Behaviour modification and reading attainment in the comprehensive school

Summary The effects of promising pupils that a letter would be sent to their parents if they showed ‘good’ progress in English comprehension were investigated. The subjects were comprehensive school pupils in two first‐year mixed ability classes which were taught by the same teacher. The pupils in both classes were given the Wide‐Span Reading Test before working for five months at the SRA Reading Laboratories. The pupils in one class were promised aletter to their parents if they showed an improvement in their reading comprehension as a consequence of using the SRA. The pupils in the other class were not given this promise. When both classes were retested on the parallel form of the Wide‐Span Reading Test, the results showed a statistically significant increase in the standardized scores for the class in which the pupils had been promised a letter to their parents, and a muchsmaller, not statistically significant increase, for the class in which the pupils had been given no such promise.