Key language, cognitive and higher-order skills for L2 reading comprehension of expository texts in English as foreign language students: a systematic review
AbstractThis systematic review addressed the following question: Which are the relations between L1 and/or L2 foundational and upper-level language skills, cognitive skills, high-order cognitive and self-regulation factors and L2-English reading comprehension skills in 11-to-19 year EFL secondary school students with different L1 language profiles? Following preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, twenty-seven studies were included for a systematic synthesis of results in the light of the different grades of “family language dista nce” between L1 and L2-English (i.e., “close r...
Source: Reading and Writing - October 17, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Visual-orthographic skills predict the covariance of Chinese word reading and arithmetic calculation
This study provides evidence connecting two aspects of visual-orthographic skills (orthographic awareness and delayed copying) to the common variance shared by Chinese word reading and arithmetic calculation, as well as in identifying positional knowledge of numbers as a potential mediator of these connections in Chinese primary school students (N = 155, 81 boys). Nonverbal Intelligent Quotient (IQ), socioeconomic status (SES), working memory, and attentional control were included as covariates. Path analyses demonstrated that both orthographic awareness and delayed copying significantly explained the covariance of wor...
Source: Reading and Writing - September 10, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Examining the relations between mothers ’ reading skills, home literacy environment, and Chinese children’s word reading across contexts
We examined the relations between mothers ’ reading skills, home literacy environment (HLE), and children’s emergent literacy skills and word reading and whether their relations vary across urban and rural contexts in China. Four hundred third-year kindergarten Chinese children (Mage = 74.50 ± 3.77 months) were recruited from Jining (N = 232) and the small towns of Luqiao and Mapo (N = 168). The children were assessed on emergent literacy skills (pinyin letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming [RAN], and vocabulary) and word reading. Their mothers were also assessed on readin...
Source: Reading and Writing - September 4, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Is the home literacy environment different depending on the media? Paper vs. tablet-based practices
AbstractThe Home Literacy model predicts different outcomes depending on formal and informal literacy practices carried out at home. However, this model does not explicitly consider the potential differences that the media (paper vs. tablets) in which these practices are carried out can have on performance. The present study explored this issue. Participants were 136 children aged 6 –7 years old and their parents. The different activities performed at home were analysed through reports of the parents, and children were assessed at school for their reading performance (decoding and comprehension). Results showed how forma...
Source: Reading and Writing - August 27, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The home literacy environment and television exposure as mediators between migration background and preschool children ’s linguistic abilities
AbstractThe development of key linguistic abilities is essential for young children and their academic success at school, in particular for children with a migration background who are at a greater risk of developing language deficits. Here, family interactions can provide valuable opportunities to support children ’s linguistic learning within the Home Literacy Environment (HLE). Although the importance of the HLE for children’s language acquisition has often been investigated, research has not focused on specific facets of the HLE and other influencing factors that may be associated with early linguistic abilities su...
Source: Reading and Writing - August 26, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Numeral comprehension in children with different levels of language proficiency
This study examines numeral comprehension in 600 Chinese primary second graders with different levels of decoding and linguistic comprehension skills. Four groups of children were compared, including typical readers (TR), poor decoders (PD), poor comprehenders (PC) and general poor readers (GPR). Results showed that the four groups had similar performances in numeral comprehension when the answer options to a question on the quantity of numerals were presented in Arabic numbers. However, when the answer options to a question on the quantity of numeral information were presented in analogue nonsymbolic magnitude representat...
Source: Reading and Writing - August 22, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The simple view of reading and its broad types of reading difficulties
This article first reviews the SVR and its main predictions, followed by an overview of the evidence bearing on these. The article then describes how reading comprehension difficulties are defined under the S VR, presenting graphics that employ continuous variables that accurately reflect these definitions. The article concludes with a discussion of classification studies that have investigated SVR-defined reading difficulties and their findings of cases of good skills in word recognition and language co mprehension coupled with poor reading comprehension. The article argues that these can be interpreted as consistent with...
Source: Reading and Writing - August 12, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Explicit and evidence-based literacy instruction in middle school: an observation study
AbstractAs evidenced by national data, a large proportion of students in middle school, contentarea classrooms in the United States (U.S.) may be considered developing readers (U.S. Department of Education in All aboard the literacy special: Reading resources from the What Works Clearinghouse.https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/literacyresources1, 2023a; U.S. Department of Education in National assessment of educational progress (NAEP), 2022 reading assessment. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved May 1, 2023b, fromhttps://www.nationsreportcard.gov/, 2023b). Evidence-based literacy...
Source: Reading and Writing - August 3, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Do changes in perceived teacher behaviour predict changes in intrinsic reading motivation? A five-wave analysis in German lower secondary school students
AbstractAlthough several longitudinal studies have confirmed that need-supportive teacher behaviour shapes intrinsic motivation in school, longitudinal studies on its role for intrinsic reading motivation are lacking. To fill in this gap, this study investigated whether changes in selected aspects of student-perceived teacher need-supportive behaviour in German lessons predicted changes in intrinsic reading motivation. We also investigated how student intrinsic reading motivation and perceived teacher need-supportive behaviour changed over the course of lower secondary school. To this end, we used data of 7634 German stude...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 29, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Stimulating inference-making in second grade children when reading and listening to narrative texts
AbstractInference-making is a central element of successful reading comprehension, yet provides a challenge for beginning readers. Text decoding takes up cognitive resources which prevents beginning readers from successful inference-making and compromises reading comprehension. Listening does not require any decoding and could therefore offer a less demanding context to practice inference-making. The present study examined whether stimulating inference-making in a listening context is more effective and less cognitively demanding for beginning readers than a reading context. In three experiments, Dutch second grade childre...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 28, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Is it the size, the movement, or both? Investigating effects of screen size and text movement on processing, understanding, and motivation when students read informational text
This study focused on the potential effects of screen size (smartphone vs. tablet) and text movement (scrolling vs. paging) on integrated understanding of text information, strategic backtracking, and intrinsic reading motivation when Norwegian university students read an informational text on either a smartphone or a tablet by either scrolling or paging. We expected that paging would lead to better integrated understanding of the text and more strategic backtracking than scrolling. Also, we explored whether scrolling would lower the intrinsic motivation for performing the reading task, and whether there were interactional...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 25, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Texts for reading instruction and the most common words in modern standard Arabic: an investigation
AbstractReading instruction for young Arabic speakers presents challenges for textbook publishers and teachers. In the present study, the authors conduct an analysis at the word level of four multidisciplinary textbooks for reading instruction in grades one and two in Egypt. The study sought to answer the following questions: What are the most common words in standard Arabic? How many of the most common words in standard Arabic are used in the textbooks? How dense is the use of common words? How many rare words are used in the textbooks studied? A word frequency analysis from existing corpora were used to create a most com...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 25, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Graphic novel reading comprehension in Chinese children with developmental language disorder (DLD)
AbstractChildren with developmental language disorder (DLD) have consistently showed poor performances in reading comprehension. Extending from previous studies that presented pure-text, this study aims to test the performances of graphic novel reading. We tested 24 Chinese children who have been diagnosed as DLD and 24 typical readers matched with age and nonverbal IQ. These children were asked to complete a battery of tests assessing graphic novel reading comprehension and related visual-cognitive skills. The results of group comparison indicated that children with DLD performed similarly to the typical readers in graphi...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 25, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Teachers ’ beliefs and practices in textbook selection and use when teaching Chinese as a second language
AbstractTextbooks are the primary materials for teaching in the Greater China Region, including the teaching of Chinese as a second language. This qualitative study examined how two teachers of first to fifth grade students in an international school in Macao selected, used, and adapted textbooks to teach Chinese to non-native Chinese speakers. It also examined the beliefs that drove teachers ’ decisions and actions. Multiple forms of evidence were analyzed, including responses to interview questions posed at multiple points, responses to a questionnaire administered at the beginning of the study, school documents, and c...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 25, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Role of radical position and character configuration in Chinese handwritten production
AbstractMost Chinese characters comprise radicals that are embedded in a specific structure (e.g., left –right structure like相, or top –bottom structure like杏). We investigated the representations of word-form units (i.e., radicals) in planning Chinese handwritten production. Adopting the picture-word interference paradigm (Experiment 1,N = 29), we manipulated picture names and their corresponding distractors to share one radical. Radicals embedded in the same character structure as the target significantly shortened the participants’ writing latency, no matter whether the radicals appeared at the same or a d...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 25, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
