Abstract: The present study explored a possible relationship between reading difficulties and speech difficulties. Dyslexic and normal readers, matched for Reading Age, were compared first on a reading task and secondly on a speaking task. In the first experiment, the two groups were asked to read nonsense words aloud. Both groups were able to read one-syllable nonwords equally well but the dyslexics had more difficulty than the normal readers when asked to read two-syllable nonwords. Moreover, they found two-syllable nonwords containing consonant clusters particularly difficult. The probability of their making an error increased with the number of consonant clusters. In the second experiment, the subjects were required to repeat real words and nonsense words of two, three, or four syllables. Both groups found nonsense words more difficult to repeat than real words. However, the relative difficulty of nonsense words over real words was greater for the dyslexic group. Their difficulty was especially marked when they had to repeat four-syllable nonsense words. Thus, in both experiments the dyslexic readers were more affected by the phonological complexity of the stimuli than the normal readers were. Hence, it was suggested that the dyslexic readers tested were subject to a general phonemic deficit which affected their ability to process both written and spoken words.

Abstract: ...essential reading for all those concerned with the current debates about the nature of democracy and social change in industrial societies.'___ Political Quarterly .

Abstract: List of maps List of graphs List of tables Preface 1. Reading, writing and the margins of literacy 2. The acquisition of literacy 3. The measurement of literacy 4. Literacy and loyalty 5. Lay illiteracy in ecclesiastical records 6. The structure of illiteracy 7. The dynamics of illiteracy 8. Literacy and society in England and beyond Appendix: illiteracy in 414 English parishes, 1641-4 List of abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index.

Abstract: To the reader Introduction Reading and reading comprehension Reading comprehension exercise-types 1. Reading techniques 2. How the aim is conveyed 3. Understanding meaning 4. Assessing the text Bibliography Acknowledgements.

Abstract: Comprehension and memory skills of fourth grade good and poor readers were compared in two studies Their ability to monitor comprehension of difficult and anomalous information was measured in three ways; by spontaneous self- corrections during oral reading, by directed underlining of incomprehensible words and phrases, and by study behaviors Poor readers engaged in significantly less monitoring on all three measures and this was correlated with poorer comprehension and recall scores An additional metacognitive measure of perceived reading strategy effectiveness indicated that poor readers are often unaware of the negative in- fluences of some strategies The patterns of responses on the multiple measures sug- gest that poor readers may adopt decoding rather than meaning comprehension goals during reading and they are less accurate in applying monitoring skills towards resolving comprehension failures Reading comprehension involves many perceptual and cognitive skills, but a ma- jor component is the ability to monitor one's level of understanding while reading This kind of mental pulse-taking is important because it is a measure of progress towards a reading goal and a signal for comprehension failures Checking com- prehension thus provides a link between the reader's purposes, progress, and behavior In our view of reading as a means-goals problem-solving task, there are three distinct aspects of comprehension monitoring: evaluation, planning, and regulation The evaluation component involves checking one's current state of knowledge while reading and provides answers to questions such as, "Does this make sense? Do I understand this word? Do these ideas fit with previous informa- tion?" If the answer to any of the previous questions is negative, then the reader must generate a plan to rectify the comprehension problem (or, alternatively, change

Abstract: complexity of the text and the cultural origin of the story affected comprehension. The native language readers were better able to understand unadapted English and the story based on American folklore. Implications of this study for teaching and for materials selection and design are discussed. The effects of the language complexity and the culturally determined background of a text on reading comprehension have always been recognized as elements of concern in the selection of reading materials for foreign language learners and in the evaluation of their reading comprehension. Research with native language readers has shown that the amount of language complexity has less effect on reading comprehension than the organization of ideas in the passage. Schlesinger (1968) found that the length and structure of English sentences had no effect on comprehension of readers who tended to use lexical meanings to understand the sentences. Meyer's work (1975) showed that organization in English prose influenced what idea units were recalled from a passage by native language readers, but there were no significant differences between recall of units with and without the presence of linguistic cues. In their discussions of the problems in reading comprehension of ESL

Abstract: Tables Introduction Ethnological Note Orthographic Note PART ONE. UNSUSPECTED DEVICES AND DESIGNS 1 Some North Pacific Coast Poems: A Problem in Anthropological Philology 2 How to Talk Like a Bear in Takelma PART TWO. BREAKTHROUGH TO PERFORMANCE 3 Breakthrough into Performance 4 Louis Simpson's "The Deserted Boy" 5 Verse Analysis of a Wasco Text: Hiram Smith's "At'unaqa" 6 Breakthrough into Performance Revisited PART THREE. TITLES, NAMES, AND NATURES 7 Myth and Tale Titles of the Lower Chinook 8 The "Wife" Who "Goes Out" Like a Man: Reinterpretation of a Clackamas Chinook Myth 9 Discovering Oral Performance and Measured Verse in American Indian Narrative 10 Reading Clackamas Texts Epilog Index to Analyzed Translations and English-Language Texts Bibliography Index

Abstract: Barbara Johnson investigates the significant and illuminating ways in which both literature and criticism are "critically different" from what they purport to be. Her subtle and provocative studies of Balzac, Mallarme, Baudelaire, Apollinaire, Melville, Poe, Barthes, Lacan, Austin, and Derrida take a refreshing new approach to the fundamental questions of meaning, interpretation, and the relationship between literature and criticism. In each of seven essays, a clear, precise, and detailed reading of the rhetoric of one or more literary or critical works reveals the text's fundamental discrepancies, ambiguities, and contradictions. If rhetoric is seen as language's capacity to differ from literal statement, and if "to differ" can also mean "to disagree, " then the reading of the rhetoric of literature and theory here is an attempt to capture the logic of a text's own disagreement with itself.

Abstract: THE MANUALS of five basal reader programs, kindergarten through grade six, were examined in order to learn what they suggest for comprehension instruction. This was done to see whether what they offer and what was found in an earlier classroom-observation study might be similar. In the latter study, almost no comprehension instruction was seen when grade 3-6 classrooms were visited. On the other hand, considerable time went to comprehension assessment and written exercises. Like the teachers, the manuals give far more attention to assessment and practice than to direct, explicit instruction. When procedures for teaching children how to comprehend are provided, they tend to be brief. Such brevity is not unlike what was referred to in the report of the classroomobservation study as "mentioning." This was the tendency of the observed teachers to say just enough about a topic to allow for a written assignment related to it. Other features of manuals that are similar to the teachers' behavior are discussed, and recommendations for change in these teaching guides are made.

Abstract: Reading instruction and its effects were examined for 105 students in elementary classrooms for the learning-disabled. Extensive detailed observations of students, teachers, and instructional material were used to explore the plausibility of a causal model of the effects of reading behaviors and instruction on students' reading performance. The results indicate that 72 percent of the variance in posttest reading scores can be explained by a model that includes a pretest, three student reading behaviors, and instructional overlap; and that 59 percent of the variance in student time spent in reading can be explained by a model that includes pretest, teacher instructional behaviors, teacher affective behaviors, and instructional pacing. Using these results as a basis, mechanisms for increasing salient student reading activities in classrooms that serve students with reading problems are discussed.

Abstract: The National Institutes of Health recently convened experts from this country and abroad to present current knowledge about febrile seizures and their consequences, and about the risks and benefits of therapy. This information was presented to a panel under the chairmanship of Dr Edwin Kendig, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The panel consisted of both academicians and practitioners. The preceding statement represents the consensus of that panel. The statement bears reading in its entirety, for it should influence the way that pediatricians think about the child who has had a seizure with fever, how he evaluates and treats that child, and what he tells the parents.

Abstract: This paper describes four syndromes of acquired dyslexia (that is, reading deficits in previously literate adults who have suffered neurological damage); deep dyslexia, surface dyslexia, phonological dyslexia and letter-by-letter reading. The format of the description inquires whether reading performance in each syndrome is (1) sensitive to dimensions of words (such as word length or part of speech), (2) affected by experimental manipulations (such as exposure duration), and (3) relevant to theorectical issues (such as the nature of codes for word recognition in reading). The four patterns of reading impairment seem to relate in an orderly way to these dimensions, manipulations and issues drawn from the literature on normal word recognition and production. Such orderly relationships, it is claimed, favour the position that neuropsychological observations are germane to conceptions of normal reading.

Abstract: Contents: Introduction: Newspapers in Transition. The Challenge to Newspapers. The Business of Newspapers. The Audience for Newspapers. The Evolution of Reading Habits. Living With Newspapers. What's in the Paper? News, the Newspaper, and Television. Newspaper Editors and Their Readers. What Do Readers Read? Marketing and Journalism.

Abstract: Eye movement was recorded as people read texts presented on a CRT in two different spacings, two different character densities, and at five different scrolling rates. Differences in efficiency of r...

Abstract: People’s everyday activities frequently depend on the skilled performance of spatial tasks in large-scale environments. Such tasks include learning an unfamiliar region through navigation or from a map, estimating distances between locations along a route or as the crow flies, estimating the bearing of an unseen location from a current position, and reading and interpreting a map. Individuals vary widely in their skill at performing these tasks (Farrell & Potash, 1979; Kozlowski & Bryant, 1977; McGee, 1979; Simutus & Barsam, this volume). In our research, we have been investigating the psychological bases of spatial skills. We undertook this research to provide a theoretical foundation for understanding and improving human performance on spatial tasks. We assume that successful performance on spatial tasks depends on both task demands (e.g., requisite knowledge, alternative possible solution paths) and the cognitive resources available to the individual (e.g., memory capacity, solution strategies, ability to perform solution operations). Thus, remediation efforts can focus either on providing the individual with additional cognitive resources (e.g., by teaching effective strategies) or by altering the task to fit existing human capabilities (e.g., by providing additional sources of information).

Abstract: The focus in this experiment was on the analysis of cohesive elements within a text and on the difficulty of their resolution within a particular text structure. The cohesive form we selected was a particular type of anaphoric reference—pronominal reference. The subjects' task was to read a text, sentence by sentence. The texts presented contained pronouns, and referents for the pronouns. In addition to reading the text, subjects were occasionally asked to report the correct referent for a pronoun that had appeared in the sentence they had just completed. With this probe task motivating them to analyze reference problems carefully as they were encountered, subjects' reading times were found to be closely related to structural properties of the text. Text variables of importance included the number of potential referents available, topicalization of the correct referent, staging of references to the correct or to alternative noun phrases, and the degree of ambiguity of the semantic constraints within the t...

Abstract: AN INSTRUCTIONAL SEQUENCE derived from Wittrock's model of generative learning was presented in classrooms for three days to 58 ten-year-old children. The purpose of the study was to determine the utility of the model for teaching reading in elementary school classrooms. Employing a unifactor, four-treatment design with participants individually and randomly assigned to the treatments, the data supported (p<.01) the hypothesis that, with time held constant, children instructed to generate associations for the text during reading show greater comprehension of that text than do children not instructed to generate the associations. The findings also confirm the hypothesis that these instructions to generate associations for the text increased the number of text-related associations produced during learning, which apparently led to increases in fact retention and story comprehension. The data support predictions from the model of generative learning and indicate its utility for improving the teaching of reading in elementary schools.