Computer-based phonological awareness and reading instruction

Reading with Orthographic and Segmented Speech (ROSS) programs use talking computers to deal with deficits in word recognition and phonological awareness. With ROSS, children read stories on a computer screen. Whenever they encounter a word they find difficult, they can request assistance by targeting the word with a mouse. The program highlights the word in segments and then pronounces the segments in order. In previous studies, children improved in reading, but children with relatively lower initial phonological awareness (PA) gained less than the others. In order to maximize the benefits from ROSS for all children, the current study aimed to improve PA before and while reading with ROSS, by using some programs based on theAuditory Discrimination in Depth method (Lindamood and Lindamood 1975), and others focusing on phoneme manipulation with speech feedback for all responses. The study compared the effects of this training with training in Comprehension Strategies (CS) based on Reciprocal Teaching techniques (Palincsar and Brown 1984), among second- to fifth-grade students with problems in word recognition. While both groups received equal instructional time in small-groups and with the computer, the groups differed in how much time they spent reading words in context. Whereas PA children spent half their computer time on PA exercises involving individual words and half reading words in context with ROSS, the CS group spent all their computer time reading words in context with ROSS. Both groups made significant gains in decoding, word recognition, and comprehension; however the PA groups gained significantly more than the CS group on all untimed tests of phoneme awareness, word recognition, and nonsense word reading. The CS children performed better on a test of time-limited word recognition; they also achieved higher comprehension scores, although only while reading with a trainer. The PA children’s improved decoding skill led to greater accuracy, but slower responses with difficult words, after one semester’s training.     

‘You can't see what the words say’: word spacing and letter spacing in children's reading books

This paper describes two tests designed to find out whether children would be helped in their reading by the use of word and letter spacing that was looser or tighter than commonly used default values. In each test, 24 six‐year‐old children were asked to read aloud in a classroom; the realistic, high‐quality test material was set using a range of either word spacing or letter spacing values. Audiotapes of the children's reading were analysed to determine reading rates; miscue analysis was used to compare the number and kind of errors they made on the different settings. The children were also asked for their views about the texts they read. The results suggest that children in the test groups did not benefit significantly from spacing that was substantially looser or tighter than our default values, and that they noticed differences in letter spacing more easily than differences in word spacing.     

How psychology helps us to understand word reading

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an overview of evidence from psychological research, which enables us to understand the processes involved in word reading, how children develop word reading skills and how to teach them to read words successfully. Psychological models of reading in alphabetic orthographies propose two routes to word reading: an indirect route requiring mapping of letters and sounds using phonological processes and a direct route, mapping visual identities of words onto meaning using visual processes and memory. The dual route paves the way to an understanding of what children need to achieve to be able to read words. Evidence about how people read words successfully has led to the development of effective teaching programmes and of tests to identify deficits when word reading does not develop optimally.     

Computerized Presentation of Text: Effects on Children’s Reading of Informational Material

This study examined whether children’s reading rate, comprehension, and recall are affected by computer presentation of text. Participants were 60 grade five students, who each read two expository texts, one in a traditional print format and the other from a computer monitor, which used a common scrolling text interface. After reading each text, participants were asked to recall as much as they could from what they had read and then answered questions that measured text recall and comprehension. Children took more time to read the passage and recalled more of the text material that they had read from the computer monitor. The benefit of computer presentation disappeared when efficiency variables, which take time into account, were examined. Children were, however, more efficient at comprehending text when reading from paper. The results suggest that children may take more time to read text on computer screens and that they are more efficient when reading text on paper.     

Reading development in European Portuguese: relationships between oral reading fluency,vocabulary and reading comprehension

This study investigated direct and indirect effects between oral reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension across reading development in European Portuguese. Participants were 329 children attending basic education, from grade 1 to grade 6. The results of path analyses showed that text reading fluency is much more dependent on the foundational skills of word recognition than reading comprehension, and the later, in turn, depends crucially on the specific constituent skill of text reading fluency. Text reading fluency has a significant influence on vocabulary from the beginning, but vocabulary contributed to reading comprehension only in more advanced grades. These results, obtained with an orthography of intermediate depth, are in line with the Simple View of Reading (SVR). However, they also highlight the importance of textual cues—besides the pivotal role of decoding—from the beginning of learning to read, which must be taken into account in the SVR.     

Reading instruction affects the cognitive skills supporting early reading development

This study examined the cognitive skills associated with early reading development when children were taught by different types of instruction. Seventy-nine children (mean age at pre-test 4;10 (.22 S.D.) and post-test 5;03 (.21 S.D.)) were taught to read either by an eclectic approach which included sight-word learning, guessing from context and analytic phonics, or by a synthetic phonics approach, where children were taught solely to sound and blend letters to read unfamiliar words. The results illustrated differences in the skills supporting children's word reading based on their method of reading instruction. For the eclectic group, pre-test letter knowledge, vocabulary and rhyming skills predicted later reading ability, whereas for the synthetic phonics group, letter knowledge, phonemic awareness and memory span predicted later reading skill. The results suggest that children will draw upon different cognitive skills when reading if they are taught to use different word recognition strategies.     

What We Know,What We Still Need to Know: Teaching Adolescents to Write

The purpose of this study was to uncover any differences in the early reading and spelling processes of children learning to read in a first language (L1) and children learning to read in a second language (L2). The reading and spelling development of native Dutch-speaking children and minority children in the first two grades of elementary school were compared. The children were given a number of tasks to test their vocabulary knowledge and the efficiency of their word decoding (including grapheme knowledge and word blending), word spelling (including cipher knowledge and phonemic segmentation), and reading comprehension processes. Analyses of variance were used to test for differences between the L1 and L2 learners. LISREL analyses were used to explore the components underlying the reading and spelling processes in the 2 groups of children. The results showed that the minority children kept up with the native Dutch-speaking children on word blending and word decoding tasks. On word spelling and reading comprehension, however, the minority children were found to be less efficient than their monolingual Dutch peers. The structural models for word decoding and word spelling were highly comparable for the 2 groups. For reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge was found to have more of an impact on the L2 learners than on the L1 learners. This finding suggests that children learning to read in an L2 should be helped to build their lexical knowledge and that reading instruction should be matched to this knowledge.     

Learning vocabulary through e-book reading of young children with various reading abilities

Previous studies revealed that young children learn novel word meanings by simply reading and listening to a printed book. In today’s classroom, many children’s e-books provide audio narration support so young readers can simply listen to the e-books. The focus of the present study is to examine the effect of e-book reading with audio narration support on the novel vocabulary learning of first grade students with advanced, average, and poor reading abilities. The effect of adding teacher’s word explanation on novel word learning was also examined. By employing a within-subject design, students read an e-book that contained ten explained words and another e-book containing ten unexplained words. Their performances were compared to ten unexposed control words. As a whole group, results indicated that teacher’s word explanation resulted in greater word learning compared to when word explanation was not provided. However, e-book reading conditions without teacher’s word explanation did not lead to incidental word learning from the e-book context compared to the unexposed control words. When the students were divided into subgroups based on their reading abilities, readers with higher reading abilities learned more word meanings from e-book with teacher’s word explanation. However, three subgroups of readers showed different patterns of word learning across the e-book with and without word explanation and the control conditions. Educational implications of using e-books for students with different reading abilities and limitations are discussed.     

Phonological recoding,orthographic decoding,and comprehension skills during reading acquisition

To become skillful readers, children have to acquire the ability to translate printed words letter by letter into phonemic representations (phonological recoding) and the ability to recognize the written word forms holistically (orthographical decoding). Whereas phonological recoding is the key for learning to read and useful for recognizing unknown or low-frequent words, orthographical decoding is often more efficient and takes less time, thus facilitating reading processes on the sentence and text level. Several studies with English-speaking children provided evidence for the relevance of the two routes but the question whether and to what extent both word recognition skills contribute to reading comprehension in young German readers requires further clarification. Based on data from a cross-sectional study with German primary school children we investigated whether and to what extent both types of word recognition skills are associated with sentence (N = 666) and text comprehension skills (N = 149) and how these relationships develop from Grade 2 to 4. The results indicate that both phonological recoding skills and orthographical decoding skills are important for reading comprehension skills. Their relative weight does not change across grade levels.     

How word decoding skill impacts text memory: The centrality deficit and how domain knowledge can compensate

We examined text memory in children with word reading deficits to determine how these difficulties impact representations of text meaning. We show that even though children with poor word decoding recall more central than peripheral information, they show a significantly bigger deficit relative to controls on central than on peripheral information. We call this the centrality deficit and argue that it is the consequence of insufficient cognitive resources for connecting ideas together due to these children’s resources being diverted from comprehension to word decoding. We investigated a possible compensatory mechanism for making these connections. Because a text representation is a synthesis of text information and a reader’s prior knowledge, we hypothesized that having knowledge of the passage topic might reduce or eliminate the centrality deficit. Our results support this knowledge compensation hypothesis: The centrality deficit was evident when poor readers did not have prior knowledge, but was eliminated when they did. This presents an exciting avenue to pursue for possible remediation of reading comprehension in children with word identification difficulties.     

Some main effective reading strategies

Reading becomes more and more important in English learning in recent days.If we want to read efficiently,there are a lot of strategies for us to use when read.We can make predictions before reading a passage.When we read,we can read in a sense group.If we do not know the word when we read,we can guess the meaning of the word through the roots,the prefixes,the suffixes.In a word,having lots of practice with suitable reading strategies can enable us to improve our English reading skills.     

Evidence for different parent–child strategies while reading

This study examined the strategies parents use naturally to help early readers at difficult points of text or pronunciation. Forty‐two children were videotaped reading to a parent. Results suggest parents are not likely to provide specific instructional feedback when listening to their children read. When given, parental feedback tends to be well tuned to the child's reading ability, with parents of less skilled readers providing richer and more varied feedback than parents of more skilled readers. A tree clustering analysis placed parents in one of three groups: 1) ‘Learner centred’ parents use a variety of feedback strategies; 2) ‘Inactive’ parents allow their children to continue uncorrected; 3) ‘Direct’ parents supply the miscued word. The children of ‘learner centred’ parents did not perform as well as children of ‘inactive’ parents on measures of reading ability, possibly because parents of better readers no longer need to be ‘learner centred’.     

The use of speech feedback by normal and disabled readers in computer-based reading practice

Disabled readers and normal beginning readers were compared on requesting help in the form of speech feedback during computer-based word reading. It was also examined whether it is best to give feedback on all words or to allow the disabled readers to choose. Normal beginning readers and reading-age matched pupils with reading problems engaged in reading practice with speech feedback on call for both difficult and easy words. A set of both difficult and easy sums was completed as a control task. Another group of reading-disabled pupils who were also matched on reading level practiced the reading of words with unsolicited speech feedback. In the first two groups the selectivity in requesting help in both the reading and arithmetic task was assessed. All subjects were tested on the reading of both practiced and nonpracticed words. The results indicate that both disabled readers and beginners were very sensitive to sum difficulty but not to word difficulty, though in the present study the students were more selective than in a previous study. The inclusion of more easy words might account for this finding. The beginners requested help only during the first sessions of reading practice, whereas the disabled readers remained dependent on the speech feedback. The reading-disabled pupils did not learn less when the computer unsolicitedly delivered the spoken form of all words than when they were allowed to choose. It is discussed how profits from the different speech feedback procedures by disabled readers might be related to word decoding skill and metacognitive monitoring.     

What oral text reading fluency can reveal about reading comprehension

Text reading fluency – the ability to read quickly, accurately and with a natural intonation – has been proposed as a predictor of reading comprehension. In the current study, we examined the role of oral text reading fluency, defined as text reading rate and text reading prosody, as a contributor to reading comprehension outcomes in addition to decoding efficiency and language comprehension. One hundred and six Dutch primary school children from fourth grade participated in this study and were assessed on decoding efficiency, vocabulary, syntactic ability, reading fluency performance and reading comprehension skills. Regression analysis showed that text reading prosody, not text reading rate, explained additional variance in reading comprehension performance when decoding efficiency and language comprehension were controlled for. This result suggests that the inclusion of text reading prosody as an aspect of text reading fluency is justified and that a natural intonation is associated with better comprehension of what is read.     

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.     

Beyond phonological skills: broader language skills contribute to the development of reading

This paper reports a study that followed the development of reading skills in 72 children from the age of 8.5 to 13 years. Each child was administered tests of reading, oral language, phonological skills and nonverbal ability at time 1 and their performance on tests of reading comprehension, word recognition, nonword decoding and exception word reading was assessed at time 2. In addition to phonological skills, three measures of non‐phonological oral language tapping vocabulary knowledge and listening comprehension were unique concurrent predictors of both reading comprehension and word recognition at time 1. Importantly, all three measures of oral language skill also contributed unique variance to individual differences in reading comprehension, word recognition and exception word reading four and a half years later, even when the autoregressive effects of early reading skill were controlled. Moreover, the extent to which a child's word recognition departed from the level predicted from their decoding ability correlated with their oral language skills. These findings suggest that children's oral language proficiency, as well as their phonological skills, influences the course of reading development.     

Phonemic and graphemic consistency: Effects on decoding for German and American children

Speed, accuracy, and types of errors in decoding lists of words and pseudo words and performance in two phonemic awareness tasks were assessed for German and American children in the first and second grades. German children were significantly better than American children only in pseudo word decoding measures across grades. Between group analyses showed that American children committed more vowel and word substitution errors in both decoding accuracy tasks than German children. Word substitution errors were more likely in word decoding than in pseudo word decoding for children in both languages. Within group analyses indicate that variance in decoding errors and speed accounted for by word substitution versus nonword and vowel versus consonant errors differed dependent on grade and whether real or pseudo words were read. Results suggest successful reading in English depends upon more complex grapheme to phoneme correspondence rules than does reading in German.     

Examining an extended simple view of reading in Chinese: The role of naming efficiency for reading comprehension

The simple view of reading (SVR) proposes that reading comprehension is the product of two constructs, namely decoding and linguistic comprehension. The present study examined the adequacy of an extended SVR in Chinese. Participants were 190 pairs of Chinese twin children of Grades 1–3 recruited in Hong Kong. The children were given Chinese measures of decoding (character reading, word reading, and 1-min word reading), linguistic comprehension (morphological awareness, vocabulary, morphosyntactic skills, and discourse skills), rapid naming (Chinese digits, English digits, and English letters), and passage reading comprehension (with multiple-choice and open-ended questions). Results of structural equation modeling showed that the direct paths from decoding and linguistic comprehension to reading comprehension were significant, but that from rapid naming was not. For the role of rapid naming in reading comprehension, the best fitting model showed that the contribution of rapid naming to reading comprehension was fully mediated by decoding. The model explained a total of 83% of the variance in reading comprehension. Therefore, the present findings support the SVR in a Chinese writing system; rapid naming may reflect some basic visual-verbal learning ability which is important for acquiring word recognition skills.     

Minding morphology: How morphological awareness relates to reading for English language learners

This study explored subprocesses of reading for 157 fifth grade Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs) by examining whether morphological awareness made a unique contribution to reading comprehension beyond a strong covariate-phonological decoding. The role of word reading and reading vocabulary as mediators of this relationship was also explored. Results showed that fourth grade morphological awareness did not make a significant unique direct effect on fifth grade reading comprehension, controlling for phonological decoding, word reading, and reading vocabulary. Fourth grade morphological awareness did, though, make a unique moderate total contribution to fifth grade reading comprehension with reading vocabulary, but not word reading, mediating the relationship when controlling for phonological decoding. In contrast, phonological decoding made a nonsignificant total contribution to reading comprehension with neither word reading nor reading vocabulary mediating the relationship when controlling for morphological awareness. Alternative models were also explored, showing the importance of including both predictors in a model of ELL reading comprehension, primarily to include the support of phonological decoding to word reading and the support of morphological awareness to reading comprehension via reading vocabulary. Results highlighted the importance of morphological awareness in facilitating reading comprehension via improving reading vocabulary knowledge, and also the potential of interventions involving morphological instruction to support reading achievement for Spanish-speaking ELLs.