The Intelligence Examination for High-School Freshmen

Abstract

This study examined the reading achievement patterns of impulsives and reflectives under varying phonics approaches in beginning reading instruction. The study used 170 second grade students who were classified as having an impulsive or reflective cognitive style and as receiving phonics instruction via an analytic or synthetic approach. Achievement in vocabulary and comprehension was measured by the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test. As such, the investigation was a post-hoc aptitude-treatment interaction study employing a step- down analysis model. Results supported the existing body of research which indicates that reflectives tend to be better readers than impulsives. However, multivariate analyses indicated reflectives in the synthetic approach performed significantly better than impulsives only in vocabulary. Under an analytic approach, the reverse was true; reflectives were significantly better only on the variable of comprehension. While the limitations of the study should be considered, it was suggested that the word recognition and vocabulary skills of reflective readers could be enhanced by beginning reading programs emphasizing a more intensive phonics approach.     

Building Reading Fluency in Developmental Readers

An increasing number of college students enrolling with poor reading fluency and comprehension skills pose a significant challenge to the college reading field in the absence of a strong understanding of the construct of reading fluency and its instruction. In order to contribute to this area of college reading, this article discusses instructional components that have been found to be effective in previous research in terms of their effectiveness and applicability for building fluent reading skills in struggling college readers.     

Development of comprehension monitoring in beginner readers

The current study was designed to understand the development of comprehension monitoring among beginner readers from first to third grade, and to determine the extent to which first graders’ comprehension monitoring predicts reading comprehension in grade three. Participants were 113 children (57% female) from four US states who were followed from Grade 1 (M = 7 years, SD = 4 months) to Grade 3 (M = 9 years, SD = 4 months). Measures included decoding, vocabulary, working memory, comprehension monitoring, and reading comprehension. Children’s ability to monitor comprehension grew significantly from first to third grade, with a deceleration in growth over time. In addition, comprehension monitoring in Grade 1 made a significant contribution to reading comprehension in Grade 3, even after controlling for decoding, vocabulary, and working memory. Together, these findings supplement our understanding of young readers’ development of comprehension monitoring as well as its association with reading comprehension at a later time. Practical implications of the results in the context of providing support for higher-level language skills in beginning reading instruction are discussed.     

Scaffolding or Distracting: CD-ROM Storybooks and Young Readers

CD-ROM storybooks, often referred to as electronic texts, e-books, and interactive stories, are learning tools with supplemental features such as automatic reading of text, sound effects, word pronunciations, and graphic animations which support the development of reading skills and comprehension in beginning readers. Some CD-ROM storybooks also provide a definition of the word to aid in vocabulary acquisition. However, over-reliance on these features may hinder development of a young reader’s decoding skills and use of context cues. Many CD-ROM storybooks contain incidental hotspots, such as dancing flowers and hidden characters, which distract from the storyline and take reader’s attention away from comprehension. These incidental features may prolong the reading event causing fatigue and loss of focus. In sum, the features provided by CD-ROM storybooks offer valuable support for the acquisition of reading skills when coupled with supervision to monitor overuse and direct instruction in comprehension strategies.     

The impact of tier 1 reading instruction on reading outcomes for students in Grades 4–12: A meta-analysis

Understanding the efficacy of evidence-based reading practices delivered in the Tier 1 (i.e. general classroom) setting is critical to successful implementation of multi-tiered systems, meeting a diverse range of student learning needs, and providing high quality reading instruction across content areas. This meta-analysis presents evidence on the effects of Tier 1 reading instruction on the reading outcomes of students in Grades 4–12, and a synthesis of effects for students identified as struggling readers. Results from this meta-analysis of 37 publications conducted between 2000 and 2015 reveal significant, positive effects for Tier 1 reading instruction on comprehension and vocabulary outcomes. A synthesis of the results for struggling readers indicates that they maintained or improved reading comprehension over struggling readers receiving typical instruction.     

Transfer of a Listening Comprehension Strategy to Independent Reading in First-Grade Students

Instruction in narrative text structure on first graders' listening and reading comprehension was examined with a view to documenting strategy instruction and transfer of learning in beginning readers. Of interest was whether or not first-grade students (n=35) would, following instruction within the context of listening to stories, gain in listening comprehension and transfer this knowledge to support reading comprehension. A comparison group (n=31) received basal activities including listening to and reading stories. Results support teaching text structure concepts to beginning readers. At post-test, the intervention group demonstrated significantly higher listening comprehension, but not free recall, than the comparison group. Persistent group differences were found for reading comprehension. Intervention group students demonstrated superior comprehension in relation to all story elements and more frequently displayed metalinguistic awareness of text structure by labeling and giving examples of story structure concepts.     

Difficult Words and the Beginner

ABSTRACT

The authors investigated the effects of a 5-week note-taking skills instructional program on note-taking and reading comprehension performance of elementary students. The participants included 349 fourth-grade students from 2 elementary schools in Taiwan. The Note-Taking Instruction group received approximately 40 min of note-taking skills instruction per week for 5 weeks in contrast to the free note-taking group and the free-recall writing group who did not receive any instruction. A note-taking evaluation task and a comprehension test were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the instruction on students’ performance in note taking and reading comprehension, respectively. The study yielded 2 findings: first, teaching students a note-taking strategy significantly improved their performance in note taking and reading comprehension, and second, poor readers showed the greatest gains in note-taking skills with instruction.     

Predicting reading comprehension of narrative and expository texts among Hebrew-speaking readers with and without a reading disability

The aim of this study was to investigate which cognitive and reading-related linguistic skills contribute to reading comprehension of narrative and expository texts. The study examined an Israeli national database of Hebrew-speaking readers in fourth grade, from which a subsample of 190 readers with a reading disability (RD) and 190 readers with no reading disability (NRD) was selected. IQ, text reading, reading comprehension, and various linguistic and cognitive skills were assessed. Structural equation modeling results suggested that both groups rely on lower level processes such as text reading accuracy and orthographic knowledge for reading comprehension of both genres. However, RD readers depend more heavily upon these lower level processes compared with NRD for whom higher level processes contribute more to reading comprehension. The various variables accounted for only 25-34% of reading comprehension variance, and possible explanations are discussed. Taken together, these findings highlight the variety of factors influencing reading comprehension and its multidimensional nature.     

The Simple View of Reading: Is It Valid for Different Types of Alphabetic Orthographies?

We present a meta-analysis to test the validity of the Simple View of Reading Gough & Tunmer (Remedial and Special Education, 7:6–10, 1986) for beginner readers of English and other, more transparent, orthographies. Our meta-analytic approach established that the relative influence of decoding and linguistic comprehension on reading comprehension is different for readers of different types of orthography during the course of early reading development. Furthermore, we identified key differences in the relations among different measures of decoding and reading comprehension between readers of English and other more transparent orthographies. We discuss the implications for reading instruction and the diagnosis of reading difficulties, as well as our theoretical understanding of how component skills influence reading comprehension level.     

Is there a thing called dyslexia?

A controversy whether developmental dyslexia is qualitatively different from other forms of reading disability has existed among reading specialists for many years because poor readers, regardless of the labels attached to them, resemble each other symptomatically (i.e., in reading achievement). For this reason, it is difficult to establish a priori criteria based on symptoms to identify dyslexia and compare it with other forms of reading disability. One possible solution to this impasse is to see if poor readers differ in the etiology of their reading disability and, if they do, then to see whether one group of poor readers fits the traditional definition of dyslexia. This strategy was adopted in the present study. In this paper, it was hypothesized that the etiology of dyslexia is different from that of other forms of reading disability because there is a difference in the components that malfunction in dyslexia and other forms of reading disability. Studies have shown that the two components that account for a large proportion of variance in reading are decoding and comprehension. Previous studies also indicate that dyslexic children are deficient in decoding skills but not necessarily in comprehension. In this study, reading-disabled children were divided into two groups on the basis of their listening comprehension. Children whose listening comprehension was at or above grade level were placed in one group; poor readers with below-grade-level listening comprehension were placed in the second group. Both groups, however, were matched for reading comprehension. The two groups and a control group of normal readers were administered a number of tasks that were designed to assess the efficiency of the components of reading. It was found that poor readers with normal listening comprehension were deficient in tasks that involved grapheme-phoneme conversion (Component I, decoding). When tested on tasks that minimized decoding requirements, their reading comprehension was comparable to that of normal readers. In contrast, the group with sub-average listening comprehension was poor in measures of reading comprehension, even when decoding requirements were minimal. With the exception of very few children, this group also had adequate decoding skills. Because poor readers with normal listening comprehension had average or above average IQ, they conform to the traditional definition of dyslexia. Poor readers with below average listening comprehension had below average IQ and could be considered as “general reading backward.” It was, therefore, concluded that the etiology of developmental dyslexia is different from that of general reading backwardness. In this paper, the termetiology refers to proximal causal factors such as decoding and comprehension and not to distal causal factors such as genetic and neurological characteristics.     

Language abilities and progress in a direct instruction reading program for students with learning disabilities

Direct instruction reading programs have been found to be a successful way to teach reading to many, but not all, students with learning disabilities. This study investigated whether reading improvement for students with learning disabilities receiving reading instruction through a direct instruction reading program might be related to their language abilities. The reading progress of 26 students (19 male, 7 female), 7 to 10 years old, was measured over 2 years. In addition, phonological and syntactic abilities were assessed. The results indicated that phonological ability was related to progress in word attack skills and that syntactic ability was related to improvement in comprehension skills. These results have implications for the reading instruction of students with learning disabilities.     

How children learn to read and why they fail

The present article considers the contrast between conceptions of reading as a natural and as an unnatural act, relying on the simple view of reading as a theoretical framework (Gough and Tunmer 1986). According to the simple view, reading comprehension is a product of both listening comprehension and decoding. Here it is argued that the comprehension aspect of reading depends on those same—natural—forces that govern acquisition of spoken language, whereas decoding depends on explicit tutelage, with little evidence that children will induce the cipher from simple exposure to written words and their pronunciations (sight-word instruction). Rejecting both sight-word and phonics instruction as inadequate in and of themselves, evidence is reviewed suggesting that successful readers require explicit awareness of the phonological structure of spoken words, which can and should be taught in kindergarten, prior to formal reading instruction. Beyond this point, reading success depends on a modicum of phonics instruction together with extensive practice with reading itself.     

Not all reading disabilities are alike

In this article, reading disability is defined broadly to refer to below-average achievement in reading comprehension as assessed by a standardized test. With our research we tried to answer the question of whether all children with reading disability share a common etiology of deficient phonology, or constitute heterogeneous groups. The answer to this question was sought in four studies that examined reading disabilities from the perspective of componential skills of reading. In Part 1, the results of the first study are reported. A principal-components analysis of the performance of 139 children from Grades 3, 4, and 6 on reading-related tasks yielded two factors: decoding and comprehension. However, factor analyses conducted for each grade separately indicated that orthographic skill and processing speed could possibly constitute a third component. The orthography-speed factor emerged as a factor only in the 6th grade. Part 2 of this article reports the findings of three studies that analyzed the componential skills profiles of poor readers. It was found that the poor readers constituted heterogeneous groups and that four different types of poor readers could be identified with deficiency in any one of the following skills: (a) decoding only, (b) comprehension only, (c) a combination of decoding and comprehension, and (d) a combination of orthographic processing and reading speed. It was also found that the criteria used in selecting poor readers influenced the distribution of the ratio of the four types of poor readers within any given group.     

Differential growth patterns in emerging reading skills of Turkish-German bilingual and German monolingual primary school students

Students from Turkish-speaking families are the largest minority language group in Germany. Yet, little is known about this group’s literacy development. Using data from a 3-year longitudinal study, we examined whether the same base reading skills are involved in early reading comprehension of 100 Turkish-German bilingual and 69 German monolingual children. We applied a basic theoretical model of reading development to examine how emerging literacy develops for monolingual compared to bilingual children. Both the bilingual and monolingual children in this sample developed the investigated base reading skills at the same rate. However, the relations among phonological awareness, German vocabulary, and word decoding showed differential patterns in the development of German reading comprehension skills for the two groups: monolingual children appeared to make use of their phonological awareness skills more, whereas reading comprehension depended more on vocabulary skills for bilingual readers. Our findings indicate that bilingual emerging readers require specialized models of reading development to account for their unique routes into reading comprehension. The results of the study point to a need for increased attention to vocabulary building in the early phases of literacy acquisition for bilingual children.     

An examination of the relationship between reading comprehension, higher-level and lower-level reading sub-skills in adults

Using a large adult reading database, we examined the relationships between high-level and low-level reading skills and between multiple reading skills, general cognitive ability, and reading comprehension ability. A principal components analysis found partial dissociability between higher-level skills including reading comprehension, vocabulary and print exposure, and lower-level skills including decoding and spelling in adult readers. Furthermore, follow-up regression analyses showed that the high-level sub-skills (e.g., vocabulary and print exposure) were significantly better predictors of reading comprehension ability than the low-level skills (e.g., decoding and spelling) in adult skilled readers. These findings suggest that higher-level and lower-level skills are dissociable in adult skilled readers and that higher-level skills are more strongly related to comprehension ability in adults.     

Using Peer Coaches to Build Oral Reading Fluency

Fluent oral reading is essential for success in elementary school. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of enhanced reading fluency instruction for struggling readers. The intervention was provided to small groups of students at risk for reading difficulties. Students were assessed on key early literacy skills. Second-grade students who were at risk for reading failure and who received supplemental intervention scored higher on measures of fluency than students who received only typical classroom instruction; the effects of enhanced fluency instruction were evident across different dosages for many children at risk for reading failure. In addition, statistically significant improvements and relationships were evident for oral reading fluency and comprehension. We discuss guidelines for developing and using the intervention in other classrooms.     

Fostering literacy learning in supportive contexts.

Young children with learning disabilities typically encounter difficulty with academic tasks requiring intentional effort and effective use of metacognitive skills--qualities that competent readers and writers possess. In response to these difficulties, special educators often modify literacy instruction, isolating the "basic skills" of literacy (such as decoding and penmanship) from meaningful reading and writing activities. Such instruction contributes to impoverished notions of literacy and exacerbates problems of metacognition. The two research programs reported here challenge the conventional literacy instruction provided to many young students with LD. The programs are rooted in developmental and cognitive theory and research, as well as emergent literacy theory. The social nature of learning is emphasized, with a focus on the role of the teacher, the form of discourse, and the role of text in literacy instruction. Results show that children with learning disabilities benefit from strategy instruction occurring within classroom cultures that support collaborative discourse, the flexible application of comprehension strategies, and appropriate, meaningful opportunities for reading and writing.     

Relations among reading skills and sub-skills and text-level reading proficiency in developing readers

Despite the recent attention to text reading fluency, few studies have studied the construct of oral reading rate and accuracy in connected text in a model that simultaneously examines many of the important variables in a multi-leveled fashion with young readers. Using Structural Equation Modeling, this study examined the measurement and structural relations of the rate and accuracy of variables important in early reading: phonemic blending, letter sounds, phonograms, decoding, single-word reading, reading comprehension, and text reading as well as reading comprehension among second grade readers. The effects from phonemic blending fluency and letter sound fluency to decoding were completely mediated by phonogram fluency, decoding fluency, single-word reading fluency, and reading comprehension had direct effects on the text reading fluency of the second grade students. Understanding the relationship among the many component skills of readers early in their reading development is important because a deficiency in any of the component skills has the potential to affect the development of other skills and, ultimately, the development of the child as a proficient reader.     

A Survey of the Instructional Practices of Grade 5 Teachers Nominated as Effective in Promoting Literacy

Grade 5 teachers, who were nominated by their supervisors as effective in educating their students to be readers and writers, responded to questionnaires about their practice. The teachers claimed commitments to (a) extensive reading at the heart of their reading instruction; (b) diverse instructional activities (e.g., whole-group instruction, small-group instruction, cooperative grouping, individual reading); (c) teaching of both word-level and higher order (e.g., comprehension, critical thinking) skills and processes; (d) development of student background knowledge; (e) student writing, including teaching of mechanics and higher order composition skills (e.g., planning, drafting, revising as a process); (f) extensive evaluation of literacy competencies using diverse assessments; (g) integration of literacy and content-area instruction; and (h) commitment to practices that promote student motivation for reading and writing. Excellent literacy instruction is a balanced articulation of many components, including whole language experiences and skills instruction.     

Lexical quality and executive control predict children’s first and second language reading comprehension

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years, SD = 5 months) learning to read Dutch in the Netherlands. Bilingual children showed lower Dutch vocabulary, syntactic integration and reading comprehension skills, but better decoding skills than their monolingual peers. There were no differences in working memory or inhibition. Multigroup path analysis showed relatively invariant connections between predictors and reading comprehension for monolingual and bilingual readers. For both groups, there was a direct effect of lexical quality on reading comprehension. In addition, lexical quality and executive control indirectly influenced reading comprehension via syntactic integration. The groups differed in that inhibition more strongly predicted syntactic integration for bilingual than for monolingual children. For a subgroup of bilingual children, for whom home language vocabulary data were available (n = 56), there was an additional positive effect of home language vocabulary on second language reading comprehension. Together, the results suggest that similar processes underlie reading comprehension in first and second language readers, but that syntactic integration requires more executive control in second language reading. Moreover, bilingual readers additionally benefit from first language vocabulary to arrive at second language reading comprehension.