Reading ability and ability to use a book: a study of middle school children

Neville, Mary H.; Pugh, A. K.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9345.1975.tb00495.x

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…If the children had received instruction, then why were they not more successful? Related work on children in Canada (Kobasigawa, 1983) and in Great Britain (Cole & Gardner, 1979;Neville & Pugh, 1975;Wray & Lewis, 1992) suggests these results are not anomalous. Cole and Gardner, for example, noted that British first-year secondary school students could explain the use of a table of contents and an index, but rarely used such features in their project work.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Neville and Pugh (1975) videotaped 9-year-olds searching for the answers to factual questions in a nonfiction book. They noted that more than half the children "seemed to be quite bemused by the task, even though they could read both book and questions, seemed able to skim or scan a page, and convinced the experimenter that they knew books contained an index and table of contents" (p. 30).…”

Section: Reading To Locate Specific Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Fifth Graders' Search for Information in a Textbook

Dreher

Sammons

1994

Journal of Reading Behavior

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Fifty-nine fifth graders were asked to use an unfamiliar textbook on a familiar topic to locate the answers to three questions, all of which contained terms that could be found in the book's index. Those who were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were asked guiding questions before and during their search were more successful than their counterparts who were simply asked to search. An examination of the information access structures (e.g., index, table of contents) used by students indicated that those who were unsuccessful relied heavily on the table of contents and/or paging through the text despite the very specific nature of the questions. The facilitating effect of the guiding questions appears to have been due to raising the likelihood that students would think of and actually use the index during their search; index use did not guarantee success, but very few students who failed to use the index were successful.A search task is type of strategic reading that occurs when readers seek specific, goal-related information. In this type of reading, the goal is not to read a book from cover to cover or to learn the contents of a chapter for a test. Instead, readers engaged in search tasks might look up a fact in a reference book, consult a manual for instructions on fixing a leaky faucet, or locate phone numbers of catering services in the Yellow Pages. In other words, readers engaged in search tasks would want to avoid irrelevant information while targeting critical portions. To do this, they might use one or more information-access features, such as an index or table of contents, to go directly to a needed bit of information, disregarding the rest.Search tasks are common workplace and school demands (Dreher, 1993). In the workplace, adults spend more time reading to locate information than reading 301 302 Journal of Reading Behaviorfor any other purpose (e.g., Guthrie, Schäfer, & Hutchinson, 1991;Guthrie, Seifert, & Kirsch, 1986;Kirsch & Guthrie, 1984;Mikulecky, 1982). And in school, students in both elementary (e.g., Armbruster & Armstrong, 1993;Armbruster & Gudbrandsen, 1986) and secondary schools (e.g., Smith & Feathers, 1983) are expected to engage in search tasks ranging from locating a single fact for answering a question to locating and synthesizing information for a report.Yet research indicates that many adults have difficulty with search tasks. The National Assessment of Educational Progress survey of literacy in young adults aged 21 to 25 indicated that most were able to locate a single piece of information in prose or documents, but that performance dropped off sharply as task complexity rose (Kirsch & Jungeblut, 1986). Ninety-seven percent, for example, could locate a piece of information in a newspaper article. But only 37% were able to answer a question that required the location of three pieces of information. Similarly, Dreher and Guthrie (1990) found that high school students were successful in locating the definition of a single term in a textbook. Only about half these...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Reading To Locate Specific Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fifth Graders' Search for Information in a Textbook

Dreher

Sammons

1994

Journal of Reading Behavior

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“…Dreher and Guthrie (1990) reported that reading to locate a specific subset of information relevant to a particular goal, as opposed to reading to recall an entire text's content, requires different processes that do not appear to correlate with a student's performance on traditional passage recall comprehension tasks. Fourth grade readers who scored well on standardized tests of narrative text comprehension struggled when they were asked to find answers to straightforward questions in informational text (Neville & Pugh, 1975). Similarly, Dreher and Sammons (1994) found only 30% of fifth graders in their sample who were reading at grade level were able to locate answers to at least two of three simple questions using a familiar-topic textbook.…”

Section: Previous Work Comprehending Offline Textsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting Reading Comprehension on the Internet

Coiro

2011

Journal of Literacy Research

221

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This study investigated the extent to which new reading comprehension proficiencies may be required when adolescents read for information on the Internet. Seventh graders (N = 109) selected from a stratified random sample of diverse middle school students completed a survey of topic-specific prior knowledge and parallel scenario-based measures of online reading comprehension. Standardized reading comprehension scores were also collected. Results indicated performance on one measure of online reading comprehension accounted for a significant amount of unique variance in performance on a second measure of online reading comprehension after controlling for standardized test scores of offline reading comprehension and topicspecific prior knowledge. Furthermore, there was an interaction between prior knowledge and online reading comprehension, such that higher levels of online reading comprehension skills may help compensate for lower levels of topic-specific prior knowledge when adolescents are asked to locate, critically evaluate, synthesize, and communicate information using the Internet. The author discusses a series of alternative interpretations of the data as well as their implications for literacy theory and research.

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“…There are at least three possible explanations for this seeming paradox. First, merely being seen handling or looking at books does not necessarily imply effective use; for example, Neville and Pugh (1975) found wide differences among school children in the efficient use of books. Teachers may have based their assessments on rather superficial visible criteria.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The writing productivity and syntactic maturity of eleven‐year‐olds in relation to their reading habits

Richardson¹

1977

Reading

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Reading ability and ability to use a book: a study of middle school children

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Fifth Graders' Search for Information in a Textbook

Fifth Graders' Search for Information in a Textbook

Predicting Reading Comprehension on the Internet

The writing productivity and syntactic maturity of eleven‐year‐olds in relation to their reading habits

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