Senior High School Students Use of Contextual Aids in Reading.

IDENTIFIES CONTEXTUAL AIDS used by senior high school students and indicates differences in their use by intellectual ability, grade level, and sex. Differences in identifying contextual aids representing four form classes were also studied. Subjects were 72 randomly selected senior high school students who responded to simulated words in context. Materials used in the study were twenty articles chosen from two popular periodicals. Data were gathered by an introspective technique: subjects were interviewed individually and were asked to explain how they used contextual aids to supply meaning for the simulated words. The responses were tape-recorded, transcribed, and compared with Ames' schema which had been developed on the basis of response of graduate students to identical materials. Chi square was used to compare context clue responses of subjects by intellectual ability, grade level, and sex. Comparisons were also made by intellectual ability, grade level, and sex on production of simulated words representing nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.