Despite a long-standing awareness of academic language as a pedagogically relevant research area, the construct of academic-language proficiency, understood as a more comprehensive set of skills than just academic vocabulary, has remained vaguely specified. In this study, we explore a more inclusive operationalization of an academic-language…

As measured by responses to a main-idea essay question and by written summaries of two passages, students' ability to abstract the macrostructure of problem/solution text read independently was improved by the use of structure training. (FL)

Reports a study indicating that summarization training of sixth-grade students improved recall of major but not minor information on a studying task and that such training is an effective tool for improving reading and studying skills. Includes ways to improve summarization instruction for children of this age group. (HTH)

Reports a study indicating that students who received instructions to induce mental imagery identified both explicit and implicit inconsistencies in text significantly more often than did those in a control group, supporting the use of mental imagery as a comprehension-monitoring strategy. (HTH)

Relates research done with three strategies to create "text-based interest" (how interesting a text is) in order to improve children's recall of expository texts used in schools. While some of the strategies increased subjective interest, none significantly improved recall. (SR)

Reveals high awareness of comparison/contrast structure and low awareness of causation structure. Supports the hypothesis that structure-aware students are more likely to use a structural strategy when reading than unaware students. Reveals that sixth graders have some text structure knowledge and may be promising candidates for instruction in how…

Indicates that use of two microcomputer word recognition programs led to substantial increases in word recognition/decoding skills and to substantial improvements in comprehension at the word and proposition/sentence level, but to no improvement at the passage level. (NKA)

Indicates that students who received direct instruction performed significantly better than students trained in inquiry on the analogy task and control subjects on the comprehension task. Gifted students consistently outperformed nongifted students on all measures, and tutored students performed comparably to students trained by the investigators.…

Concludes that a cloze strategy, which induced students to integrate text information with prior knowledge, yielded superior gains in comprehension compared to treatments that did not include the strategy. (FL)

Reports on a study designed to determine the effects of preteaching vocabulary of differing levels of importance to a text using two different methods of instruction on children's comprehension of basal stories. Concludes that, in general, the results supported the growing evidence for the "direct effect" of instruction on children's text…

Describes a study whose purpose was to identify the relative contribution of the nature of instruction and the frequency of encounters in bringing about word knowledge proficiency in fourth-grade children. Results suggest that instruction based on definitional associations is sufficient to affect word knowledge. (HOD)

Investigates whether the use of the computer to mediate text affects reading comprehension and concludes that computer-mediated text can influence reading comprehension and that comprehension was most consistently increased when manipulations of the text were under computer control. (HOD)

Using eight intermediate grade remedial reading students as subjects, a study was conducted to (1) validate the method of repeated readings to determine if improvements in fluency could be achieved, (2) identify aspects of reading and fluency that change with repeated practice, and (3) determine if improvements in any of these areas had any…

A study investigated the singular and combined effectiveness of phrasing and repeated readings (practice) on the recall of idea units and narrative categories of fifth grade good and poor readers, concluding that practice rather than phrasing proved to have the most facilitating effect on poor readers' recall of idea units but not narrative…

Describes an experiment that examined the degree to which self-instructional training influences elementary school aged children's comprehension monitoring during reading, and notes that such training does, indeed, increase comprehension monitoring. (HOD)