Predicting word-level reading fluency outcomes in three contrastive groups: Remedial and computer-assisted remedial reading intervention,and mainstream instruction

The aim of the longitudinal intervention study was to build a model of predictive values of reading fluency in three contrastive reading groups: remedial and computer-assisted remedial reading intervention, and mainstream instruction, to identify the most effective type of intervention for children with different profiles of compromised pre-reading skills. The participants were 7-year-old Finnish school beginners (N = 166). Two remedial interventions took place in four weekly sessions of 45 min over a period of 28 weeks in Grade 1. For a child with deficits in the core pre-reading skills (letter knowledge, phonological awareness or rapid automatized naming), the computer-assisted remedial intervention would be the most successful in remediating reading fluency in the transparent Finnish language. Furthermore, children in the computer-assisted intervention were able to reach the average level of the mainstream children by the end of Grade 2.     

Interventions for reading difficulties: a comparison of response to intervention by ELL and EFL struggling readers

This article explores whether struggling readers from different primary language backgrounds differ in response to phonologically based remediation. Following random assignment to one of three reading interventions or to a special education reading control program, reading and reading-related outcomes of 166 struggling readers were assessed before, during, and following 105 intervention hours. Struggling readers met criteria for reading disability, were below average in oral language and verbal skills, and varied in English as a first language (EFL) versus English-language learner (ELL) status. The research-based interventions proved superior to the special education control on both reading outcomes and rate of growth. No differences were revealed for children of EFL or ELL status in intervention outcomes or growth during intervention. Oral language abilities at entry were highly predictive of final outcomes and of reading growth during intervention, with greater language impairment being associated with greater growth.     

Intensive remedial instruction for children with severe reading disabilities: immediate and long-term outcomes from two instructional approaches

Sixty children with severe reading disabilities were randomly assigned to two instructional programs that incorporated principles of effective instruction but differed in depth and extent of instruction in phonemic awareness and phonemic decoding skills. All children received 67.5 hours of one-to-one instruction in two 50-minute sessions per day for 8 weeks. Both instructional programs produced very large improvements in generalized reading skills that were stable over a 2-year follow-up period. When compared to the growth in broad reading ability that the participants made during their previous 16 months in learning disabilities resource rooms, their growth during the intervention produced effect sizes of 4.4 for one of the interventions and 3.9 for the other. Although the children's average scores on reading accuracy and comprehension were in the average range at the end of the follow-up period, measures of reading rate showed continued severe impairment for most of the children. Within 1 year following the intervention, 40% of the children were found to be no longer in need of special education services. The two methods of instruction were not differentially effective for children who entered the study with different levels of phonological ability, and the best overall predictors of long-term growth were resource room teacher ratings of attention/behavior, general verbal ability, and prior levels of component reading skills.     

Toward a resolution of inconsistencies in the phonological deficit theory of reading disorders: phonological reading difficulties are more severe in high-IQ poor readers

This study examined whether high- and low-IQ poor readers differed in patterns of reading performance. Ten-year-old poor readers with IQ scores of 110 and higher showed difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, failing to show an advantage in reading high-frequency regular versus irregular words and showing impaired nonword reading accuracy for their reading age. However, poor readers with IQ scores of 90 and below showed a more phonological approach to reading, with better reading of regular than irregular words of both high and low frequency, and with nonword reading skills slower than, but as accurate as, those of reading-age controls. We concluded that the high-IQ poor readers experienced difficulty in taking a phonological approach to reading, whereas the low-IQ poor readers had much less marked phonological problems, supporting Stanovich's phonological-core variable-difference model.     

Individual and group sensitivity to remedial reading program design: examining reading gains across three middle school reading projects

The purpose of this project was to examine group- and individual-level responses by struggling adolescents readers (6th–8th grades; N = 155) to three different modalities of the same reading program, Reading Achievement Multi-Component Program. The three modalities differ in the combination of reading components (phonological decoding, spelling, fluency, comprehension) that are taught and their organization. Latent change scores were used to examine changes in phonological decoding, fluency, and comprehension for each modality at the group level. In addition, individual students were classified as gainers versus non-gainers (a reading level increase of a year or more vs. less than 1 year) so that characteristics of gainers and differential sensitivity to instructional modality could be investigated. Findings from both group and individual analyses indicated that reading outcomes were related to modalities of reading instruction. Furthermore, differences in reading gains were seen between students who began treatment with higher reading scores than those with lower reading scores; dependent on modality of treatment. Results, examining group and individual analyses similarities and differences, and the effect the different modalities have on reading outcomes for older struggling readers will be discussed.     

Correction to: Assessing the direct and indirect effects of metalinguistic awareness to the reading comprehension skills of struggling adult readers

Reading and Writing - In the original publication of the article.     

Effects of a peer-mediated phonological skill and reading comprehension program on reading skill acquisition for middle school students with reading disabilities

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a peer-mediated instructional approach on the teaching of phonological skills and reading comprehension for middle school (sixth- to eighth-grade) students with reading disabilities. All students (n = 38) were identified as having learning disabilities and reading at the third-grade level or below. One group was taught using a peer-mediated phonological skill program, Linguistics Skills Training (LST), and a peer-mediated reading comprehension program, Peer Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS). The contrast group was taught in the more traditional whole-class format using a widely implemented remedial reading program. The results showed significant differences between conditions, with students receiving the LST/PALS instruction outperforming the contrast group on Letter-Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension using the Woodcock-Johnson Test of Achievement-III. Furthermore, large effect sizes for growth were found on Letter-Word Identification, Word Attack, and Passage Comprehension for the LST/PALS treatment group. No differences were found between conditions for reading fluency. Findings are discussed in regard to instruction delivery format (peer tutoring vs. whole class) with respect to best practices for middle school students with reading disabilities.     

Goals,data use,and instruction: the effect of a teacher professional development program on reading achievement

In this paper, we investigated whether student reading comprehension could be improved with help of a teacher Professional Development (PD) program targeting goals, data use, and instruction. The effect of this PD program on 2nd- and 3rd-grade student achievement was examined using a pretest-posttest control group design. Applying propensity score matching, 35 groups in the experimental condition were matched to 35 control groups. Students in the experimental condition (n = 420) scored significantly higher on a standardized assessment than the control condition (n = 399), the effect size being d = .37. No differential effects of the PD program were found in relation to initial reading performance or grade. Different model specifications yielded similar albeit smaller effect sizes (d = .29 and d = .30). At the end of the program, students in the experimental condition were more than half a year ahead of students in the control condition.     

Effects of a phonological awareness program on English reading and spelling among Hong Kong Chinese ESL children

This study investigated the effects of a 12-week language-enriched phonological awareness instruction on 76 Hong Kong young children who were learning English as a second language. The children were assigned randomly to receive the instruction on phonological awareness skills embedded in vocabulary learning activities or comparison instruction which consisted of vocabulary learning and writing tasks but no direct instruction in phonological awareness skills. They were tested on receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness at the syllable, rhyme and phoneme levels, reading, and spelling in English before and after the program implementation. The results indicated that children who received the phonological awareness instruction performed significantly better than the comparison group on English word reading, spelling, phonological awareness at all levels and expressive vocabulary on the posttest when age, general intelligence and the pretest scores were controlled statistically. The findings suggest that phonological awareness instruction embedded in vocabulary learning activities might be beneficial to kindergarteners learning English as a second language.     

The effects of different approaches to reading instruction on letter detection tasks in normally achieving and low achieving readers

The present study used two letter detection tasks, the classic missing letter effect paradigm and a single word versus familiar word compound version of this paradigm, to study bottom-up and top–down processes involved in reading in normally achieving as compared to low achieving elementary school readers. The research participants were children in grades first to sixth who had been taught to read by three approaches to reading instruction (ARI): the whole language/global approach, the phonic/synthetic approach or the eclectic approach. Thus, the study attempted to clarify how different ARIs activate these processes in these two types of readers. The main hypothesis was that since low achieving readers rely on top–down processes for word recognition (see, e.g., Stanovich, 1980), the whole language ARI will reduce the difference in bottom-up tasks between them and the normally achieving readers. In the two experiments included in the study, participants were required to perform a letter detection task while reading short texts in Hebrew for comprehension. Contrary to this study hypotheses, the main finding was that the whole language ARI does not compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processes of low achieving readers. Moreover, the results of this study imply that any improvement in basic processes involved in reading proficiency produced by the whole language ARI for both the normal and the low achieving readers dissipates by grade three.     

Reading achievement in relation to phonological coding and awareness in deaf readers: a meta-analysis

The relation between reading ability and phonological coding and awareness (PCA) skills in individuals who are severely and profoundly deaf was investigated with a meta-analysis. From an initial set of 230 relevant publications, 57 studies were analyzed that experimentally tested PCA skills in 2,078 deaf participants. Half of the studies found statistically significant evidence for PCA skills and half did not. A subset of 25 studies also tested reading proficiency and showed a wide range of effect sizes. Overall PCA skills predicted 11% of the variance in reading proficiency in the deaf participants. Other possible modulating factors, such as task type and reading grade level, did not explain the remaining variance. In 7 studies where it was measured, language ability predicted 35% of the variance in reading proficiency. These meta-analytic results indicate that PCA skills are a low to moderate predictor of reading achievement in deaf individuals and that other factors, most notably language ability, have a greater influence on reading development, as has been found to be the case in the hearing population.     

The use of phonological, orthographic, and contextual information during reading: a comparison of adults who are learning to read and skilled adult readers

The purpose of this study was to assess the role that phonological, orthographic, and contextual sources of information play in a group of adults who were learning to read compared to adult skilled readers. Participants read short paragraphs that contained a correct homophone, an incorrect homophone, or a spelling control. Target words were orthographically similar or dissimilar, and they appeared in context that predicted the target or was neutral with respect to the target. The pattern of data obtained for skilled readers was consistent with past work (Rayner et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 24(2), 476–497, 1998). Skilled readers showed no reading time differences between the correct homophone and the incorrect homophone, as long as the two were orthographically similar, but reading times on these words were faster than the spelling control condition. The pattern of data for the adults who were learning to read was different. These readers were actually better at noticing that an incorrect version of the homophone was present. Importantly, we did find consistent significant differences between the incorrect homophone condition and the spelling control condition. This suggests the adults who were learning to read use phonological codes during word recognition, but they do so less efficiently than skilled readers.     

Tracing reading to the dark side: investigating the policy producing reading and readers in detention homes

ABSTRACT

Both inside and outside educational settings, reading literature is emphasized as something good, perhaps even something that makes us better people. This paper aims to open the ‘black-boxed’ conception of reading by studying how reading and (non)readers are conceptualized in relation to young people taken into custody. I examine a policy document describing a reading project in detention homes for young people as a case in which reading is perceived as having specific effects. Actor-network theory is used as a methodological approach to call attention to the way ideas, values, and knowledge about educational content are produced. The analysis shows that the seemingly coherent policy document produces radically different versions of what reading is and who the readers and non-readers are. I conclude that conceptualizations of reading and literacy always involve the creation of ‘a dark side of reading’; the strong construction of ‘reading as doing good’ has marginalizing effects.     

Relationships of naming skills to reading,memory, and receptive vocabulary: Evidence for imprecise phonological representations of words by poor readers

The main hypotheses addressed in the research were (1) whether imprecision in the phonological representations of lexical items underlies the impaired expressive naming abilities of disabled readers, and (2) whether weak verbal memory might mediate the relationship between naming and reading skills. From samples of 93 first graders and 67 fourth graders, extreme groups of good and poor readers were identified and compared on measures of receptive vocabulary, expressive naming, acceptability judgments for variants of object names, imitation and correction of naming errors by another speaker, pseudoword repetition, and long-term memory. Performance was generally better by older than younger students and by good than poor readers at each age, with little interaction between grade and reader group. The results indicated that for both good and poor readers, imprecise phonological knowledge, especially about long words, contributed to children’s difficulties on all naming tasks. Memory differences, however, appeared to play only a minor role in explaining the strong association between naming and reading.     

Developmental links of very early phonological and language skills to second grade reading outcomes: strong to accuracy but only minor to fluency

The authors examined second grade reading accuracy and fluency and their associations via letter knowledge to phonological and language predictors assessed at 3.5, 4.5, and 5.5 years in children in the Jyv?skyl? Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. Structural equation modeling showed that a developmentally highly stable factor (early phonological and language processing [EPLP]) behind key dyslexia predictors (i.e., phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition) could already be identified at 3.5 years. EPLP was significantly associated with reading and spelling accuracy and by age with letter knowledge. However, EPLP had only a minor link with reading fluency, which was additionally explained by early letter knowledge. The results show that reading accuracy is well predicted by early phonological and language skills. Variation in fluent reading skills is not well explained by early skills, suggesting factors other than phonological core skills. Future research is suggested to explore the factors behind the development of fast and accurate decoding skills.     

Training phonological awareness: a study to evaluate the effects of a program of metalinguistic games in kindergarten

A phonological awareness program was evaluated in a small-scale study using thirty eight children from three intact kindergarten classes at an American school on the outskirts of London. The average age of the children was five years four months. There was one experimental class and two control classes. The experimental class received a Danish training program of metalinguistic games and exercises. One control class used a kindergarten reading and writing program called Success in Kindergarten Reading and Writing which incorporates phonological awareness skills, but in an informal way. The other control class followed the normal kindergarten program. The results showed that the children in the experimental group and the Success in Kindergarten group had significantly greater gains in reading and spelling measures given at the end of the year. They also did better on six of the metalinguistic tests, with the experimental group showing significantly greater gains in all the tests of phoneme awareness than the other two groups. The implications of a formal versus informal phonological awareness training program are discussed.     

Putting meat on the bones: factors affecting student teachers’ confidence to teach reading

Teacher training, especially in the teaching of reading, has come to the forefront in policy making and teacher training institutions are now subject to even more rigorous inspection procedures than schools, much of this inspection focusing on the preparation of teachers of reading. Yet much of this development has rested on very little research evidence. We still do not know exactly what constitutes effective teacher training for reading teaching. Gill Scrivens’ study reported here makes a significant contribution to this area in that it highlights the fact that some earlier research studies have taken too simplistic a view of the training process. It also suggests practical ways forward in this area.     

On the interaction between phonological awareness and reading acquisition: It’s a two-way Street

We have investigated the reciprocal influence of reading acquisition and phonemic awareness. Using a between-grades quasi-experimental design, we have found that learning to read is the most important factor that accounts for the drastic improvement of phonemic segmentation skills during the first year of schooling. On the other hand, we found that improving phonemic skills in kindergarten facilitated reading acquisition in children at risk for developing reading disorders. We suggest that, for most children, exposure to the alphabet automatically triggers phonemic awareness, which is a necessary condition for efficient acquisition of reading. However, the emergence of phonemic awareness requires a previously developed sensitivity to phonology, which in some children may be absent. The present data suggest that, if phonological skills are absent, they may be developed in preschoolers by explicit training, thereby preventing failure in reading acquisition.     

Gliding text: a new aid to improve the reading performance of poor readers by subconscious gaze control

In support of efforts at reducing the number of dyslexics and illiterates in industrialized countries it is proposed, for the first time, to use gliding text ‐ as known in television subtitles ‐ as a method of text display to help those learning to read. Beginners, having the difficult task of precisely directing their gaze letter by letter along the line of text, experience with gliding text automatic gaze guidance as in so‐called ‘optokinetic nystagmus’. This subconscious gaze control allows beginners to pay more attention to contextual processing. First training courses have shown that exercises with gliding text are very efficient. Reading difficulties were eliminated for 21 second‐grade elementary school children in only 24 training sessions, each of 15 min duration. The mean reading speed increased from ten to 24 words per minute (WPM).     

The effect of pictures on the reading processes of less able readers: a miscue analysis approach

The impact of illustrations on the reading performance of children with reading difficulties has been examined. Nineteen children from the first year of three comprehensive schools each read illustrated and unillustrated fictional passages at three levels of difficulty. The reading performance was assessed using miscue analysis, Goodman and Burke (1972) and a two-way analysis of variance was applied to analyse the results. Reading performance was assessed in the area of: total errors, time taken to read the passages, comprehension, grammatical relationships and errors excluding omissions and insertions. The results suggested that, in the majority of these aspects of the reading process, there was a statistically significant interaction between illustration and difficulty levels. At the lower level of difficulty, reading performance in the illustrated conditions was superior to that in the unillustrated conditions. At the higher level of difficulty the reverse trend was apparent.