PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150)

Four studies conducted over a 2-year period systematically evaluated the effectiveness of interactive instructional practices in the vocabulary learning and reading comprehension of learning disabled students. The design of the four studies was similar in that comparisons were made among three different interactive teaching strategies (semantic mapping, semantic feature analysis, and semantic/syntactic feature analysis) and a teaching strategy relying on direct, definitional instruction. During the first year, subjects consisted of 42 bilingual, learning disabled students in upper elementary grades studying social studies and 61 learning disabled junior high and middle school students studying science. During the second year, subjects consisted of 47 upper elementary and 53 junior high school students. All subjects were selected randomly from a metropolitan southwestern school district