Levels of skills and predictive patterns of reading comprehension in bilingual children with an early age of acquisition
AbstractBilingualism appears to be related to poor language and reading comprehension in the instructional language (L2). However, in the long term, an early age of second language acquisition (AoA) may produce higher levels of second language skills than a later onset of L2 exposure. Most studies on school-aged second language learners (L2 learners) include children with 3 –7 years of second language (L2) exposure. We compared 91 early bilingual (Norwegian and a variety of different native languages) 5th graders with 196 monolingual peers on a range of linguistic skills and their relationships with reading comprehensio...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 4, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
How do French students in primary grades process past participle inflections and their N-1 and N+1 in sentence dictation tasks? An analysis of the effects of verb frequency and verb consistency
AbstractThe research presented in this paper aimed to serve two purposes. First, the objective was to understand the relationship between lexical and grammatical spelling. In this way, we studied how the frequency and consistency of verb interacted with the application of grammatical rules. Second, we investigated the dynamics of spelling during the writing of simple sentences to evaluate the impact of spelling one word on another; that is, to determine anticipatory and delayed spelling treatments in a sentence. Second- to fifth-grade students from primary schools completed a spelling-to-dictation task using sentences of t...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 1, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Relation between executive function and early language and literacy development in Bengali, Chinese, and Hindi
This study examined these relations among young children in three Asian countries. A series of EF and language tasks was administered to 700 children (350 girls) aged from 3 to 6 years from urban and rural areas in Bangladesh (n = 232), China (n = 233), and India (n = 235). Overall EF was positively associated with oral language and literacy after controlling for age, socio-demographic variables, and country. Hierarchical linear regression analyses examined the associations of three EF components (working memory, shifting, and inhibitory control) with oral language and literacy. In all three contexts, inhibit...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 1, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Teaching Chinese characters to students in grades 1 to 3 through emergency remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic
AbstractThe current study examined how Chinese characters were taught by primary grade teachers in Macao during online instruction resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., emergency remote instruction). A random sample of 313 first to third grade teachers in public and private schools were surveyed about their instructional practices. Most teachers surveyed (72%) reported they taught a lesson about Chinese characters once every 3 –4 weeks during emergency remote instruction, and 83% and 81% of teachers indicated they assigned homework for writing and reading characters, respectively, at the same rate. On average, they...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 30, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Children with handwriting difficulties: developing orthographic knowledge of alphabet-letters to improve capacity to write alphabet symbols
This study examined the effectiveness of a handwriting program for early non-proficient writers which integrated instruction of factual, procedural, and spatial information to develop orthographic knowledge of alphabet-letters, for the purpose of mastering alphabet-letter writing skills. A non-concurrent ABA single system research design was employed. The A phases represented in-class handwriting instruction and the B phase was the experimental intervention. Participants were ten children in their first two years of formal schooling, identified by their teacher as having difficulty with handwriting. The repeated outcome me...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 29, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Response to Intervention in first-grade writing instruction: a large-scale feasibility study
AbstractEarly failure to learn writing skills might go unnoticed and unremedied unless teachers adopt specific strategies for identifying and supporting students who learn at a slower pace. We implemented a Response to Intervention (RTI) program for teaching narrative writing. Over 18 months from start of primary school, 161 Spanish children received instruction in strategies for planning text and training in handwriting and spelling, and completed very regular narrative writing tasks. Data from these tasks were analysed to identify students at risk of falling behind. These stu dents then completed additional, parent-sup...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 29, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A computational model of TE-dominant noticing, repetition, prior knowledge and grammatical knowledge acquisition
AbstractComputer-assisted textual enhancement (CATE) technology has been widely used to improve English as foreign language (EFL) learners ’ syntactical and grammatical learning. Visual attention, repetition, and prior knowledge are known as the vital factors in CATE-assisted knowledge-acquisition; however, there still lacks a model which can describe those factors’ intrinsic cooperating-mechanism that works in the CATE-based knowl edge-acquisition. Therefore, this paper built up a computational model (PESE) of using those factors as variables, by fitting and predicting the data collected from empirical experiments wit...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 23, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The role of transcription and executive functions in writing: a longitudinal study in the transition from primary to intermediate Grades
AbstractLearning to write is one of the great challenges children face in primary grades, requiring both transcription skills (handwriting and spelling) and executive functions (EFs; working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility). Although this claim is widely accepted, the field suffers from some limitations, including few longitudinal studies examining the joint role of transcription and EFs in the writing of school-age children. The current study aimed to fill in this gap with a twofold goal: to examine the development of transcription and EFs in Portuguese children transitioning from primary (Grade 4) t...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 23, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Prereaders ’ knowledge about the nature of book reading
AbstractChildren ’s early knowledge and skills set the stage for later reading development. The present studies examined children’s conceptual knowledge of reading prior to formal literacy instruction. Young children’s knowledge about who is able to read books and what readers are reading when they read books has been studied primarily through interviews. However, conclusions from this research are limited by methodological concerns. In three experiments with a total of 105 U.S. preschoolers (ages 3 years, 1 month to 5 years, 5 months) we examined whether prereaders understand what part of a book is read , who can re...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 23, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Predicting native Chinese readers ’ perception of sentence boundaries in written Chinese texts
AbstractThe notion of sentencehood in Mandarin Chinese is much less well-defined than in many other languages, with a block of clauses often joined by commas without conjunctions and with the period often occurring at the end of a block of clauses to indicate meaning completeness rather than the completeness of a sentential structure. The potential factors that may affect native Chinese speakers ’ judgment of meaning completeness and perception of sentence boundaries have not yet been systematically examined. In light of this research gap, this study investigates the factors that may play a role in native Chinese speaker...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 17, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Introduction to the 2020 special issue for the Association for Reading and Writing in Asia (ARWA)
(Source: Reading and Writing)
Source: Reading and Writing - March 12, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Same or different: Chinese character reading and word reading of young readers with development
AbstractThe present study aimed to investigate whether and how Chinese single character reading and 2-character word reading can reflect somewhat different processes. Tasks of Chinese rapid automatized naming (RAN), morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, along with vocabulary knowledge and nonverbal intelligence tasks, were administered to 283 Hong Kong Chinese kindergarteners (Mean age = 66.08 months,SD = 5.15), who were followed up one year later at grade one. Results demonstrated that, concurrently, morphological awareness and RAN explained unique variance in Chinese word read...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 11, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Early phonological training preceding kindergarten training: effects on reading and spelling
This study examined the effects of early phonological training on emergent phonological and reading skills. Children (N = 364) were randomly assigned in small groups to a phonological training group (n = 117), or a control group (n = 247) including both a non-phonological training group and a non-trained control group. The phonological training began three years before the formal reading instruction star ts in Sweden. It was carried out in two waves during six weeks at the age of 4, and during six weeks at the age of 5. All children, including the control children, received phonological training in kindergarte...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 11, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
How does the brain read different scripts? Evidence from English, Korean, and Chinese
This study compared brain activation patterns during a visual rhyming judgment task in English, Korean, and Chinese. The results revealed that among the three languages, Korean and Chinese showed greater similarities in brain activation than either of them showed with English. Specifically, English recruited the left inferior frontal gyrus, left fusiform gyrus, and left superior temporal gyrus to a greater degree than did Korean or Chinese. In contrast, Korean and Chinese elicited greater activation than English in the bilateral middle frontal gyri, left inferior parietal lobule, and precuneus. These findings suggest that ...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 11, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Middle school matters: examining the effects of a schoolwide professional development model to improve reading comprehension
AbstractMany middle school students perform below grade-level standards in reading (National Center for Education Statistics, Washington, 2019), and recent observation studies demonstrate middle school teachers ’ limited use of reading comprehension practices within content area instruction (e.g., science and social studies; as reported by Greenleaf (in: Hinchman (ed) Adolescent literacies: A handbook of practice-based research, Guilford Press, 2017)). In this experimental pilot study, we aimed to boost middle schoolers’ reading comprehension outcomes by providing schoolwide professional development (PD) on integrating...
Source: Reading and Writing - March 7, 2022 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
