Interest and Ability in Reading

Heading. Arthur I. Gates. New York. The Macmillan Company. 1930. vii -j264 pp. In keeping step -vvitli the movement of scientific method in education, Perhaps no one has distinguished himself in the publication of material relating to children's reading so greatly as has Professor Gates, of Teachers College, Columbia University. For the last decade he has interested himself in the specific nature of problems relating to reading, to the extent that in the realm ?f teaching method in this field he has become a standard author. In 1928 two of his volumes appeared as summaries of his investigations up until that time: The Improvement of Heading (Macmillan) and New Methods in Primary Reading (Teachers College). This new volume acts in a dual capacity. Its primary purpose seems that ?f presenting the results of experimental work in relation to such problems as the interest children show in various types of material which they read, the ratio of new words introduced into reading material to the number of old Words therein, and the influence of type of material. A further analysis of what constitutes the types of material that children prefer, and of the effect of organizing materials into programs of work involving the linguistic, the exploratory, the constructive and the artistic is also presented. The secondary