Thesis (D.A.)--Illinois State University, 1997. / Title from title page screen, viewed June 7, 2006. Dissertation Committee: Ron Fortune (chair), Douglas D. Hesse, Lee Brasseur. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-225) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p.168-183) and index.

This study determined the reading skills that community college faculty perceived as necessary for their students' success in certain English, history, and biology courses. Three questions were posed: What reading skills do faculty perceive as necessary for their students' success? Which skills are perceived to be most important? To what extent are the perceptions of English, history, and biology faculty similar or different? Sixty-one faculty from nineteen Texas community colleges completed three Delphi questionnaires for this study. Perceived reading skill needs were rated by levels of importance. Ratings were analyzed by determining medians and interquartile ranges for each identified skill.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The high failure rate of especially first year students at tertiary institutions with its financial and manpower implications poses a problem. A report of the work committee of the Committee of University Principals Identified the lack of research on the learning needs of students as well as the need for a student learning profile and ways in which learning style research results can be utilised in the tertiary instruction programme. The implications of learning styles on the reading development of university students are still in doubt. Reading demands a vast amount of a student's study hours and reading ability underachievement occurs to a great extent. Consequently reading development programmes were introduced at tertiary Institutions to offer students the opportunity of developing and improving their reading skills. At the Rand Afrikaans University three different reading courses are offered, but during the past years it has become evident that not all students benefit equally from a specific course. These three courses accentuate the two main components of the reading act. namely the optical-mechanical (in course A), or the cognitive linguistic (in course B) as against the integration of both these components (in course C). The problem is which factors determine to which specific course a student should be assigned to optimise his reading ability. One probability is that a student's learning style could be such a factor. Hypotheses were posed to examine this. The aim of this study is to determine whether a student's learning style has any implications for the different reading courses which are conducted at the Student Counseling Bureau at RAU. An attempt was made to determine the preferred learning style of students in order to ascertain whether 8 student with 8 specific learning style would benefit more from a specific reading course (or courses).

This study provides a rationale for adopting course materials. It demonstrates the relationship between ability to read assigned materials and academic achievement, and that selection of materials creates two groups having different probabilities of success. The sample was selected from a population of all students enrolled in Principles of Economics courses at North Texas State University in the spring semester of 1986. The Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used to determine reading ability. Assigned materials were analyzed for readability. A frustration level was determined and used to divide the sample: the group of interest, those with reading abilities below the frustration level who underwent the treatment of reading materials written above their ability to comprehend; and the comparison group, those with reading abilities above the frustration level who did not undergo the treatment.

It was the purpose of this study to correlate reading improvement as measured by test scores from a reading test with six values measured in a scale of values to see which, if any, could have served as predictors of reading improvement.

Attitudes to extensive reading have been shown to be crucial in the additional language (AL) learning classroom. Research seems to confirm that the affective domain – attitudes, motivations, interests and personal evaluations – is essential in a study of behaviour and practice in the AL classroom. The current study aims to find out what the reading attitudes and practices of students at a teacher training college are and explore whether there are significant relationships between the students’ reading attitudes and their reading ability, vocabulary skills and academic performance. It is in light of the above-mentioned quest that we seek to understand what reading attitudes are and what they entail. The ‘attitude’ construct is defined by Guthrie and Greaney (1991: 87) who state that people’s attitudes to reading are resultant from “perceptions” acquired from past reading experiences regarding how pleasurable and valuable reading is. It appears that positive reading outcomes assist in the development of a positive attitude, whereas negative outcomes of reading tend to discourage further ventures into reading, resulting in the development of a negative attitude (McKenna, Kear & Ellsworth, 1995: 941). / Educational Studies / M. A. (Applied Linguistics)

Attitudes to extensive reading have been shown to be crucial in the additional language (AL) learning classroom. Research seems to confirm that the affective domain – attitudes, motivations, interests and personal evaluations – is essential in a study of behaviour and practice in the AL classroom. The current study aims to find out what the reading attitudes and practices of students at a teacher training college are and explore whether there are significant relationships between the students’ reading attitudes and their reading ability, vocabulary skills and academic performance. It is in light of the above-mentioned quest that we seek to understand what reading attitudes are and what they entail. The ‘attitude’ construct is defined by Guthrie and Greaney (1991: 87) who state that people’s attitudes to reading are resultant from “perceptions” acquired from past reading experiences regarding how pleasurable and valuable reading is. It appears that positive reading outcomes assist in the development of a positive attitude, whereas negative outcomes of reading tend to discourage further ventures into reading, resulting in the development of a negative attitude (McKenna, Kear & Ellsworth, 1995: 941). / Educational Studies / M. A. (Applied Linguistics)

Phase Two study consists of 548 non-English major sophomore students in a large-scale survey on the relationships among metacognitive knowledge, vocabulary size and EFL reading comprehension ability. The instruments include Questionnaire on the Metacognitive Knowledge of EFL reading comprehension, Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 1990) and EFL Reading Comprehension Test. The findings reveal that Chinese tertiary EFL readers have a good command of 2,000-word level and approach 3,000-word level. Vocabulary size does not only exert direct influences on EFL reading comprehension ability, but also plays a significant moderating role in regulating the effect of metacognitive knowledge on EFL reading comprehension ability. When the vocabulary size reaches above the threshold of 3,000 words, metacognitive knowledge plays an increasing role in EFL reading comprehension ability. / The present study sets out to investigate how Chinese tertiary EFL readers utilize metacognitive knowledge in their academic reading process, to discover the possible differences between less successful readers and successful readers in utilizing metacognitive knowledge in their reading and to map out the relationships among metacognitive knowledge, vocabulary size and EFL reading comprehension ability. / The study consists of two phases. Five less successful and five successful Chinese tertiary EFL readers participated in the think-aloud reading task and the interviews in Phase One study. Twenty-nine types of metacognitive knowledge were identified and categorized into nine subcategories under two major categories of person knowledge and strategy knowledge following Flavell's metacognitive framework (1979). Less successful readers used more frequently most types of metacognitive knowledge than their successful counterparts. Vocabulary was found to be the major obstacle hindering the students' reading progress for both groups of students. However, successful readers deployed strategy knowledge more flexibly to address the vocabulary gap than less successful readers. Differences were also discovered on the motivational and affective characteristics such as reader role, goal of reading, interest and self-efficacy between the two groups. Successful readers were more actively engaged in reading and provided interpretations of the text on their own authority. They also demonstrated an accurate self-knowledge and higher levels of task-mastery goal and interest toward reading. / The theoretical, empirical and educational contributions of these findings for L2 reading are discussed, as are suggestions for future research. / Li, Jie. / Advisers: Yujing Ni; Kawai Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: 1923. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-193). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts