Content,domain, and word knowledge: Relationship to comprehension of narrative and expository text

The influence of background knowledge on reader's comprehension of text has become a fundamental assumption associated with text processing. Background knowledge has been represented in a variety of constructs including specific text knowledge, general world knowledge, discourse knowledge, and domain knowledge. Our interest in the present study was to examine background knowledge and strategy knowledge from a broad view to better understand how they contribute to elementary-age students' reading comprehension of both narrative and expository texts. Constructs of domain, content, and word knowledge were developed based on the extant literature. These knowledge constructs were measured with researcher-developed tests consisting of both narrative and expository passages ranging from 1000 to 2000 words (2–4 pages) in length. Comprehension of each passage was measured with a 25-item subtest. All students in Grades 3 through 6 were administered the knowledge and comprehension tests. A two-stage analysis procedure was used. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine empirically the internal structures of the comprehension questions. Factor scores were constructed and then treated as a multivariate set, with a second set comprised of the background and strategy factors. A canonical analysis was then performed to relate the two sets and canonical functions and structure coefficients were interpreted substantively. Our findings indicated that background knowledge specific to the content of the text being read begins to diminish in importance at about Grade 4. Strategy knowledge and use in comprehension of text begin to play a more important role at Grade 4 and above. Grade 6 analyses support a conclusion that the reading development process in elementary grades has been completed, and that reading comprehension at this grade is primarily an indicator of students' proficiency in selecting efficient ways to gain meaning from text.     

Reading comprehension difficulties in children

This paper reports two studies investigating the nature of comprehension deficits in a group of 7–8 year old children whose decoding skills are normal, but whose reading comprehension skills are poor. The performance of these poor comprehenders was compared to two control groups, Chronological-Age controls and Comprehension-Age controls. The first study examined whether these comprehension difficulties are specific to reading. On two measures of listening comprehension the poor comprehenders were found to perform at a significantly lower level than Chronological-Age controls. However, they did not differ from a group of younger children matched for reading comprehension skills. This indicates that the observed comprehension difficulties are not restricted to reading, but rather represent a general comprehension limitation. The second study investigated whether these comprehension difficulties can be explained in terms of a memory deficit. The short-term and working memory skills of these three groups were examined. The poor comprehenders did not differ from their Chronological-Age controls on either of these tasks. In conclusion, it is argued that working memory processes are not a major causal factor in the creation of the comprehension difficulties identified in the present group of poor comprehenders.     

Fluency and comprehension of narrative texts in Turkish students in grades 4 through 8

The present study attempted to extend our knowledge of the role of reading fluency in contributing to reading comprehension among Turkish students in grades 4 through 8. One hundred students at each grade level were administered assessments of reading fluency, word recognition automaticity and prosody, and silent reading comprehension. Word recognition automaticity was found to be a significant predictor of comprehension at all grade levels tested. Prosody predicted comprehension at all grades levels except grade 4. Regression analyses at each grade level indicate that, except for grade 4, word recognition automaticity and prosody, together contribute to the prediction of reading comprehension. The magnitude of fluency’s prediction of comprehension ranged from approximately a quarter to a third of comprehension. The results are discussed in terms of policy and instructional changes that may be considered for reading instruction for Turkish students.     

Implementation and effects of explicit reading comprehension instruction in fifth-grade classrooms

In this intervention study, teachers tried to implement four instructional principles derived from the literature on research-based, explicit reading comprehension instruction in their fifth-grade classrooms. The principles focused on relevant background knowledge, reading comprehension strategies, reading-group organization, and reading motivation. Results indicated that during a five-month intervention period, students in the intervention group increased their strategic competence and comprehension performance relative to controls. However, no effect was found on reading motivation. The overall pattern of results is explained in relation to the implementation quality of the four instructional principles, with implementation data indicating that the principles of reading-group organization and reading motivation were particularly difficult for the teachers to translate into classroom practice.     

Components of reading comprehension and scholastic achievement

The aim of this study was to understand whether the reading comprehension process is better explained by a single or by multiple factors. 184 students (9 to 13 years old) were presented with a recently devised battery of tests, that measure ten aspects of reading comprehension. Structural equation modelling showed that a two factors model better accounts for the data compared to a one or a three factors model. Results confirmed the hypothesis which distinguishes between ‘basic’ and ‘complex’ aspects of reading comprehension. The second goal of the study was to analyze the relationship between the two-components model and scholastic achievement. Our results highlighted that the more ‘complex’ aspects of reading comprehension, reflecting some metacognitive knowledge and control processes, are the better predictors of scholastic achievement.     

A longitudinal analysis of English language learners’ word decoding and reading comprehension

This longitudinal investigation examined word decoding and reading comprehension measures from first grade through sixth grade for a sample of Spanish-speaking English language learners (ELLs). The sample included 261 children (average age of 7.2 years; 120 boys; 141 girls) at the initial data collection in first grade. The ELLs’ word decoding and reading comprehension scores showed quadratic growth over the course of the study. The sample’s reading comprehension, but not their word decoding, began to fall behind the normative sample starting in the third grade. Phonological awareness, rapid automatic naming (RAN), and oral language measures were used as predictors and correlated with growth rates in a manner consistent with past research.     

The role of reading self-concept and home literacy practices in fourth grade reading comprehension

This study examined the relationships among reading comprehension, reading self-concept, and home literacy environment (HLE) in a sample (n = 67) of fourth grade children enrolled in an urban school district. Children’s reading comprehension, word reading, and verbal ability were assessed using standardized measures. Reading self-concept was assessed with a child-administered survey that is comprised of three subscales (i.e., competence in reading, perception of ease with reading, attitude towards reading). Information on child and family literacy practices was collected via a questionnaire administered to parents of participating children. Bivariate correlations and multiple regression analyses demonstrated that all three reading self-concept subscales were positively related to reading comprehension after controlling for verbal ability and word reading skills, and aspects of HLE were positively related to aspects of reading self-concept. The findings support the inclusion of psychosocial and family literacy measures in future studies designed to investigate the process of reading comprehension for children beyond the primary grades.

The effects of headlines and summaries on news comprehension and recall

In two experiments, we attempted to analyze the effects of newspaper article headlines and summaries on final comprehension and recall. During the first experiment, the participants consisted of 117 high school students from the 9th grade, 68 from the 11th grade, 79 first year Psychology students from the Autonoma University of Madrid and 66 fifth year Journalism students from the Complutense University of Madrid. The subjects were randomly required to read a news report in one of the following experimental conditions: (1) the whole news article (headline, summary and text), (2) the headline and text, (3) the summary and text, and (4), the text only. The data from immediate and delayed free recall tasks were recorded. The results showed that the structure of the news article did not influence the recall and that there were differences among groups in the amount and quality of recall. The headline and the summary modified by the use of macrostructural criteria constituted additional elements introduced into the second experiment to provide a contrast with the original headline and summary. The results showed that an improvement in article recall did occur with the modified version in comparison with the original version. These two experiments have confirmed that the aims and criteria of journalists differ from those held by the authors of scientific texts and question whether the reading strategies applied are the same in both cases.     

The impact of relational markers on expository text comprehension in L1 and L2

This article reports on an experimentinvestigating the impact of causal discoursemarkers (connectives and signaling phrases) onthe comprehension of expository texts in L1 andL2. Although several psycholinguistic studieshave investigated the impact of connectives andlexical markers of text structure oncomprehension (i.e. off-line), there is noconsensus on the exact effect of explicitdiscourse markers on text understanding; threedifferent findings are reported in theliterature: markers would have a facilitatingeffect, an interfering effect or no effect atall. The first goal of this article is toclarify this problem of contradicting resultsby limiting the scope of the study to causalrelations, and to one specific text type:expository texts. Furthermore, the naturalnessof the experimental texts was controlled,readers did not need specific backgroundknowledge to understand the texts and theexperimental method consisted of open answerquestioning. Our second goal is to investigateto what extent a supposed effect of linguisticmarking depends on readers proficiency in afirst or second language.The experiment consisted in the reading of short expository texts in two languages, Dutchand French, which both functioned as L1 and L2.The results indicate that readers benefit fromthe presence of causal relational markers bothin L1 and in L2. Implications for (theoriesof) text processing are discussed, as well asfor the further insights in readingcomprehension in L1 and L2.     

Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children

Young children's reading comprehension skill is associated with their ability to draw inferences (Oakhill 1982, 1984). An experiment was conducted to investigate the direction of this relation and to explore possible sources of inferential failure. Three groups of children participated: Same-age skilled and less skilled comprehenders, and a comprehension-age match group. The pattern of performance indicated that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading comprehension ability. Failure to make inferences could not be attributed to lack of relevant general knowledge. Instead, the pattern of errors indicated that differences in reading strategy were the most likely source of these group differences.     

The role of question type and reading ability in reading comprehension

Performance on a standardized reading comprehension test reflects the number of correct answers readers select from a list of alternate choices, but fails to provide information about how readers cope with the various cognitive demands of the task. The aim of this study was to determine whether three groups of readers: normally achieving (NA), poor comprehenders (CD), with no decoding disability, and reading disabled (RD), poor comprehenders with poor decoding skills, differed in their ability to cope with reading comprehension task demands. Three task variables reflected in the question-answer relations that appear on standardized reading comprehension tests were identified.Passage Independent (PI) question can be answered with reasonable accuracy based on the reader's prior knowledge of the passage content.Inference (INFER) questions required the reader to generate an inference at the local or global test level.Locating (LOCAT) questions require the reader to match the correct answer choice to a detail explicitly stated in the text either verbatim or in paraphrase form. The relations among reader characteristics, cognitive task factors and reading comprehension test scores were analyzed using a structural relations equation with LISREL. It was found that the three reading groups differed with respect to the underlying relationship between their performance on specific question-answer types and their standardized reading comprehension score. For the NA group, a high score on PI was likely to be accompanied by a low score on INFER, whereas in the CD and RD groups, PI and INFER are positively related. The finding of a negative relationship between background knowledge and inference task factors for normally achieving readers suggests that even normal readers may have comprehension difficulties that go undetected on the basis of a standardized scores. This study indicates that current comprehension assessments may not be adequate for assessing specific reading difficulties and that more precise diagnostic tools are needed.     

高等医学院校医学专业英语阅读测试内容效度实证分析

本文从内容效度的主要影响因素入手,基于近5年来某高等医学院校医学专业英语阅读测试试题为样本,以语篇输入视角,进行历时性研究与分析,客观评价某高等医学院校医学专业英语阅读测试的内容效度,提出相应建议,以期对提高医学专业英语测试水平有所裨益。     

Effects of exposure to literary Arabic on reading comprehension in a diglossic situation

Reading difficulties in Arabic in elementary schoolare usually attributed to the diglossia of the Arabiclanguage, whereby the spoken language is totallydifferent from literary Arabic, the language of booksand school instruction. Educators, teachers, andparents still believe that exposure of young Arabicspeakers to literary Arabic in the preschool period isa burden for them, and is not useful. The presentpost hoc study examined the influence of exposure toliterary Arabic of preschool children on their readingcomprehension of literary Arabic stories in grades 1and 2. Participants in the study were 282children, 135 from grade 1 and 147 from grade 2. Ofthe participants, 144 constituted the experimentalgroup, and were exposed to literary Arabic throughouttheir preschool period. The 138 participants of thecontrol group were exposed not to literary but tospoken Arabic during that period. These children weretested for reading comprehension at the end of grade1 and grade 2 and compared with the control group. The results generally indicate better readingcomprehension results for the children who wereexposed to literary Arabic than for the children whowere exposed only to spoken Arabic.     

Longitudinal predictors of reading comprehension in French at first grade: Unpacking the oral comprehension component of the simple view

According to the simple view of reading (SVR), reading comprehension relies on “decoding” (pseudoword, word reading) and “oral comprehension” skills. Testing 556 French pupils, we aimed at unpacking these two components and tracking their longitudinal development in first grade. We have found that: (1) lower level language skills (vocabulary, syntax) and discourse skills (oral text comprehension) emerged as two dimensions of “oral comprehension”; (2) lower level language skills longitudinally predicted reading comprehension outcomes, above code-related skills; (3) decoding precursors (letter knowledge, naming speed and phonemic awareness) predicted reading comprehension directly, and indirectly, through decoding skills (pseudoword, word reading, text reading fluency); (4) Oral comprehension skills did not favour the development of decoding. Our results support the independency of the SVR components. However, we suggest that a more fine-grained conceptualisation of oral comprehension skills would help to better understand the individual and pedagogical factors influencing the early development of reading comprehension.     

Lexical- and sentence-level processes in comprehension of written sentences

Two experiments and three measures of lexical skills (word finding, rapid automatized naming, receptive vocabulary) were administered to 24 third and 24 fifth graders. Each experiment included two between-subject variables (grade and sex) and four within-subject variables (mode of sentence presentation – one word and one-sentence-at-a-time; word type – orthographic, phonological and semantic foils; position of foil in sentence – beginning, middle, and end; and sentence type – meaningful and nonsense). The experiments contrasted on reading comprehension task: receptive sentence acceptability (Experiment 1) or expressive sentence reproduction (Experiment 2). One-word-at-a-time presentation, which highlights the lexical unit, resulted in better accuracy on the expressive task that required verbatim reproduction than on the forced choice receptive task. Word finding and rapid automatized naming that require active production of phonologically-referenced name codes, but not receptive vocabulary, were correlated with measures of word recognition and reading comprehension in the experiments and on the psychometric tests. These results are consistent with Perfetti's contention that a phonologically-based name code is the heart of lexical access.     

Reading motivation and reading comprehension growth in the later elementary years

Reading motivation has been viewed as a multifaceted construct with multiple constituents. Our investigation of motivational multiplicity expanded on previous literature by including motivation constructs (interest, perceived control, collaboration, involvement, and efficacy), text genres, specific versus general contexts, and the self-versus other evidence sources about motivation. We expected that this multiplicity would influence the identification of reading comprehension growth predictors. We obtained pre- and post-interview data, teacher ratings, motivation self-reports, and reading comprehension scores. Interviews showed motivation constructs to be semi-independent. Students’ reading motivations for narrative and information texts were not highly associated; and self-reports and other motivation reports were not highly associated, but situated and general reading motivations were correlated. Interview-based coding of motivation predicted reading comprehension growth, but reading comprehension did not predict motivation growth. Situated motivation for information books predicted general motivation growth according to multiple regression analyses. Implications for an engagement model of reading development were discussed.     

Emotional factors of causal coherence in text comprehension

The current study tested the effects of positive and negative emotion at the beginning and end of texts, as well as the consistency in valence throughout a text on readers’ response choice to items on a multiple-choice reading comprehension assessment. Multinomial logistic regressions were performed on 1,161 college participants’ assessment responses to test whether emotion in narrative and informational text items significantly predicted which distractor response options readers chose in comparison to the correct response option. Overall, consistent emotion throughout text and positive and negative emotion at the beginning and end of text were significant predictors of readers’ response choices. The results are discussed in terms of emotion being an indicator of readers’ causal processing. Specifically, findings provide a better understanding of how emotional features in narrative and informational texts may influence how readers develop causal coherence and comprehension during reading. This understanding could also help inform the development of instructional tools that encourage readers to focus on aspects of text (i.e., emotion) which could, in turn, help improve comprehension for readers who struggle.     

Gender differences in reading: Examining text-based interest in relation to text characteristics and reading comprehension

Reading is a key competence for knowledge acquisition and learning processes. One important source of reading motivation is interest. Even though students' text-based interest often differs by gender, it remains unclear which text factors underlie these differences and whether text-based interest relates to reading comprehension among boys and girls. In a sample of 514 elementary students (47.2% girls), this study examined whether text topic, protagonists' gender, and text difficulty affect boys' and girls' text-based interest and whether interest and reading comprehension are intertwined. Based on a repeated within-subject design using fourteen narrative texts, the results indicated that boys' interest was higher in texts with male-attributed topics, male protagonists, and in more difficult texts. In contrast, girls’ interest was only affected by text difficulty. Text-based interest and reading comprehension were significantly related, albeit stronger for boys than for girls. The findings are discussed regarding future implications for research and educational practice.     

The effect of a strategy training on reading comprehension in fourth-grade students

Previous studies have shown that instruction of reading strategies is an effective method for enhancing reading comprehension. However, many of the interventions in these studies focused on small groups of (poor) comprehenders and were provided by research assistants, making it time-consuming and relatively expensive. The authors implemented a strategy intervention to intact classrooms, consisting of reciprocal teaching and delivered by teachers. Participants were 510 typically developing fourth-grade students. A clustered randomized controlled trial was conducted with pretest, posttest, and follow-up measures to assess knowledge of reading strategies and reading comprehension. The results revealed that the intervention had an effect on knowledge of reading strategies at posttest and follow-up. However, the intervention did not affect reading comprehension performance. Together with the results of earlier studies, the present study raises the question whether strategy interventions are the most efficient to improve fourth-grade students' reading comprehension.