Dialect variation,dialect-shifting,and reading comprehension in second grade

The purpose of this study was to examine second graders’ (n = 680) changing spoken nonmainstream American English (NMAE) use in relation to their oral language and reading comprehension achievement. Fall NMAE production was negatively associated with fall achievement scores. NMAE production generally decreased from fall to spring. Students who qualified for the US Free and Reduced Lunch program (FARL) and who had stronger language skills were more likely to decrease their NMAE use (i.e., dialect shifting) than their peers who did not qualify for FARL or their peers with weaker language skills. Dialect shifting for a sub-sample of 102 students who used substantial amounts of NMAE at the beginning of the school year was predicted by school context, controlling for reading and language skills—in general, students who attended more affluent schools dialect shifted to a greater extent than did their peers who attended higher poverty schools. Greater dialect shifting in this group predicted gains in reading comprehension from fall to spring.     

Interpersonal communication skills of deaf adolescents and their relationship to communication history

As part of a longitudinal study, the conversational skills of 67 deaf adolescents were assessed in spoken English, simultaneous communication (SimCom) and American Sign Language (ASL). Two groups of students were identified on the basis of the communication used in their current educational program: a small group of 16 students in programs using spoken English (oral) and a larger group of 51 students in programs using sign communication (bimodal). Students in spoken English programs had good spoken English skills and limited ASL skills, whereas the reverse was true for students in bimodal programs. Most students demonstrated sufficient skill in one or more systems to meet basic interpersonal communications needs, but not those required for advanced academic discourse. In neither group was spoken English related to ASL skill. SimCom skills were strongly related to spoken English in the oral program group and to ASL in the bimodal program group. Spoken English in adolescence was highly predictable from spoken English in early childhood. Within the bimodal program group, students with deaf parents had better SimCom and ASL skills than those with hearing parents. Among bimodal program students with hearing parents, better SimCom skills (but not ASL skills) were associated with earlier introduction to sign communication in school and to mothers' use of sign communication.     

Intervention Provided to Linguistically Diverse Middle School Students with Severe Reading Difficulties

This study investigated the effectiveness of a multicomponent reading intervention implemented with middle school students with severe reading difficulties, all of whom had received remedial and/or special education for several years with minimal response to intervention. Participants were 38 students in grades 6-8 who had severe deficits in word reading, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Most were Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) with identified disabilities. Nearly all demonstrated severely limited oral vocabularies in English and, for ELLs, in both English and Spanish. Students were randomly assigned to receive the research intervention (n = 20) or typical instruction provided in their school's remedial reading or special education classes (n = 18). Students in the treatment group received daily explicit and systematic small-group intervention for 40 minutes over 13 weeks, consisting of a modified version of a phonics-based remedial program augmented with English as a Second Language practices and instruction in vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension strategies. Results indicated that treatment students did not demonstrate significantly higher outcomes in word recognition, comprehension, or fluency than students who received the school's typical instruction and that neither group demonstrated significant growth over the course of the study. Significant correlations were found between scores on teachers' ratings of students' social skills and problem behaviors and posttest decoding and spelling scores, and between English oral vocabulary scores and scores in word identification and comprehension. The researchers hypothesize that middle school students with the most severe reading difficulties, particularly those who are ELLs and those with limited oral vocabularies, may require intervention of considerably greater intensity than that provided in this study. Further research directly addressing features of effective remediation for these students is needed.     

Specialized Study Skills,Developmental-Reading Instruction and Counseling

Ninety beginning freshmen at the University of Missouri-Rolla were utilized as subjects. The sample was sub-divided into three equal groups; the experimental group was composed of pre-registered students enrolled in an intensified instructional program in Study Skills and Developmental Reading and were provided specialized counseling services; one control group was composed of students that had taken part in the pre-registration program at UMR, but were not enrolled in the Study Skills and Developmental Reading instruction and were not provided specialized counseling services; and the other control group was accorded no variation in traditional method of enrollment or instruction. All three groups were matched on their obtained School and College Ability Test scores, English and Mathematics Placement Test scores, college majors and semester hours attempted. All students in these groups were above average in quantitative skills and below average in verbal skills.

The experimental group met for developmental reading and study skills instruction on a bi-weekly basis for no academic credit. The study skills instruction included material dealing specifically with both study habits and study attitudes. The developmental reading sequence consisted of both machine and workbook instruction. The counseling service was provided on a voluntary basis and was initiated at the time of pre-registration. A statistically significant difference in grade point average (GPA) was discerned after the first semester of the project. While no significant differences in GPA existed after the second and third semesters of the investigation, the attrition rate was considerably lower for the experimental group than for the control groups. Highly significant gains were evidenced in reading rates with no significant loss in reading comprehension.     

How socioeconomic status,executive functioning and verbal interactions contribute to early academic achievement in Chinese children

The present study investigated the relative importance of executive functioning, parent–child verbal interactions, phonological awareness and visual skills on reading and mathematics for Chinese children from low-versus middle-socio economic status (SES) backgrounds. A total of 199 kindergarten children were assessed on executive functioning, verbal interactions, phonological awareness, visual skills, mathematics and word reading in Chinese and English. Results revealed that low-SES children exhibited lower levels of cognitive-linguistic skills, verbal interactions, reading and mathematics achievement than their middle-SES counterparts. Path analyses also indicated that executive functioning and verbal interactions made significant and direct contributions to mathematics, and indirect contributions to reading through phonological awareness. These results suggest that executive functioning and verbal interactions provide the foundation for phonological awareness and visual skills, which in turn affect reading and mathematics achievement. Overall, findings underscore the potential importance of SES inequalities, cognitive-linguistic skills and parental verbal input to their children for early reading and mathematics achievement.     

Book matters: The effect of Cocky’s Reading Express on student performance

The literature argues that children are more likely to succeed academically if they acquire strong reading skills and a love of reading at a young age. In this paper, I evaluate an early childhood literacy program, Cocky’s Reading Express (CRE), to understand how reading events at school and the gifts of books impact learning. Combining the CRE visit records with administrative student data, I find that CRE leads to 0.02–0.03 of a standard deviation increase in statewide English Language Arts test scores among low-income students one year after the visit and find suggestive evidence that CRE improves the math scores for subgroups of students in poverty. In particular, the CRE effect varies based on locality and access to reading materials, with a larger effect on students residing in metropolitan areas or close to public libraries. However, the positive effects on low-income students diminish over time; CRE does not show impacts on the scores of students from better-off families either.     

Making the most of summer school: a meta-analytic and narrative review

Summer schools serve multiple purposes for students, families, educators, and communities. The current need for summer programs is driven by changes in American families and by calls for an educational system that is competitive globally and embodies higher academic standards. A research synthesis is reported that used both meta-analytic and narrative procedures to integrate the results of 93 evaluations of summer school. Results revealed that summer programs focusing on remedial or accelerated learning or other goals have a positive impact on the knowledge and skills of participants. Although all students benefit from summer school, students from middle-class homes show larger positive effects than students from disadvantaged homes. Remedial programs have larger effects when the program is relatively small and when instruction is individualized. Remedial programs may have more positive effects on math than on reading. Requiring parent involvement also appears related to more effective programs. Students at all grade levels benefit from remedial summer school, but students in the earliest grades and in secondary school may benefit most. These and other findings are examined for their implications for future research, public policy, and the implementation of summer programs. Based on these results, our recommendations to policy makers are that summer programs (a) contain substantial components aimed at teaching math and reading and (b) include rigorous evaluations, but also (c) permit local control of curricula and delivery systems. Funds should be set aside to foster participation in summer programs, especially among disadvantaged youth. Program implementers should (a) begin summer program planning earlier in the year, (b) strive for continuity of staffing and programs across years, (c) use summer school in conjunction with summer staff development opportunities, and (d) begin integrating summer school experiences with those that occur during the regular school year.     

浅谈高中英语阅读理解

阅读理解在中学英语学习中越来越重要，是学好英语的关键。科学的阅读技巧和方法是英语科高考的保证，也是今后更高层次学习的基础和必需。     

Fostering the Development of Reading Skill through Supplemental Instruction: Results for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students

This paper reports the effects of a two-year supplemental reading program for kindergarten through third grade students that focused on the development of decoding skills and reading fluency. Two hundred ninety-nine students were identified for participation and were randomly assigned to the supplemental instruction or to a no-treatment control group. Participants' reading ability was assessed in the fall, before the first year of the intervention, and again in the spring of years 1, 2, 3, and 4. At the end of the two-year intervention, students who received the supplemental instruction performed significantly better than their matched controls on measures of entry level reading skills (i.e., letter-word identification and word attack), oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The benefits of the instruction were still clear two years after instruction had ended with students in the supplemental-instruction condition still showing significantly greater growth on the measure of oral reading fluency. Hispanic students benefited from the supplemental reading instruction in English as much as or more than non-Hispanic students. Results support the value of supplemental instruction focused on the development of word recognition skills for helping students at risk for reading failure.     

Reading,syntactic, and working memory skills of bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian children

The purpose of the study was to examine the nature of language, memory, and reading skills of bilingual students and to determine the relationship between reading problems in English and reading problems in Portuguese. The study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 37 bilingual Portuguese-Canadian children, aged 9–12 years. English was their main instructional language and Portuguese was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program at school where they were taught to read and write Portuguese. The children were administered word and pseudoword reading, language, and working memory tasks in English and Portuguese. The majority of the children (67%) showed at least average proficiency in both languages. The children who had low reading scores in English also had significantly lower scores on the Portuguese tasks. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudoword reading, working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The Portuguese-Canadian children who were normally achieving readers did not differ from a comparison group of monolingual English speaking normally achieving readers except that the bilingual children had significantly lower scores on the English syntactic awareness task. The bilingual reading disabled children had similar scores to the monolingual reading disabled children on word reading and working memory but lower scores on the syntactic awareness task. However, the bilingual reading disabled children had significantlyhigher scores than the monolingual English speaking reading disabled children on the English pseudoword reading test and the English spelling task, perhaps reflecting a positive transfer from the more regular grapheme phoneme conversion rules of Portuguese. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of reading skills. In both English and Portuguese, reading difficulties appear to be strongly related to deficits in phonological processing.     

高中英语阅读教学中批判性阅读应用研究

对于学习二语的学生来说,阅读被认为是听说读写四种技能中较为重要的技能。本文旨在调查高中英语批判性阅读现状,着重研究在高一英语阅读课堂上是否实施批判性阅读教学及学生在阅读过程中是否使用批判性阅读策略。     

浅析高中生英语阅读自我概念和成就动机的提高

文章分析影响高中生英语阅读的情形,探讨提高高中生英语阅读的自我概念和成就动机技巧,目的在于帮助学生克服英语阅读障碍,使其逐步养成良好的阅读习惯,走出阅读误区,从而不断提高英语阅读能力.     

The interrelationships among preschool predictors of reading acquisition for German children

A sample of 169 German children were tested in general verbal ability, verbal memory span, phonological awareness, lexical access speed and accuracy, and letter knowledge in preschool. These tests were used as independent measures predicting performance on second grade reading comprehension, word discrimination, and word decoding speed. Tests of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness were also given over a year later in elementary school. After determining that the influence of verbal ability, memory capacity, and phonological awareness on reading comprehension was comparable when measured in preschool and elementary school, the effects of all preschool measures on the three dependent reading measures were assessed. These analyses revealed differential main effects and interactions for the three dependent measures. However, a significant three-way interaction among lexical access, memory capacity, and phonological awareness was found for all three reading measures. These results indicate that the interaction and subsequent effects of these linguistic skills precedes and influences reading acquisition. This is contrary to the view that these skills interact as a result of reading experience. The implications of these results, as well as comparisons of conducting such studies with German rather than English speaking children are discussed.     

Fourth grade follow-up of reading and spelling skills of French immersion students

Twenty-one French immersion and traditional English program students, originally assessed in first grade, were retested on single-word reading and spelling in fourth grade. The immersion students, who had shown equivalence with the control students on most written language measures in first grade, maintained their equivalence in fourth grade. Furthermore, they demonstrated slight superiority over the English program students in reading non-words. Their first-grade advantage in linguistic analysis ability may have helped their written English skills to develop comparably to those of the control subjects despite much less exposure to, and instruction in, written English. It is suggested that although no other advantage was seen at this time from their early heightened linguistic analysis ability, the French immersion subjects may surpass the English program students once they can join their linguistic analysis skill to greater expereince with written English.This research was funded by Grant A2008 from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. We would like to thank Dr. Barry Vail and the principals, staffs, and students of the Durham Board of Education, Ontario, for their generous cooperation in this study.     

Linguistic Diversity and the Development of Reading Skills: A Longitudinal Study

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the same component processes are involved in reading acquisition for children with varying levels of proficiency in English in kindergarten and the first grade. The performance of 858 children was examined on tasks assessing basic literacy skills, phonological processing, verbal memory, and syntactic awareness. There were 727 children who were native English speakers (NS children) and 131 children who spoke English as a second language (ESL children). Although ESL children performed more poorly than NS children on most measures of phonological and linguistic processing in kindergarten and first grade, the acquisition of basic literacy skills for children from both language groups developed in a similar manner. Furthermore, alphabetic knowledge and phonological processing were important contributors to early reading skill for children from both language groups. Therefore, children learning English may acquire literacy skills in English in a similar manner to NS children, although their alphabetic knowledge may precede and facilitate the acquisition of phonological awareness in English.     

Teaching early numeracy to students with autism using a school staff delivery model

Mathematics is one of the core school subjects in the UK and an emphasis is placed on developing pupils’ mathematical competencies throughout all key stages. Despite that, the attainment of students with disabilities in mathematics remains low. The current study explored ways in which the Teaching Early Numeracy to children with Developmental Disabilities (TEN-DD) programme could be implemented by teaching staff in a special school in the UK to improve the numeracy skills of students with autism. Adaptations to the delivery of the programme were made during the study as a result of continued collaboration with the participating school. The findings suggest that it may be feasible to implement the TEN-DD programme using a school staff delivery model and it may help learners improve their early numeracy skills. Practical aspects of TEN-DD’s implementation highlighted the need to incorporate more systematic adaptations for minimally verbal students, as well as for learners who might need additional training with prerequisite skills.     

Examining Gifted Students Who Are Economically At-Risk to Determine Factors that Influence Their Early Reading Success

The aim of this study was to determine whether the Frequency with which parents read to their children, Preschool Exposure and the initial Age that students “who are economically at-risk” were first exposed to significant literacy activities at home or in a preschool setting affected their reading grades. Students “who are economically at-risk,” for the scope of this study, are those students whose family incomes qualify them to receive either free or reduced lunches. The criteria set forth by the United States Department of Agriculture’s School Lunch Program and Child Nutrition Web site (United States Department of Agriculture, 2005) was used to determine whether families were qualified to receive reductions in the price of their school meals. Parents of students from six southeast Alabama schools were selected to participate in the study. All six schools administered the Questioning, Understanding, Enriching, Seeking and Thinking (QUEST) program for gifted or academically successful students. The subjects were 84 parents/families with public school children who are economically at-risk and participated in the QUEST program. Data were gathered using a questionnaire developed by the researcher. Instructional implications for this research study are to (1) improve reading instruction for economically at-risk students within our nation’s elementary schools; (2) equip parents with teaching tools and theories for providing critical pre-reading skills to their young children and (3) to provide sound research for teacher educators to base their instruction to preservice teachers preparing to teach students who are economically at-risk.     

Accelerating decoding-related skills in poor readers learning a foreign language: a computer-based intervention

The results of Fast ForWord® training on English decoding-related skills were examined. Finnish fifth-grade students were identified as having reading fluency problems and poor skills in English as a foreign language learned at school and were randomly assigned to either a training group (TRG) or a control group. The TRG (n?=?13) received 50?min of daily computer program-based training for a period of approximately 10 weeks. Students in the first control group (n?=?11) received the school’s regular instructional programme. A second control group was composed of 14 average readers. The students’ English skills were examined in pre-test, post-test and follow-up measurements. The TRG students saw an acceleration in decoding-related skills. The educational implications of the results are discussed.     

The effectiveness of computer-based EFL instruction among primary school students in Israel

This paper presents an effectiveness study of a computer-based English reading program, the Waterford Early Reading Program (WERP), among first and second grade students in Israel. Students who used the program were compared to a control group only receiving English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction as part of the school curriculum. First grade students who used the software during the study period experienced significantly greater gains than control group students on all four measures of reading ability. Second grade students in the treatment group experienced greater gains than control group students on the nonsense word and phoneme segmentation measures. These results indicate that adaptive English reading software has a place in an EFL education system, especially among young students with complex linguistic backgrounds. Adaptive programs like WERP may produce better EFL results than non-adaptive programs because they are able to adjust based in part on a student’s linguistic proficiency.     

Cognitive skills and literacy performance of Chinese adolescents with and without dyslexia

The present study sought to identify cognitive abilities that might distinguish Hong Kong Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and to assess how these abilities were associated with Chinese word reading, word dictation, and reading comprehension. The cognitive skills of interest were morphological awareness, visual-orthographic knowledge, rapid naming, and verbal working memory. A total of 90 junior secondary school students, 30 dyslexic, 30 chronological age controls, and 30 reading level controls was tested on a range of cognitive and literacy tasks. Dyslexic students were less competent than the control students in all cognitive and literacy measures. The regression analyses also showed that verbal working memory, rapid naming, morphological awareness, and visual-orthographic knowledge were significantly associated with literacy performance. Findings underscore the importance of these cognitive skills for Chinese literacy acquisition. Overall, this study highlights the persistent difficulties of Chinese dyslexic adolescents who seem to have multiple causes for reading and spelling difficulties.