sound
out
words.
Unfortunately,
these
students
become
so
intent
on
decoding,
they
lose
any
sense
of
the
meaning
of
the
words
and
sentences.
However,
the
majority
of
students
who
have
difficulty
reading
do
not
have
poor
decoding
skills
or
no
understanding
of
phonics.
Instead,
the
majority
of
students
who
struggle
with
reading
have
limited
vocabularies.
They
may
also
lack
basic
background
knowledge
they
can
apply
to
their
reading,
which
means
that
cannot
create
their
own
meaning
from
the
text.
Even
though
this
category
of
reading
difficulty
is
by
far
the
highest,
they
are
usually
not
recognized
as
struggling
readers
by
content
areas
in
middle
and
high
school
classrooms
throughout
the
United
States.
An
additional
group
of
students
are
aliterate,
which
means
they
can
read
but
prefer
to
do
other
things,
such
as
play
sports,
talk
on
their
cell
phones,
or
socialize
with
their
friends
and
say
they
are
just
“too
busy”
to
read.
Statistics
indicate
that
young
people
today,
at
least
in
our
country,
are
not
keeping
up
with
the
demands
of
current
literacy
trends.
The
data
also
highlights
disparities
between
racial
and
ethnic
groups
and
among
students
coming
from
different
socioeconomic
levels.
For
example,
reading
scores
of
12th
grade
students
on
the
National
Assessment
of
Educational
Progress
(NAEP)
have
remained
static
for
the
past
20
years
(Darwin
and
Fleischman,
April
2005,
p.
85).
For
over
25
years,
the
gap
between
the
scores
of
white
and
black
students
has
widened
in
8th
and
12th
grade
(U.S.
Department
of
Education,
2000).
Yet
most
teachers
continue
to
use
textbooks
as
the
major
printed
source
of
the
content
area,
even
when
the
average
student
in
secondary
classrooms
reads
below
the
level
of
many
content-‐area
texts
(Allington,
2002).
The
way
many
teachers
compensate
for
the
students
who
cannot
read
their
textbooks
is
often
by
using
the
lecture
method
to
help
the
students
with
key
ideas
and
concepts
(Darwin
and
Fleischman,
p.
85).
Unfortunately,
the
lecture
method
can
thwart
the
students’
needs
for
improving
their
literacy
skills,
because
instead
of
addressing
the
problem,
it
merely
avoids
it
(Schoenback
et
al,
1999).
Although
no
one
program
can
meet
the
needs
of
all
adolescent
readers,
teachers
in
all
content
areas
can
present
effective
strategies
that
help
students
improve
their
reading.
In
a
report
from
Reading
Next:
A
Vision
for
Action
and
Research
in
Middle
and
High
School
Literacy,
Biancarosa
and
Snow
(2004)
recommend
principals
and
teachers
deal
with
diverse
literacy
needs
of
young
adult
readers
in
a
seven
step
program
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