Reading (Higher education)

Fast, efficient reading skills are essential in college where the majority of learning comes from independent reading. However, reading college-level expository texts is a potential problem for college students with learning disabilities (LD) who classically have difficulty with reading. Since little is known about young adults with LD who attend college, the purpose of this study was to examine the reading abilities of this group. More specifically, reading comprehension scores, from both oral and silent reading, as well as analyses of oral reading miscues were examined. Additionally, the influence of expository text structures on reading comprehension and oral miscues was explored. A total of forty undergraduate subjects from one state university participated in the study: twenty were upper class (junior/senior status) students with childhood diagnoses of LD in reading; twenty were upper class students without LD who were considered poor college readers. Four passages from a college textbook on social problems were selected for the reading assessment: two passages of an enumeration text structure, and two of an historical text structure. All subjects read two passages silently and two passages orally from each structure, The subjects' oral readings were analyzed for types of miscues. After reading each passage, the subjects then orally summarized the readings. A comprehension score was derived for each passage from the oral retellings. Results revealed that the college students with LD produced a greater total number of oral reading miscues and earned fewer comprehension points than their peers without LD. Text structure did not effect the comprehension scores of the students with LD; however, the type of text structure did effect the oral reading comprehension scores of the students without LD. The subjects with LD also produced a significantly higher percentage of miscues categorized as loss-of-meaning miscues. The results of this study indicated that college students with LD continue to have reading difficulties: difficulty decoding words; poor comprehension; and a lack of metacognitive awareness and use of strategies for comprehending various expository text structures.

This study established the effectiveness of matching
prescriptions in an individualized reading program to the
learning styles of students at the Community College level.
The study was made at Miami-Dade Community College (South)
during the Winter Term, 1977. Two questionnaires were
administered to measure the experimental and control
group 1 students' perception of the learning experience
and to measure the experimental and control group 1
instructors' perception of the students. It was concluded that the tests selected were
valid and reliable for this study. The results obtained
by the experimental group students showed that matching
produced higher means in posttest scores. The sex and
age factors did not influence the students' final scores
to the degree that the ethnic factor did.
It was recommended that further similar research
be done in the matching of student learning style and
reading materials.