INCREASING COMPREHENSION THROUGH SPECIFIC SKILL INSTRUCTION, CLOZE PROCEDURE, AND DISCUSSION

Statement of Problem. A pressing problem in reading education is poor comprehension. Often students with seemingly good verbal abilities, backgrounds of information and word recognition skills complain of understanding little of what they read and retaining even less. The cloze procedure has been recommended as an instructional strategy for improving reading comprehension. This study tested the proposition that cloze exercises with peer and teacher-led discussion of closures and the direct teaching of comprehension skills could combine effectively to help low comprehenders overcome their reading difficulties. A second concern was student improvement in study habits and attitudes. Methodology. Eight classes (159 students) enrolled in Developmental Reading I at Indian River Community College on Southeastern Florida\u27s coastline were collapsed into four treatment groups (each having students designated as low comprehenders or developmental readers). The Non-Equivalent Control Group design was used with all students twice taking the Davis Reading Test and the Survey of Study Habits and Attitudes; a two way analysis of covariance was employed with a SAS Program. During 18 hours of instruction and reinforcement, the students had practiced how to isolate details and recall specific facts, understand main ideas, make judgments, understand characters, draw conclusion, make inferences, retain concepts and organize facts, recognize tone, and appreciate literary forms. Conclusions. The low comprehenders who were enrolled in the cloze/discussion group improved their scores in both reading comprehension and study habits and attitudes as did the cloze only, traditional/discussion, and traditional groups. However, this improvement was not statistically significant at the .05 level of confidence. Thus the cloze is as effective as more traditional programs and a viable alternative. Secondly, the effectiveness of cloze may vary among teachers. Among Recommendations Given. To increase reading comprehension, cloze exercises should be combined with specific skill instruction and discussion of cloze answers while integrated into a balanced reading/study program. Cloze researchers should investigate: (1) student and teacher attitudes toward cloze (2) student and teacher work habits and attitudes, styles and characteristics as they interface with cloze