This study researched the question as to whether reading goals and organizational signals interact to affect comprehension. Organizational signals are literary instruments that make the topic structure more salient and increase the recall for the majority of the topics in a text. Readers have specific goals that they wish to accomplish during reading. Participants read one of two texts, which contained one of three levels of signals: no signals, half signals, and full signals. The participants were assigned a specific goal from one of two main categories of goals: reading for school or reading for pleasure. Significant Text and Goal differences were found, but there was no effect of headings. Participants with the school goal recalled more than did the participants with the pleasure goal. It appears that reading goals do have an effect on the processing characteristics that people use while reading, which affects the amount recalled. / Department of Psychological Science

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to compare the readability levels of the recreational reading books children selected to read with the reading levels of the children established by Powell's (1992) criteria for the Informal Reading Inventory. Using Fry's Readability Graph, a second purpose of this study was to compare the reading levels of the books the children chose and read with the reading levels of the books the children chose and did not read. Five hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance.Hypotheses I-IV were tested using a t-test for paired samples to determine if there was any particular reading level from which children tended to choose their recreational reading books.The analyses did not allow rejection of Hypotheses I and II. There were no significant relationships found between the reading levels independent and developmental, and the levels of recreational reading books children chose from their school library.The analyses did allow rejection of Hypotheses III and IV. The reading levels emergent and frustration proved to be statistically significantly different from the children's recreational book levels.Hypothesis V was tested using the Pearson correlation coefficient to determine the relationship between the reading levels of the recreational reading books the children chose and read and the reading levels of the books the children chose and did not read.The analysis failed to reject Hypothesis V. There was no significant relationship between the reading levels of the books the children chose and read and the reading levels of the books the children did not read. Although this hypothesis did not prove to be statistically significant, the following tendency was observed: the easier the readability of the book, the more likely it was to have been read.The findings of this study indicate fourth grade students chose books from their school library on all their reading levels. However, on the average students chose books between their independent and developmental reading levels. / Department of Elementary Education

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of dialogue journal writing, journal writing without dialogue, and regular classroom instruction on the reading comprehension of college students enrolled in a developmental reading class. Also, the effect of the journal writing on the college students' metacognitive awareness of reading strategies was investigated.The subjects were 77 freshman college students enrolled in six credit/no credit developmental reading classes at a mid-size midwestern university. Two of the classes wrote dialogue journals in which the teacher responded in writing to what the students wrote. The second two classes wrote in journals but received no written feedback. The last two classes received regular class instruction with no journal writing.The Nelson-Denny Reading Test was used as the post test. The results of a three-way analysis of variance with nesting indicated that there was no difference in the reading comprehension scores among the journal writing only, the dialogue journal writing, and the control groups. The results also indicated that there was no difference between the reading comprehension scores of males and females.A second three-way analysis of variance with nesting was conducted using the students' mean responses on the Wingenbach Reading Strategies Questionnaire. The results indicated that there was no significant differences within the classes in each treatment or between the males and females in the three treatment groups.The control group did score greater when contrasted with the two treatment groups on the questionnaire. The dialogue journal group also scored greater than the journal writing only group.The results of this study indicated that journal writing with or without dialogue did not affect the reading comprehension scores of the students in this study. Another finding of this study, suggested that teacher interaction either through additional class time or written dialogue can result in greater metcognitive awareness of reading strategies. / Department of Elementary Education

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

A study of the older readers' section of Young Australians Best Book Award (YABBA) from 1986 to 1991, based on analysis of 21,351 voting forms from this period. Through analysis of the data from these voting forms, ranking authors and titles, comparing gender preferences, the source of the book voted for, school type and school location were all compiled into graphs and tables. Appropriate comparisons have been made between variables across the six year period, to give some idea of the voting population involved in the older readers' section of YABBA and their preferences and motivations. A follow up survey of voters and YABBA organisers in 1992 attempted to further enhance this data by collecting information on voter preferences, opinions and possible influences on the voting process. The study attempts to place YABBA in the context of the wider children's literature community and discuss briefly its historical development with reference to other children's choice awards, their strengths and weaknesses. A relevant discussion on popularity versus literary merit is related to the ongoing discussion of YABBA in comparison to the Children's Book Council awards. Later chapters include a discussion of the most popular YABBA titles (seven highest rating titles) with particular emphasis given to YABBA's two most popular authors - Paul Jennings and Robin Klein. Humour is an important factor in the popularity of many YABBA titles and this is discussed as are developments since 1991 and the long-term future of YABBA.

Thesis (doctoral)--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 347-373) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 477-545).

Thesis (M.L.S.)--Brigham Young University. / Chiefly tables. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-144).

Part of Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1933. / Photolithographed. "Private edition, distributed by the University of Chicago libraries." Bibliography: p. 34-35.