Recently, it has been proposed that schools teach disciplinary literacy in science, mathematics, history, and literature classes as students move into middle school and high school. A disciplinary literacy approach emphasizes the specialized knowledge and abilities possessed by those who create, communicate, and use knowledge within each of the…

There is growing interest in disciplinary literacy instruction as a primary means of improving adolescent literacy outcomes. At times, this disciplinary framework has been represented as a replacement for the more broadly known general strategy instruction. However, disciplinary literacy, a potentially powerful idea, cannot replace general…

This article describes the use of African American English (AAE) in the written and oral language of African American adolescents who struggle with writing. Written and oral language samples of 22 African American 10th-grade students were transcribed, analyzed, and coded for AAE, grammatical errors, spelling errors, and punctuation errors. Four…

In the past 12 years, middle and high school students across the United States have read with declining levels of proficiency compared to both international and national standards. It is thought that American students' overall low reading performance is related to the amount of expository material they must read with advancing grade levels. This…

This article reports on the reading comprehension crisis of older students in the middle and high school grades in our nation. Its goal is to establish a common foundation for intervention by educators and clinicians alike, by providing a brief description of the state of the field in comprehension theory. In particular, the Kintsch…