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The orthodox view of reading as the accumulation of isolated skills continues to dominate classroom practice. Under this framework, prescriptions for problem readers usually involve intensified drills in the same basic skills to which the students failed to respond in the first place. Prevention entails the early and often precipitous examination of students to detect perceptual, cognitive, linguistic, or affective problems and the introduction of intervention programs to deal with these difficulties via structured prescriptive activities. The newer view of reading as a holistic process of interrelated skills and behaviors has significant implications for instructional and person-centered strategies. According to this view, reading is a tool that students actively manipulate for their own purposes. Because they facilitate efficient reading processing rather than isolated skill development, holistic reading practices provide supplemental experiences for pupils responding to orthodox methodologies and alternative strategies for students who have failed in traditional skills programs. Holistic reading experiences contain maximum information for the reader--specifically discourse prose, content of inherent interest and usefulness, and tasks appropriate to the age, needs, and character of the readers. (A chart of suggested activities to promote the holistic/functional reading approach is included.) (MM)

Containing five sections, this paper deals with motivational processes in reading. The paper first discusses motivation and unmotivated behavior. It then examines contributions from psychology, which include views concerning the nature of variables and processes involved in motivation and behavior; a hypothetical motivational sequence; and "unlocking the ghost in the machine," or bringing out internal motivating influences, such as insight, intellectual awareness, task knowledge, and self-evaluative abilities. The paper concludes that since successful learning comes from proactive behavior, teachers could help students by acquiring new concepts and skills that positively affect student motivation. (EL)

The disabled reader's measurably low success in processing print creates tension, stress, and increasingly negative perceptions of the reading act and of the reader's own beliefs about his or her personal competencies. The task of the reading specialist might be facilitated by conscious and increasingly skilled application of psychotherapeutic techniques whose immediate uses could alleviate or reduce psychic suffering, anxiety, guilt, shame, and conflict. Some techniques the remedial reading specialist might use to achieve this include (1) stress or tension relief techniques designed to provide comfort, security, and a feeling of confidence; (2) awareness or effort activation techniques designed to establish student awareness, insight into ambivalence, conflicts, and the students' awareness of their uniqueness; and (3) the understanding of skills paradigm/self-directed activation techniques designed to establish students' understanding of sequences for resolving problems ranging from decoding to studying and theme writing, and to facilitate utilization of their own problem solving abilities. (Activities are suggested for each of these techniques.) (HOD)

"New wave" instructional theory and approaches are surfacing in dialogues on teaching and learning and in classroom activities of avant-garde instructors. In an adaption and sequal to Toffler's ideas on the rapidly fading industrial age, instruction in higher education needs to be updated with the application of futuristic thinking. To change, it will be necessary to alter assumptions and beliefs about college students and the validity, long-term importance, and durability of the information that is taught--for example, what is important in preparing young people for the high technology space age. The kind of creative thinking about what and how college instructors teach needs to be grounded on the future. Five "new wave" recommendations are to (1) create a responsive environment; (2) design experiential learning activities; (3) develop cooperative learning efforts; (4) foster metacognitive growth in learning; and (5) provide for diverse learning styles and modes of acquiring information and displaying learning. (Seventeen references are appended.) (MS)

Often approaching reading with feelings of stress, anxiety, and fear, disabled readers need affective as well as cognitive training in remedial reading programs. Their intellectual objectivity, self-understanding, and rapport with teachers and classmates could be increased, and their anxiety reduced, if remedial reading specialists would incorporate psychotherapeutic strategies into classroom learning activities. Based on Gestalt and Ratio-Emotive therapy, and Cognitive-Behavior Modification, these exercises range in applicability from elementary to college level, and include writing activities to help clarify feelings and formulate goals, step-by-step work in problem solving, and circle games to highlight group interdependence. (MM)