Researchers used alternating treatment designs to investigate the effects of listening-whilereading (LWR) and listening interventions on comprehension levels and rates in four middle school students with emotional disorders. During LWR, students were instructed to read passages silently along with experimenters. During the listening condition, we did not give students a printed copy of the passage but merely instructed them to listen as an experimenter read the passages aloud. The control condition consisted of students reading passages silently. After each condition, students answered 10 comprehension questions without referring back to the printed passage. Although neither intervention resulted in comprehension levels consistently superior to those of the silent reading control condition, LWR and listening resulted in higher rates of comprehension than the silent reading control condition across all four students. However, listening appeared to improve reading comprehension rates in only two students. These results suggest that LWR may be an efficient procedure for enhancing comprehension across content areas with groups of students who have heterogeneous reading skills. The discussion focuses on future applied research with students with disabilities.

Reading comprehension rate (RCR) is a direct measure of reading skills that may be useful in formatively evaluating students reading beyond the fourth-grade level. To investigate the concurrent validity of RCR, we correlated RCR, reading comprehension level (RCL), and words correct per minute (WC/M) with the Broad Reading Cluster Scores of the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement (WJ-III ACH ) across 88 students in 4th, 5th, and 10th grades. Results showed that aloud-RCR was significantly correlated with the WJ-III ACH scores for 4th-grade (r ϭ .90; n ϭ 22), 5th-grade (r ϭ .87; n ϭ 29), and 10th-grade (r ϭ .65; n ϭ 37) students. Regression analysis specified a one-predictor model for 4th-grade students (aloud-RCR), a twopredictor model for 5th-grade students (WC/M and aloud-RCR), and a one-predictor model for 10th-grade students (WC/M). Discussion focuses on directions for future research and applied issues related to RCR probe passage development.

Much research has validated procedures to enhance reading fluency in children and adolescents, but more is needed to determine whether such procedures work with adults who have deficits in reading skills. A within‐subjects design was used to evaluate and compare the effects of listening while reading (LWR) and repeated readings (RR) on reading fluency in adults reading at about fourth‐ or fifth‐grade level. Results confirmed previous studies with children and adolescents that showed LWR and RR did increase reading fluency, but neither was more effective than the other. This study suggests that the opportunity to read with LWR caused the adult participants' increases in rereading fluency. Although adults and adolescents had similar responses to LWR and RR interventions, the adults' reading fluency appeared to increase more. This finding supports the need for more studies on whether strategies that have been empirically validated with children produce similar effects in adults.

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