The role of question type and reading ability in reading comprehension

Performance on a standardized reading comprehension test reflects the number of correct answers readers select from a list of alternate choices, but fails to provide information about how readers cope with the various cognitive demands of the task. The aim of this study was to determine whether three groups of readers: normally achieving (NA), poor comprehenders (CD), with no decoding disability, and reading disabled (RD), poor comprehenders with poor decoding skills, differed in their ability to cope with reading comprehension task demands. Three task variables reflected in the question-answer relations that appear on standardized reading comprehension tests were identified.Passage Independent (PI) question can be answered with reasonable accuracy based on the reader's prior knowledge of the passage content.Inference (INFER) questions required the reader to generate an inference at the local or global test level.Locating (LOCAT) questions require the reader to match the correct answer choice to a detail explicitly stated in the text either verbatim or in paraphrase form. The relations among reader characteristics, cognitive task factors and reading comprehension test scores were analyzed using a structural relations equation with LISREL. It was found that the three reading groups differed with respect to the underlying relationship between their performance on specific question-answer types and their standardized reading comprehension score. For the NA group, a high score on PI was likely to be accompanied by a low score on INFER, whereas in the CD and RD groups, PI and INFER are positively related. The finding of a negative relationship between background knowledge and inference task factors for normally achieving readers suggests that even normal readers may have comprehension difficulties that go undetected on the basis of a standardized scores. This study indicates that current comprehension assessments may not be adequate for assessing specific reading difficulties and that more precise diagnostic tools are needed.     

运用语篇教学法提高英语阅读理解能力

阅读能力的培养是英语教学的重要环节,是提高学生综合语言运用能力的保障。语篇教学法是语篇分析在教学中的实际应用,它既注重语言知识的学习,又注重对文章主题、结构及体裁的分析,对于提高学生文章整体理解能力具有重要的指导作用。     

Phonological processing, language comprehension, and reading ability

Previous research has indicated a relationship between reading ability and the integrity of certain phonological processing skills--skills that operate on the sound structure of language. This study shows how the deficient phonological processing skills of poor beginning readers can impair their comprehension of spoken phrases and sentences that are disambiguated by prosodic cues (i.e., pitch, stress, and pause). Following a brief summary of the available research literature, two new experiments are reported to illustrate that poor readers do not interpret certain sentences as accurately as good readers do, because they are less able to hold phonological material temporarily in working memory. Further insight into the basis of these differences between good and poor readers is provided by two additional pieces of evidence: The differences between good and poor readers are analogous to those between older and younger children readers, and the performance of poor readers tends to resemble that of younger children reading at their same level (i.e., reading-ability-matched controls). Apparently, good and poor readers tend to differ in the rate at which they develop phonological processing skills.     

浅谈如何提高学生的英语阅读理解能力

提高英语阅读理解能力,必须掌握足够的词汇量和正确的阅读技巧和方法。本文从词汇、理解技巧及阅读方法三个方面阐述了提高英语阅读理解能力的方法。     

Vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) reading comprehension ability

This study explored the role of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in reading comprehension ability of Chinese as a heritage language (CHL) learners. One hundred ninety five CHL students participated in this study and completed a series of measures including two sets of vocabulary knowledge (one consisting of items pertaining to early exposure to spoken Chinese and the other comprised of items selected from a pool of words in Chinese as a foreign language classrooms), morphological awareness (structural awareness and functional awareness), and reading comprehension ability (lexical inference and passage comprehension). Drawing upon structural equation modeling with a bootstrap estimation method, the study found that vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness both contributed to reading comprehension among CHL learners. More critically, the results indicated that morphological awareness mediated the relation between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension in CHL learners. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses probed the relative contributions of vocabulary knowledge measures to morphological awareness and reading comprehension, and found that vocabulary knowledge acquired in formal Chinese instruction contributed to morphological awareness and reading comprehension, to a greater extent, than that gained through early exposure to spoken Chinese.     

Measuring college students' reading comprehension ability using cloze tests

Recent investigations challenge the construct validity of sustained silent reading tests. Performance of two groups of post‐secondary students (e.g. struggling and non‐struggling) on a sustained silent reading test and two types of cloze test (i.e. maze and open‐ended) was compared in order to identify the test format that contributes greater variance in reading comprehension. One hundred participants were recruited from students enrolled in a preparatory course for a high‐stakes statewide reading examination. Our results suggest that all three measures have good concurrent validity. There was no evidence that open‐ended cloze performance was more related to verbal ability than any other reading measure. Maze performance did the best job at discriminating between our struggling and non‐struggling readers. Implications for reading comprehension assessment in post secondary‐aged adults are discussed.     

Word-to-text integration in English as a second language reading comprehension

Reading and Writing - We assessed the relationship between word-to-text-integration (WTI) and reading comprehension in 7th grade students (n?=?441) learning English as a second language...     

Mode of acquisition as a factor in deaf children's reading comprehension

This article examines the role of mode of acquisition (MoA) of word meanings in reading comprehension: children acquire word meanings using perceptual information (e.g., hearing, seeing, or smelling the referent) and/or linguistic information (e.g., verbal explanations). A total of 72 deaf and 99 hearing children between 7 and 15 years of age performed a self-paced reading task. Comprehension scores increased with age in both groups, but reading speed increased over age only for the hearing participants. For both groups, reading times on linguistically acquired words were longer than on perceptually acquired words. Although deaf children scored lower than hearing children in both conditions, comprehension scores for both groups were lower on linguistic items than on perceptual items. Thus, MoA influences reading comprehension, but the deaf show difficulty on both the perceptual and the linguistic items.     

Effects of organizational pictures and modality as a feedback strategy on learner comprehension and satisfaction

One of the strongest instructional interventions documented in educational literature is the use of feedback to influence learning outcomes. However, there is lack of empirical research specifically pertaining to the use of multimedia in the feedback message. The purpose of this research was to test whether organizational pictures and modality as a feedback strategy had an effect on learner comprehension and satisfaction. The research design was a 2 Multimedia (Picture Present vs. Picture Absent) × 2 Modality (Narration vs. On-screen Text) × Trial (Trial 1 vs. Trial 2) with Multimedia and Modality serving as between-subject conditions and Trial serving as a repeated measure. One-hundred fifteen university students participated in the study. Findings show statistically significant increases in comprehension scores from Trial 1 to Trial 2 assessments for all four treatment conditions. Learners in the Picture present conditions were statistically more satisfied with the learning experience. Additionally, we used eye-tracking to verify the extent to which the pictures were used in the feedback message. A discussion and recommendations for future research and feedback design are provided.     

Mutual compensation between L1 reading ability and L2 language proficiency in L2 reading comprehension

The present study investigates the contribution of first language (L1) reading ability and second or foreign language (L2) proficiency to L2 reading comprehension, by focusing on the compensation between L1 reading ability and L2 proficiency. Two research questions were addressed: (1) does high L1 reading ability compensate for low L2 language proficiency? (2) does high L2 language proficiency compensate for low L1 reading ability? Participants were 241 Japanese university students learning English as a foreign language. They were divided into three levels (high, middle, low) according to the levels of their L1 reading ability and L2 language proficiency. Effects of these two factors on L2 reading ability were analysed by analysis of variance. A multiple regression analysis to estimate a compensation model was also applied. Results provided positive answers to both research questions. The present study thus demonstrates the mutual compensation between L1 reading ability and L2 proficiency, which works in order to achieve the highest possible level of L2 reading comprehension for readers with different ability backgrounds in L1 reading and L2 proficiency.     

Comprehension of written sentences as a core component of children's reading comprehension

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that sentence processing is an essential mediatory skill between word recognition and text comprehension in reading. In Experiment 1, a semantic similarity judgement task was used with children from Grade 2 to Grade 9. They had to say whether two written sentences had the same (or very similar) meanings or whether the meanings of the two sentences were very different. As expected, performance improved with age both on the high‐frequency words and with increasingly complex sentences. In Experiment 2 with children in Grade 3, scores in written sentence comprehension and vocabulary made the most important unique contribution to the reading comprehension of an expository text. The results are discussed first, in the light of a general framework in which sentence‐level skill is at the core of reading comprehension and second, with reference to the issue of reading assessment.     

Skills needed for reading comprehension of physics texts and their relation to problem-solving ability

This article reports an investigation of some of the skills needed for the critical reading of physics texts. To assess these skills a reading comprehension test was developed that combines features of errordetection and true–false–unreported tests. This test was administered to college students of physics, and the results were analyzed statistically to determine the separability of the skills and their hierarchical ranking. It was found that the skill required to comprehend texts in continuous format is of a higher level than and separable from the skill required to comprehend texts in the form of a separated list of statements. The skill required to discriminate unreported statements from the others (true and false) was found to be of a higher level than and separable from the skills required to make the other discriminations. The relation between the students' reading comprehension skills and their problem-solving ability was also investigated. Students' scores on reading comprehension of texts that require a very low problem-solving ability were found to be uncorrelated to their grades on solving problems that require a very low decoding ability. This implies that the two abilities are independent.     

Examining listening previewing as a classwide strategy to promote reading comprehension and vocabulary

Classwide instructional strategies to improve not only reading fluency but also comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are essential for student reading success. The current study examined the immediate effects of two classwide listening previewing strategies on reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Twenty‐one, fourth‐grade general education students were exposed to three experimental conditions including a silent reading control condition, a listening previewing condition, and a listening previewing with vocabulary previewing condition. For all conditions, students read grade‐level passages, answered 10 comprehension questions, and completed a vocabulary‐matching task. Results showed that both listening previewing conditions led to improvements in comprehension as compared to silent reading. Adding a vocabulary previewing component to listening previewing procedures resulted in the highest levels of comprehension and vocabulary. Applied implications and directions for future research are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

英语阅读中的默读与朗读

阅读是一种技巧,掌握了这种技巧,学生们就会如虎添翼,阅读能力大大提高。阅读有多种方法,本文主要谈论默读和朗读两种阅读技巧。通过默读和朗读,可提高学生阅读理解力和阅读速度,锻炼学生英语表达能力,并帮助学生在听、说、写等方面得到进一步提高。     

Reciprocal teaching and reading comprehension: a review

Reading researchers recently have turned their attention to co-operative forms of learning and teaching. One particular form of co-operative teaching is reciprocal teaching which involves the reciprocal interaction of experts and novices in explicit, overt demonstrations of strategy use. Scaffolding, active meaningful involvement, feedback, and fading of the expert's leading the interactions are seen as critical elements of the technique. This paper outlines the theoretical underpinnings of the technique and reviews research examining the effects of reciprocal teaching of comprehension strategies (summarising, predicting, clarifying, questioning) on comprehension disabled subjects. In general the findings show powerful effects, effects that transfer and generalise. The potential of the technique for enhancing other reading skills is discussed.     

Phonological skills and reading comprehension

In the present study the mainfocus is on the impact of phonologicalawareness on reading comprehension. The studyinvolved 1300 children in Grade 1. Syllableawareness, phoneme awareness, word decodingand reading comprehension were each assessedwith two or three subtests. The results wereanalyzed by structural modeling. Due to themarked skewness observed for some of themanifest variables, separate analyses wereperformed for students with average worddecoding performance and for students with poorword decoding. Both among average and poordecoders, phonological awareness had a directimpact on reading comprehension, indicatingthat phonological factors play an independentrole in the processing of text. One possibleway to explain this observation is that atleast two critical factors in comprehension,vocabulary and short-term memory, are bothdetermined in part by phonological ability. Itmight also be the case that phonologicalawareness partly reflects metacognitiveprocesses assumed to be involved in readingcomprehension.     

Measuring ESL readers’ ability to apply reasoning in reading: a validity study of the TOEFL reading comprehension subtest

This paper reports the results of an attempt to measure English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ability to apply reasoning in reading. The elicitation instrument was an experimental test which was developed from a model of reading comprehension based upon cognitive activities which Piaget referred to as concrete operations. The experimental test delineated Piaget's concrete operations in prose text and set them against difficulty criteria. The experimental test which measured the ability to apply reasoning in reading and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) were administered to a pool of adult ESL subjects. The results indicated that the TOEFL reading comprehension subtest does not measure the ability to apply reasoning in reading; thus, its validity as a measure of reading is in doubt. Significant effects were also shown for the paragraph types and the item types in the experimental test. The items based on the classification paragraphs were significantly more difficult than the items based on the serial paragraphs. In like manner, the items based on the multiplication paragraphs were significantly more difficult than the items based on the addition paragraphs. And finally, the intension questions which concerned the properties of a class were significantly more difficult than the extension questions which dealt with the members of classes. The results of this study indicate a need for further, increased attention to the measurement of reading to solve problems in ESL reading assessment and to the effects of the different structural organizations of ideas (e.g., addition, classification, multiplication, and series) and the interrelations of ideas on the comprehension process. The motivation for this line of research derives from the pragmatic interest of those researchers concerned with the communicative aspects of a text and the manner in which authors organize their ideas. Current research is beginning to explain the complex interaction between text structure and the reader's processing of such structure which further explicates the comprehension process.