Abstract: Used to describe something that is difficult to fully or easily understand because it is intangible or theoretical and is not associated with a particular instance or concrete example. The concept of "hope" is more abstract than the concept of "house."

Adult illiteracy: Inefficiencies in reading and writing that continue into adulthood.

Adverb: A word, usually ending in ly, that enhances a verb, an adjective, a sentence, a clause, or another adverb.

Assessment: The process of gathering information to help an individual make decisions. In education, the information gathered should help a teacher make decisions about appropriate instructional goals, objectives, teaching methods, curriculum, and program placement.

Background knowledge: A personal reservoir of information on a variety of topics; information retained in one's long-term memory.

Choral reading: Reading aloud as a group either in a classroom setting or by as few as two people. Choral reading helps to build oral skills by allowing readers to hear what they are reading and thus make the appropriate changes necessary for fluent reading.

Cognitive ability: Ability with regard to thinking, comprehending, analyzing, and evaluating.

Connected instruction: Instruction that continually shows and discusses with the students the relationship between what has been learned, what is being learned, and what will be learned.

Considerate text: Text that is well-written and well-organized, thereby making it easy to understand.

Content literacy: Development of the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills necessary to learn in each of the academic disciplines.

Continuous assessment: An element of responsive instruction in which the teacher regularly monitors student performance to determine how closely it matches the instructional goal. Ideally, these checks of student performance should occur after as many practice sessions as possible.

Decoding: Relating a sequence of letters in print to their corresponding sounds, allowing the reader to translate the sequence into a word.

Echo reading: A supportive activity where the teacher reads and then has the student read the same sentence. This helps to build reading fluency.

Elaborated feedback: An element of responsive instruction in which the results of student performance on a practice task are shared with the student to help him/her understand what was done correctly and what specific things need to be targeted for improvement during the next practice exercise.

Explicit: Completely and clearly expressed without ambiguity or vagueness; fully developed. Example: Explicit instructions would leave no doubt in your mind about what you were to do. Every part would be "spelled out."

Fluency: In the area of reading, the skill of reading with accuracy, speed, and ease.

Graphic organizer: An organized, visual representation of information used to facilitate comprehension and remembering; a visual depiction.

Inappropriate text: Text that is not written at a student's instructional level and is not appropriate for the interests of the student.

Incompatible instruction: A method of instruction that does not match a student or students' learning needs and therefore does not result in learning.

Inconsiderate text: Text that is poorly written, poorly organized, or both, thereby making it difficult to understand.

Inferential comprehension: Comprehension that involves using reasoning- drawing conclusions about the relationships between or among bits of information that are not explicitly stated. It requires relating background knowledge to what is read or applying knowledge about text structure to aid comprehension. Examples: Compare the following two sentences: 1) "The roads were icy; Mike drove very carefully." and 2) "Mike drove very carefully because the roads were icy." Comprehending the first involves drawing a conclusion about the relationship between icy roads and driving carefully (inference); the second sentence demands only literal comprehension because the relationship is explained within the context of the sentence.

Informative instruction: A way of teaching systematically in which the teacher ensures that the student understands how s/he is learning, how s/he can plan and control his/her own learning at each step of the learning process, and why this is important.

Intensive instruction: A way of directing student attention in which sufficient time is spent in teacher-guided interactive learning activities; characterized by a high degree of goal-directed student engagement that leads to student mastery and generalization.

Language comprehension: The ability to use personal background knowledge, plus knowledge and skills related to language usage to enable understanding and comprehension of language. Language comprehension is a prerequisite to listening comprehension and reading comprehension.

Language structures: The pattern or organization of letters in words, words in sentences, sentences in paragraphs, and paragraphs in whole texts, often specific to a particular language. Knowledge of language structures plays a key role in the comprehension of words, sentences, and texts.

Literacy: The ability to read, write, listen, and speak in ways that enable communication, enhance understanding of ideas, and enrich lives.

Literacy acquisition: The process of gaining and fully comprehending different types of information.

Literal comprehension: Understanding explicitly- and clearly- stated written or spoken words.

Matthew effects: Briefly stated, the effects of a cycle, in which students with learning disabilities may find themselves. Poor decoding skills limit their ability to advance to more complex texts. This, in turn, limits their exposure to the content, as well as the more complex structure, of texts that are necessary for future learning.

Metacognitive strategies: Orderly methods or plans to monitor, regulate or direct one's mental processes. Example: If you have figured out for yourself the best way to study or prepare for a take-home exam, you have developed a metacognitive strategy. Congratulations!

Paraphrasing: A process that involves taking information from reading or listening and rephrasing the information in one's own words in a way that personalizes the information and can facilitate one's ability to understand and remember.

Phonemic rules: Patterns of the relationships among phonemes (the smallest speech sounds that affect the meaning of a word) and graphemes (the letter or letters that correspond to phonemes).

Plateau: In reading, to reach a certain level and not progress much further.

Proficient readers: Individuals who effectively and independently use skills and strategies to construct meaning from print.

Reading comprehension: The process or result of gaining intended and personal meaning from written material.

Reading disability: Condition characterized by reading performance that is significantly below what would be expected for an individual's age and reading potential.

Responsive instruction: A way of making teaching decisions in which a student's reaction to instruction directly shapes how future instruction is provided.

Scaffolded instruction: An instructional strategy during which the teacher provides just enough assistance (explanation, instruction, modeling, guided practice, feedback, etc.) to students to allow them to do a task that they would not be able to do without this assistance. The assistance is gradually withdrawn until the student is able to do the task on his own.

Self-questioning: Identifying cues from information heard or read that makes a learner wonder about who, what, when, where, which, why, and how and ask personalized questions that relate to the information. The learner then reads to find the answers to these questions. Self-questioning can facilitate understanding and remembering. Good readers automatically self-question; weaker readers need to be taught to do this.

Sound-symbol correspondence: The association of a phoneme (sound) with a grapheme (letter).

Strategy: An individual's approach to a task; how a person thinks and acts when planning, executing, and evaluating the performance of a task and its outcomes.

Structured instruction: Instruction that involves systematically teaching information that has been "chunked," or separated, into smaller and more manageable pieces.

Summarizing: Concisely synthesizing the essential ideas of a text or passage.

Syntax: The ordering of words within phrases, clauses, and sentences whereby the relations among the words are indicated. For example, in English, verbs usually follow nouns, and adjectives usually precede nouns: Dorothy followed the yellow brick road.

Systematic instruction: Instruction that is carefully organized, connected to past and future learning, scaffolded so that students need decreasing support, and informative so that students become self-directed learners.

Text structure: The organizational framework of written material; the way ideas in a text are organized. Examples of some common patterns of expository text structure include description, sequence, cause/effect, and compare/contrast. Each structure has elements that are specific to it. For example, a narrative structure, or story, would include characters, a setting, a plot, conflict, and resolution.

Title I teachers: Teachers who typically teach children who are at high risk for learning difficulties. Title I teachers are part of a federally funded education program called Title I that was established to help these students overcome these difficulties.

Vignette: A short and concise occurrence, event, or scene.

Visualizing: A learning strategy that involves mentally picturing objects or events in order to facilitate understanding and remembering.