The authors conducted an experimental study to examine the effects of collaborative strategic reading and metacognitive strategic learning on the reading comprehension of students in seventh- and ...eighth-grade English/language arts classes in two sites (Texas, Colorado) and in three school districts. Students were randomly assigned to classes and then classes were randomly assigned to treatment or business-as-usual comparison groups. If a teacher had an uneven number of classes, we assigned extra classes to treatment. The total number of classes randomized was 61, with 34 treatment and 27 comparison. Treatment students received a multicomponent reading comprehension instruction (collaborative strategic reading) from their English/language arts/reading teachers that included teaching students to apply comprehension strategies in collaborative groups for 18 weeks, with approximately two sessions per week. Findings indicated significant differences in favor of the treatment students on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Comprehension Test but not on reading fluency.
Audiobooks allow language learners to read and listen to the same text simultaneously; yet the effects of this bimodal input (written and spoken) on learners’ comprehension have been inconsistent, ...suggesting that the conditions under which audiobooks can help comprehension are not well understood. As such, I explored silent reading speed and text complexity as two potential variables that moderate reading‐while‐listening (RWL) comprehension. In a within‐participant design, 46 English learners in an American university read, listened to, and simultaneously read and listened to two complexity versions of a fictional text. Mixed‐effects regression modeling revealed that participants comprehended better in the RWL conditions than in the listening‐only conditions, echoing findings from the captions literature. This effect was moderated by neither silent reading speed nor text complexity. There were also no main effects between RWL and reading‐only conditions, indicating limitations in the use of audiobooks in language classrooms to promote written text comprehension.
The present study examined the effect of reading goals on the processing and memory of central and peripheral textual information. Using eye-tracking methodology, we compared the effect of four ...common reading goals—entertainment, presentation, studying for a close-ended (multiple-choice) questions test, and studying for an open-ended questions test—on the specific reading time of central and peripheral information and the overall reading time of expository texts. Text memory was tested using multiple-choice questions. Results showed that readers devoted more time to central information than peripheral information during initial reading, regardless of reading goal, but that they adjusted their rereading to the reading goal, with total reading time being longer for central information under some (entertainment and presentation) but not all (open-ended and close-ended questions tests) reading goals. Moreover, readers devoted more time to reading the texts for a study purpose (test or presentation) than for an entertainment purpose, and devoted more time in reading the texts to answer open-ended questions than close-ended questions. Finally, we found that readers remembered more central information than peripheral information under all reading goals. These findings suggest that centrality affects readers’ early processing of text whereas reading goals only affect subsequent processing. Interestingly, processing time during reading predicted memory for peripheral information but not for central information.
Engineering undergraduates face difficulties in comprehending discipline-specific study materials because the reading skill has been neglected at the school-level, and the students themselves have ...not been motivated adequately to read. This paper hypothesizes that instruction-sessions on reading strategies enable tertiary-level learners to understand their engineering texts better. In this study, the teacher-researchers distributed a questionnaire to find out the students' difficulties in academic reading, their attitude to the reading strategies taught, and the usefulness of the instruction-sessions. They also interviewed the students, and systematized the data collected. The analysis showed a mixed reaction from the students. Some of them reported that learning the strategies fostered a positive change in advancing their reading skills, while others testified that strategies had only a negligible role in doing so. Therefore, this study suggests a 5 D approach to strategic reading - Decipher, Digest, Deduce, Detail and Discuss - to overcome the difficulties in reading.
Print culture expanded significantly in the nineteenth century due to new print technologies and more efficient distribution methods, providing literary critics, who were alternately celebrated and ...reviled, with an ever-increasing number of venues to publish their work. Adam Gordon embraces the multiplicity of critique in the period from 1830 to 1860 by exploring the critical forms that emerged. Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites is organized around these sometimes chaotic and often generative forms and their most famous practitioners: Edgar Allan Poe and the magazine review; Ralph Waldo Emerson and the quarterly essay; Rufus Wilmot Griswold and the literary anthology; Margaret Fuller and the newspaper book review; and Frederick Douglass’s editorial repurposing of criticism from other sources. Revealing the many and frequently competing uses of criticism beyond evaluation and aesthetics, this insightful study offers a new vision of antebellum criticism, a new model of critical history, and a powerful argument for the centrality of literary criticism to modern life.
This study examined the influence of classroom pedagogic reading practices and out-of-school practices in explaining why the reading attainment of Hong Kong Grade 4 students was superior to that of ...their counterparts in Taiwan in the 2006 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Analyses of scores from 9301 students (4712 from Hong Kong and 4589 from Taiwan) revealed that independent reading in school made a distinctive contribution to the reading performance of Hong Kong and Taiwan students after controlling for the effects of students' and parents' reading attitudes, the availability of supportive home educational resources and student engagement in a range of reading practices. Out-of-school informational reading was found to be negatively associated with students' reading attainment for both Hong Kong and Taiwan students. There was evidence that reading aloud in class in Taiwan classrooms significantly contributed to the Taiwan students' poor reading performance.
This research investigated oral reading fluency as a predictor of silent reading fluency at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Several measures were used, including the Gray Oral Reading Test, ...the Test of Silent Word Reading Fluency, the Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency, and the Reading Observation Scale. A total of 223 students participated in the research, 63.2% at the postsecondary and 36.8% at the high school level. Among them, 17.5% had reading disabilities. We sought to identify performance‐level differences between the two groups, students with and without reading disabilities; specifically, silent reading fluency test results of students with reading disabilities vs. students without reading disabilities and the oral reading fluency as a predictor of silent reading fluency proficiency levels. An independent‐samples t test, correlations, and hierarchical regression analyses were employed. The results indicated that the relationships between oral reading fluency and silent reading fluency were statistically significant.
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The present study aimed to explore the relationship between reading motivation, reading engagement, strategy use, and L2 reading proficiency and the predictability of the first three factors on L2 ...reading proficiency in a group of Iranian EFL learners. The participants were selected based on a nonrandom purposive sampling technique. They were asked to complete the MRQ, reading engagement questionnaire, the SILL, and an IELTS reading test. The data were analyzed using the SPSS software. The findings indicated that there existed a meaningful positive relationship between reading motivation and L2 reading proficiency as well as reading engagement and L2 reading proficiency. There did not exist a positive relationship between strategy use and L2 reading proficiency. The results also revealed that reading motivation and reading engagement predicted the L2 reading proficiency of the participants. Furthermore, a significant difference existed among the low, intermediate, and high-proficient L2 readers in terms of reading motivation and reading engagement. Implications of the study are presented in the article.
The present set of 7 experiments systematically examined the effectiveness of adding causal explanations to simple refutations in reducing or eliminating the impact of outdated information on ...subsequent comprehension. The addition of a single causal-explanation sentence to a refutation was sufficient to eliminate any measurable disruption in comprehension caused by the outdated information (Experiment 1) but was not sufficient to eliminate its reactivation (Experiment 2). However, a 3 sentence causal-explanation addition to a refutation eliminated both any measurable disruption in comprehension (Experiment 3) and the reactivation of the outdated information (Experiment 4). A direct comparison between the 1 and 3 causal-explanation conditions provided converging evidence for these findings (Experiment 5). Furthermore, a comparison of the 3 sentence causal-explanation condition with a 3 sentence qualified-elaboration condition demonstrated that even though both conditions were sufficient to eliminate any measurable disruption in comprehension (Experiment 6), only the causal-explanation condition was sufficient to eliminate the reactivation of the outdated information (Experiment 7). These results establish a boundary condition under which outdated information will influence comprehension; they also have broader implications for both the updating process and knowledge revision in general.
This longitudinal randomized-control trial investigated the effectiveness of scientifically based reading instruction for students with IQs ranging from 40 to 80, including students with intellectual ...disability (ID). Students were randomly assigned into treatment (n = 76) and contrast (n = 65) groups. Students in the treatment group received intervention instruction daily in small groups of 1 to 4 for approximately 40 to 50 min for 1 to 4 academic years. On average, students in the treatment group made significantly greater progress than students in the contrast condition on nearly all language and literacy measures. Results demonstrate the ability of students with low IQs, including students with mild to moderate ID, to learn basic reading skills when provided appropriate, comprehensive reading instruction for an extended period of time.
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