children, were assessed. Children with increasing reading abilities were progressively more successful in their ability to segment words in both aural and visual contexts. (FG)

Concludes that insertion and omission miscues made by either good or poor readers at instructional or frustration levels cause little syntactic and semantic distortion, and that, consequently, time spent coding and interpreting such miscues is probably wasted. (FL)

Investigates the reading ability and classroom performance of vocational students enrolled in the second year of study in auto mechanics, carpentry, electronics, graphics, and masonry. (HOD)

In two studies, sixth graders (Study 1) and fourth graders (Study 2) listened to or read a text. Some students were asked to imagine pictures of the material. Oral presentation of the material produced better results than written-only forms. Fourth graders benefited more from mental imagery than did sixth graders. (Author/JJD)

Evaluates the effect of question type (rote, conceptual) and adjunct question response mode (multiple choice, short answer) on rote and conceptual learning outcomes of 98 undergraduate high and low ability readers. Results indicate rote adjunct questions are more helpful to readers and high reading ability students demonstrate better test…

Groups of good and poor readers were tested on free recall of 10-word lists. The poor readers demonstrated as strong a recency effect as the good readers, but showed inferiority in immediate memory span. The results demonstrate a degree of dissociation between the recency effect and memory span. (Author/KC)

Thirty nine 11-year-old children were given the same unilateral word-naming task on two separate occasions. A test-retest reliability of .46 was a function of both reading ability and sex. (Author)

Noting the inadequate vocabularies of students in her college writing classes, the author calls for a revival of close textual reading at all educational levels as a means of improving reading and vocabulary skills. (PGD)

This study argues that instructional organization affects student perceptions of academic competence, which in turn control the distribution of power. It is indicated that classroom social power is more closely related to perceived competence and more hierarchized under unidimensional than multidimensional conditions. (Author/GK)

Elderly persons (N=90) were tested for their reading ability and 126 documents from seven service agencies were analyzed for their readability. Results indicated two-thirds of the sample had reading abilities lower than eighth grade, whereas 98 percent of the documents had readability levels at or above ninth grade. (Author)

Develops an alternative analysis to the Peabody Individual Achievement Tests' authors' suggested use of a pairwise comparison system to determine when one academic area is significantly different from another. Suggests determining academic strengths and weaknesses relative to a child's average performance on the entire test. (Author/JAC)

Reports on a study in which ninth-grade students of differing reading ability were asked to paraphrase a section of text. Indicates that a major difference among reader ability groups was in the number of inferences they made in the paraphrasing task. (HTH)

The movement for spelling reform supports the broadening of educational opportunity. Our spelling is outdated, inflated, inconsistent and often absurd. While a simplified spelling system won't eliminate all reading problems, it will make reading problems easier to isolate and diagnose. (MW)

The Cloze Procedure can be a useful instrument in matching student reading levels to appropriate reading selections. Additional research on ways to match students to readings at appropriate levels is needed. (Author/CJ)