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Reading Practices / 1
The Reading Practices and Study Behaviors of Developmental and NontraditionalCommunity College Students
M Cecil SmithRobert J. KellerDepartment of Educational Psychology,Counseling and Special EducationNorthern Illinois UniversityDeKalb, Il 60115Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-Western Educational ResearchAssociation, Chicago, IL, October 13-16, 1993.
 
Reading Practices / 2
The Reading Practices and Study Behaviors of Developmental and NontraditionalCommunity College Students
This study examined the everyday reading practices and study-related reading behaviors of a sample of community college students. Although there is little research on suchstudents' reading and studying skills, many of these students have characteristics that putthem at risk for academic failure, including poor academic performance in high school,poor study skills, and low standardized test scores. 48 students in a study skills coursekept a Reading Activity Method (RAM) diary for 12 weeks in order to examine their ownreading and studying behaviors. Differences were apparent between older, nontraditionalstudents and younger, developmental students on measures such as amount of readingtime and reading volume. The nontraditional students were more vigilant in recordingtheir reading activity. Implications for use of the RAM diaries in classroom settings andstudy skills programs are discussed.
 
Reading Practices / 3
The Reading Practices and Study Behaviors of Developmental and NontraditionalCommunity College Students
The purpose of the study was to examine the everyday reading practices andstudy-related reading behaviors of a sample of community college students. This researchwas motivated, in part, by the need to examine college students' general reading andstudying-related reading activities. Also, there is a little research on adults' everydayreading behaviors and how these behaviors relate to their academic, work-related, andpersonal achievements.The second author teaches at the community college where the study wasconducted. Many of his students possess characteristics that put them at risk for academicfailure: poor academic preparation and performance in high school; lack of appropriatestudy skills; and low test scores. In attempting to assist his students in developing theirreading and study skills and to improve their test preparedness, he was struck by theapparent lack of research on community college students' reading and studying activities.We have, in fact, found no research examining reading and study practices of communitycollege adults, and the relationship between reading practice and academic success amongsuch students. Community college students represent a different population thanuniversity undergraduates, on which most study skills and reading research has beenconducted. That research, while informative, may not be directly applicable in assistingcommunity college students with their study skills.We also want to describe a specific method that we used to obtain readingbehavior data among our subjects. This method, we believe, has potentially widespreadapplication for both educational researchers and practitioners, including those concernedwith assessing and developing students' reading and study skills.Previous research has evaluated the effects of study skills programs (Hughes &Graham, 1992), particularly those that teach techniques such as SQ3R, or more recently,provide metacognitive strategy instruction (Aaronson, 1987; O'Neill, 1992). Theseinterventions have focused on enhancing students' reading comprehension rather thanpromoting reading practices, however. Previous research has also shown that older andbetter-educated adults exhibit more diversity in their reading practices and the types of reading which they do, tend to be more motivated to engage in reading tasks, and havemore positive attitudes towards reading than do younger, less-educated adults (Guthrie,Seifert, & Kirsch, 1986; Smith & Stahl, 1993). We expected, then, that there would beinteresting differences in reading practices among our subjects.
Sample
-15 older (mean age = 31.3 years) nontraditional students;-returning to college to improve their work-related skills;-entering or returning to college after a lengthy break from schooling;-taking a study skills course as an elective.-33 younger (mean age = 20.6 years) developmental studies students who lackedthe basic skills necessary for success in college (many of these Ss were athletes);-scored below criterion levels on the ACT and the Nelson-Denny Reading Test.-required to take a study skills course.-All of the students were enrolled in the study skills course taught by the secondauthor.
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