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The purpose of this study was to determine whether teaching disabled readers a structured inferencing strategy using materials sequentially arranged from easy to more difficult would improve their ability to answer inferential questions. The subjects consisted of fourth and fifth grade poor readers who were randomly placed in one of four groups-strategy plus materials, strategy only, materials only, control. An analysis of covariance revealed that the strategy plus materials group scored significantly better than the other three groups on experimenter-designed inference questions. In addition, the strategy plus materials group and the materials only group scored significantly better than the control group on a standardized reading test.Results suggest that disabled readers' apparent lack of logical reasoning in answering inferential questions may exist because they do not have a successful strategy for attacking problems. Furthermore, a strategy may be enhanced by the use of materials sequentially arranged from easy to more difficult.

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Abstract. The purpose of this investigation was to compare the question answering of good and poor readers when their prior knowledge for the answers to questions was determined before reading to be accurate, inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. Fifty-six fifth-grade students with equivalent I.Q.'s, but varying in reading ability and extent of general prior knowledge for the passage topics, participated in the study. Subjects read an expository passage written on their approximate instructional reading level. The results indicated that poor readers did not use prior knowledge to the same extent as did good readers. This was especially true when students were learning new information. The results also suggest that poor readers have difficulty answering text implicit questions even if they possess adequate prior knowledge for passage topics.

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