ABSTRACT

Reading is a private venture; learning to read is a joint venture. Reading improvement is directly related to the student's level of motivation, which in turn will be strengthened or weakened by ability, effort, and the difficulty of the task. In most instances, improvement of the poor student's motivation requires both a positive change in reading activities along with the improvement of reading skills. This chapter examines the reader's private world, the factors important to that world, and the informal guidelines for diagnosing points of reading difficulty. High-ability subjects attributed successful completion of a task to effort and the absence of luck, while the same subjects attributed failure to complete a task to lack of effort or bad luck. Cognitive psychologists traditionally categorize memory as short-term (STM) or long-term (LTM). However, some researchers have identified a working memory as the mediator between immediate and stored information. Self-concept consists of the person's own summation of his or her personality.