title: The effects of an interactive instructional strategy for enhancing reading comprehension and content area learning for students with learning disabilities.
abstract: This study investigated the effectiveness of an interactive vocabulary instructional strategy, semantic-feature analysis (SFA), on the content area text comprehension of adolescents with learning disabilities. Prior to reading a social studies text, students in resource classes either completed a relationship chart as part of the SFA condition or used the dictionary to write definitions and sentences as part of the contrast condition. Passage comprehension was measured on a multiple-choice test consisting of two types of items, vocabulary and conceptual. Comprehension was measured immediately following teaching and again 6 months after teaching. Prior knowledge for the content of the passage served as a covariate. Results indicated that students in the SFA instructional condition had significantly greater measured comprehension immediately following and 6 months after initial teaching. These results are discussed in relation to concept-driven, interactive strategies for teaching content and facilitating text comprehension.
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Bos
authors.forename: P L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Anders
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Filip
authors.forename: L E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Jaffe
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003210:Concept Formation; D003479:Curriculum; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000628:therapy*; D004519:Education, Special; D006801:Humans; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000628:therapy*; D014825:Vocabulary