The study examines the relationship between general knowledge, skills in applying reading strategies, and reading comprehension for ninth-grade students at varying educational levels: academic, semi-academic, vocational and learning disabilities. Two hundred and five students received a battery of tests evaluating their general knowledge, skills in applying four reading strategies (summary, self-questioning, clarification and prediction), and two reading comprehension tests. The findings revealed differential contributions of general knowledge and strategy application to reading comprehension. Compared with the academic students, semi-academics have deficient strategic skills. Vocational students, in addition to deficient strategic skills, have poor general knowledge, which further impedes their reading comprehension. The deficiency of students with learning disabilities goes beyond these two components. These results led us to recommend different foci of comprehension intervention for each group.
In this article we demonstrate how to improve students' learning motivation by means of an attributional dialogue between teachers and students. The change in motivation is reflected in students' learning to attribute their achievements to their own educational efforts and to the use of appropriate learning strategies. The article exemplifies this procedure with dialogue pages of a typically achieving learner and a student with learning disabilities.
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