Predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children: a 3-year longitudinal study

Abstract

This study aims to identify the predictors of Chinese reading and literacy skills among Chinese school children in Taiwan. Participants recruited in the study were 182 Grade 1 elementary school students. First, data were collected on these students’ literacy skills, which comprised morphological awareness, orthography processing, visual perception skills, phonological awareness, and rapid automatised naming. In Grade 2, data were collected from these students on their word decoding skills, which comprised character recognition and reading fluency. Finally, in Grade 3, data were collected on the Chinese comprehension skills of the same students. A structural equation model examined the direct and indirect effects of students’ literacy skills at Grade 1 on their reading comprehension at Grade 3, with students’ word decoding at Grade 2 acting as a mediator. Results showed that reading comprehension of students at Grade 3 was predicted by their literacy skills at Grade 1.     

A prospective study of the relationship between phonological,semantic and syntactic skills and specific reading disability

Although it is well established that a relationship exists between specific reading disability and spoken language difficulties, the nature of that relationship remains controversial. In the study reported here, the performance of poor readers was firstly compared with that of matched good readers on a series of spoken and written language tasks on three assessment trials 12 months apart, and secondly to that of younger average readers. Five experimental tasks were used to measure the readers' phonological processing skills, and three subtests from the CELF-R were selected to measure the students' syntactic and semantic skills. Reading accuracy and comprehension ability were assessed by the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability-Revised. The results showed that 8–10-year-old poor readers performed poorly in all three linguistic areas concurrently, and that these difficulties persisted. However, the important finding from this study was that while the good readers demonstrated no significant difference between their phonological processing skills and their semantic/syntactic skills, the poor readers' ability did differ according to skill area. The poor readers' phonological processing skills appeared to be particularly impaired, a finding which was further enhanced by results from the reading-match comparison. The results are discussed in terms of current theories of reading disability.     

Predicting word and pseudoword reading in Arabic-speaking children: the independent contributions of phonological and morphological awareness and visual attention

The present study explored whether phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA) and visual attention (VA) independently predict word and pseudoword reading accuracy in native Arabic-speaking children from grades 4 and 5. A total of 141 participants took part in the study, and were divided into two groups of readers with (n = 30) and without (n = 111) dyslexia. PA was measured with orally administered syllable manipulation and deletion tasks. The MA task targeted the dismantling of composite Arabic words into meaningful parts in oral modality. VA was assessed by objects and letters cancellation tasks. The results showed that the two groups differed significantly in all of the measures. The regression analysis output showed that VA emerged as a significant predictor of word and pseudoword reading beyond the predictive role of PA and MA. These results have implications for the understanding of the underlying factors of word and pseudoword reading development in Arabic.     

Metacognitive perspectives on the development of reading comprehension: a classroom study of literary text‐talks

The current study is a contribution to reading research dealing with tuition in reading comprehension and specifically with the issue of arranging tuition to support the development of metacognition. The empirical findings referred to in this study are from textual discussions of works of fiction in grades 6 and 7. The specific focus of the study is the correlation between the linguistic strategies used by the teacher and the pupils' opportunities to develop metacognitive perspectives as a consequence of these strategies. The study shows how the teachers, by use of a series of linguistic strategies, can offer pupils support in order to (1) identify and visualise the premises of their personal queries; (2) observe and verbalise their processes of interpretation together with their emotional reactions when reading; (3) survey, adjust and communicate their use of reading comprehension strategies and (4) recognise the text as an aesthetic construction and the interaction/transaction between texts and the reader.     

Listening comprehension and reading comprehension in poor decoders: Evidence for the importance of syntactic and semantic skills as well as phonological skills

The relation between decoding and comprehensionin the oral and written modalities was studiedin a randomly selected group of nine-year-olds,subdivided into good, average and poordecoders. Performances on two types ofcomprehension tasks (story retelling andcloze tasks) were compared and related tophonological, syntactic and semantic abilities.(Story retelling demanded the ability to retellthe gist of a story, while the cloze tasksdemanded precise skills in drawing anaphoricreference across sentence boundaries.) Atwo-way analysis of variance using IQ ascovariate showed that poor decoders scoredlower than average and good decoders on allcomprehension tasks. This suggests a highdegree of interdependence between listeningcomprehension, reading comprehension anddecoding. The associated pattern of oralcorrelates furthermore varied with task demandsand to some extent, independent of modality.Vocabulary was related to the ability toretell a story. Syntax and, in particularphonemic awareness, were on the otherhand more strongly related to the ability todraw anaphoric reference. The results wereinterpreted in favor of ``the phonologicaldeficit hypothesis', but the interactionbetween linguistic sub-skills and task demandswas also underscored.     

Role of morphological awareness in biliteracy development: Within- and cross-language perspectives among Korean ESL learners in grades five and six

The study investigated the within- and cross-language contribution of morphological awareness (MA) to vocabulary and reading comprehension among students learning to read two typologically different orthographies at the same time: Korean and English. Fifty Korean ESL learners in grades five and six were administered Korean and English measures of MA (derivational and compound morphemes), vocabulary, and reading comprehension (narrative and expository texts), in addition to measures of phonological awareness (PA) and orthographic awareness (OA). Information about home language environment was also obtained from a parental questionnaire. Path analysis showed that MA was the most significant contributor to vocabulary (β = 0.33, p < 0.05) and reading comprehension (β = 0.46, p < 0.01) in English; and in Korean (β = 0.62 and β = 0.54, respectively, all ps < 0.01), controlling for effects of PA and OA. Unidirectional cross-language transfer was found from Korean MA to English vocabulary (β = 0.27, p < 0.05) and reading comprehension (β = 0.22, p < 0.05) and multiple determining factors are discussed. Educational implications and research recommendations are also presented.     

The role of phonological memory,word recognition,and comprehension skills in reading development: from preschool to grade 2

We examined the relationships among phonologicalawareness, phonological memory, and development ofreading skills in a longitudinal study, by following222 Finnish preschoolers through the grade 2.The main focus was on the role of phonological memoryin word recognition and comprehension. The skillsassessed were verbal abilities, phonological memory,phonological awareness, word recognition, listeningand reading comprehension, altogether comprising themost extensive set of variables so far used in thestudy of phonological memory and reading. We proposeda structural equation model for the developmentalrelationships among the variables. This model waslargely confirmed by the data. The most significantpredictor of word recognition was phonologicalawareness. Phonological memory had only a weak effecton phonological awareness at preschool age, andvia this connection, a weak indirect effect on grade 1 word recognition. Contrary toexpectations, phonological memory also had asignificant, albeit weak effect on grade 2word recognition. Phonological memory did notdirectly affect reading comprehension. However,it was strongly related to listeningcomprehension at preschool, and via the strongeffects of both listening comprehension and wordrecognition on reading comprehension, there weresignificant indirect effects of phonological memory onreading comprehension. The results also underline thestability of development of phonological memory, wordrecognition, and comprehension from preschool to theend of grade 2.     

Predicting ELL students’ beginning first grade English oral reading fluency from initial kindergarten vocabulary, letter naming, and phonological awareness skills

The precursors of early English reading success have been widely studied for native English-speaking students, and those findings have been generalized to the English language learner (ELL) student population. However, the development of English language acquisition may be different for ELL students. The purpose of this study was to investigate the predictive role of English letter naming fluency, initial sound fluency, and vocabulary skills at the time of kindergarten entry for first grade English oral reading fluency and to examine the variability in language and literacy skills of ELL students by their demographic characteristics. The data for this study came from the Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN), and were collected from Florida's Reading First schools. Letter Naming Fluency, Initial Sound Fluency, and Oral Reading Fluency components of Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test were used as measures. Hierarchical Linear Modeling was used to analyze the curvilinear growth of ELL students’ first grade oral reading fluency. The results of this study revealed that kindergarten English letter naming fluency was the best predictor and vocabulary skills were the second best predictor of oral reading fluency in the first grade, followed by initial sound fluency. On average, male ELL students compared to female ELL students, ELL students eligible for free or reduced price lunch eligibility (FRPL) compared to those not eligible for FRPL, and Hispanic ELL students compared to White ELL students read fewer words at the beginning of the first grade and showed a slower growth rate. English oral reading fluency scores of Asian ELL students were the highest.     

Relationships between reading,phonological skills and language development in individuals with Down syndrome: A five year follow-up study

This article is based on language, memory andreading information gathered for a five yearfollow-up study of 30 children and adolescentswith Down syndrome, aged from 10 to 24 years atthe end of the study. At Time 1, 10individuals were classified as readers but byTime 2 this number had risen to 16. Readers significantly outperformed non-readerson tests of nonverbal ability, languagecomprehension and production, phonologicalmemory and phonological awarenesss. However,some of these differences could be accountedfor by readers' significantly lower hearingthresholds. Phonological memory and earlyletter knowledge at Time 1 were significantpredictors of reading scores for Time 2readers, after controlling for age, nonverbalability and corresponding Time 1 readingscores. There was no evidence that learning toread had a significant impact on later languagecomprehension, but early reading skills may besignificant predictors of MLU five years later,after controlling for age, nonverbal abilityand hearing.     

Track recommendation bias: Gender,migration background and SES bias over a 20‐year period in the Dutch context

Bias in track recommendations is an important mechanism, which causes education inequity in a tracked educational system (streaming). If teacher biases in track recommendations change over time, inequity in society and in the education system may also change. We investigated changes in track recommendation bias over time for gender, immigration status and socioeconomic status (SES), based on a longitudinal empirical study of nine cohorts of Dutch students in their final year (grade 6) of primary education in the period 1995–2014. An overview of educational and societal trends was provided, alongside the empirical analysis, to explain the findings in variation over time in track recommendation bias. Results indicate that the level of track recommendations provided to the students gradually increased over time. For a similar performance, a higher track recommendation was awarded in 2014 compared to 1995. This development coincided with an increase in parental education level, the valuing of education and the introduction of lower‐status pre‐vocational education tracks. Track recommendation bias favouring students with a migrant background and female students decreased, which coincided with growing cultural intolerance and attention to the ‘boy problem’. Bias in track recommendations related to SES appeared stable, with only small deviations from year to year. The results of this study indicate that track recommendation bias and teacher considerations are dependent on time and context.     

Explaining social class differences in growth of reading skills from beginning kindergarten through fourth-grade: The role of phonological awareness,rate of access,and print knowledge

The aim of this longitudinal study was to further ourunderstanding of the reasons for social classdifferences in growth of decoding and readingcomprehension skills from beginning kindergarten throughchildren's fourth grade year. Participants wereenrolled in five public schools in a moderately sizedsouthern American city (n = 197). We examined ifbeginning kindergarten levels of three kinds ofreading related abilities explained social classdifferences in growth of reading skills during thetime periods of beginning kindergarten to children'sfirst-, second-, third-, and fourth-grade years. Thereading related abilities were phonological awareness,rate of access to phonological information inlong-term memory, and print knowledge. We found thatthe reasons for social class differences in growth ofreading skills depended on the time interval that wasconsidered. During the earliest time interval, socialclass differences in growth of decoding skills werecompletely accounted for by performance on the controlmeasures of general verbal intelligence and prior wordreading skills. During the remaining time periods,social class differences in growth of decoding andreading comprehension skills persisted whenperformance on the three kinds of reading relatedabilities and the control measures were accounted for. The greatest attenuation of SES differences in growthof reading skills occurred when beginning kindergartenlevels of print knowledge were taken into account.     

Teaching nature of science through inquiry: Results of a 3‐year professional development program

This study assessed the influence of a 3‐year professional development program on elementary teachers' views of nature of science (NOS), instructional practice to promote students' appropriate NOS views, and the influence of participants' instruction on elementary student NOS views. Using the VNOS‐B and associated interviews the researchers tracked the changes in NOS views of teacher participants throughout the professional development program. The teachers participated in explicit–reflective activities, embedded in a program that emphasized scientific inquiry and inquiry‐based instruction, to help them improve their own elementary students' views of NOS. Elementary students were interviewed using the VNOS‐D to track changes in their NOS views, using classroom observations to note teacher influences on student ideas. Analysis of the VNOS‐B and VNOS‐D showed that teachers and most grades of elementary students showed positive changes in their views of NOS. The teachers also improved in their science pedagogy, as evidenced by analysis of their teaching. Implications for teacher professional development programs are made. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 653–680, 2007     

The relations of early phonological awareness,rapid‐naming and speed of processing with the development of spelling and reading: a longitudinal examination

Phonological awareness has been found to be strongly related to spelling. Findings on the relations between rapid‐naming and spelling are less consistent and have been suggested to be shared with speed of processing. This study set out to examine these relations in spelling and reading of Hebrew. Children attending the regular educational system were followed longitudinally (N = 70): phonological awareness, rapid‐naming and speed of processing were tested in kindergarten and in grade 1, and spelling and reading were tested in grade 2. Kindergarten and grade 1 rapid‐naming predicted spelling and word reading, and grade 1 phonological awareness predicted spelling, word reading and decoding. Speed of processing was an insignificant predictor. The findings extend the role of phonological awareness in spelling to an orthography with partial phonological representations and concurrently suggest weak relations. The results further suggest a link between rapid‐naming and orthographic knowledge, which may not be explained by shared variance with speed of processing.