There are at least two kinds of phonetic knowledge: phoneme synthesis and analytic knowledge. In phoneme synthesis a person demonstrates phonetic knowledge by being able to assemble segments into larger units. With analytic knowledge one knows that syllables or words are analyzable into constituent segments. One type of knowledge enables learning…

Libraries serve our nation and its citizens in two primary ways: by preserving our common culture, and by nurturing and sustaining democracy itself. A particular democratic function of libraries is fostering reading. As noted in two reports recently issued by the U.S. Department of Education, "What Works" and "First Lessons," it is imperative to…

A study investigated the relationship between high and low reading ability and the study techniques of reading, the usual method of note taking, and student-generated paragraph summaries on the six levels of cognitive learning from textual material as measured by Bloom's "Taxonomy." Subjects, 84 college students enrolled in an…

Assuming that the ability to interpret punctuation is basic to reading comprehension, a study was conducted to assess the junior high school reader's ability to interpret internal punctuation in a written passage. From an examination of texts, reference and research materials used at the junior high school level, six uses of three punctuation…

A study examined the effect of reading ability on 60 seventh-grade students' narrative writing quality, use of descriptive and evaluative t-units, use of storytelling linguistic cues, degree of revision, and between draft self-assessing inferences about intentions, problems in fulfilling intentions, and predicted revisions. Subjects wrote two…

There have been broad, and effective efforts in recent years to strengthen the humanities; however, there are still many problems, questions, and disagreements--especially in the areas of standards and competencies--to be resolved. Current legislative and board attention to standards provides an impetus for a serious review of current practices to…

There is no one structural model that defines the construct functional literacy. However, acceptable construct definitions in the literature cumulatively form some beginnings for a nomological network that relates functional literacy to the level of skills deemed necessary for survival in society. In the study, two different validation…

Pronouns, substitutes, elipses, conjunctions, synonyms, antonyms, superordinates and subordinates, and part-whole relations all provide cohesive ties that help a reader understand text. A study at Britain's Open University (England) has revealed the way in which the perception of cohesive ties is achieved as children's reading ability grows.…

This survey on reading ability and reading development discussed reading programs, came to conclusions about reading needs and made specific recommendations for program improvement. (RK)

Training in listening improves speech, and therefore reading abilities. (JH)

Oral responses of black youngsters are no more limited than those of whites. (JH)

The effect of reading practice upon reading ability was investigated in three separate studies, with six high school students in each study. Each student was given 50 to 70 hours of individualized instruction on a PLATO IV computer terminal. Half of the students in each study were selected on the basis of high scores on the Raven Progressive…

Sixty tenth graders participated in this study of relationships between eye/voice span, phrase and clause boundaries, reading ability, and sentence structure. Results indicated that sentences apparently are "chunked" into surface constituents during processing. Better tenth grade readers had longer eye/voice spans than did poorer readers and…