Towards More Systematic Development of Children's Reading Vocabulary in Developmental Reading Programs for the Middle to Upper Elementary Grades.

The major purpose of this thesis was to show that it is possible to develop a theoretically sound and empirically based rationale for determining the systematic introduction and use of vocabulary in middle-grade reading instructional material. A major portion of the research for this thesis consisted of a content analysis of six current reading series and their accompanying workbooks (grades two through six) to determine how, what, in what order, and at what grade levels, prefixes are taught; how many exemplars of the prefix are offered in meaningful reading material; and whether or not sufficient opportunities for systematic development of prefixed-word vocabulary now exist in meaningful instructional material. It was concluded that sufficient opportunities for systematic development of vocabulary with most prefixes do not exist at many grade levels in these series. A major implication of the findings was that frequency of prefixing may serve as an index of lexical maturity and, consequently, of conceptual difficulty in reading material. It is suggested that the kind of selection used in a developmental reading program for the teaching of reading skills be critically examined, in order to foster more systematic vocabulary development. (Author/LL)