Does students ’ exposure to websites moderate the positive relationship between print exposure and text comprehension?
In this study, I investigated the print exposure and website exposure of undergraduates in relation to their scores on a text comprehension test. Print exposure was measured with a national version of the author recognition test, whereas a new website recognition test was developed to measure students ’ exposure to texts on the internet. The participants’ reading attitudes and number of years in higher education were included as control variables. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that three factors are measured by the website recognition test: (1) lifestyle topics; (2) news and culture; and (3) social activity. Th...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 23, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Evaluating the structural and predictive validity of a derivational morphology task with struggling adult readers
AbstractThe purpose of this study was to (a) examine the underlying assessment structure of the Derivational Morphology Task (DMORPH) and (b) investigate the relation of the DMORPH to vocabulary and reading comprehension outcomes with a sample of struggling adult readers. Specifically, participants included 218 struggling adult readers enrolled in adult literacy classes. We used item-level analyses to evaluate the underlying structure of the DMORPH. Items with phonological (e.g., “music” to “musician”) and non-phonological transformations (“teach” to “teacher”) were examined in relation to adult literacy ...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 14, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The effects of purpose instructions and strategy-focused instructions on reading processes and products
AbstractIn educational settings, students read for multiple purposes, such as preparing for an exam, practicing a new reading strategy, writing an essay, and more. Because reading is a goal-directed activity, providing students with task instructions can help them create goals for reading and develop a plan to meet these goals. In the current experiment, we investigated the effects of purpose instructions and strategy-focused instructions on cognitive processes during reading and learning from a single text. Participants were randomly assigned to one cell of a 2 × 2 factorial design. Participants in all four conditio...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 14, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Unpacking an online peer-mediated and self-reflective revision process in second-language persuasive writing
AbstractOnline peer feedback has become prevalent in university writing classes due to the widespread use of peer learning technology. This paper reports an exploratory study of Chinese-speaking undergraduate students ’ experiences of receiving and reflecting on online peer feedback for text revision in an English as a second language (L2) writing classroom at a northeastern-Chinese university. Twelve students were recruited from an in-person writing class taught in English by a Chinese-speaking instructor and asked to write and revise their English persuasive essays. The students sought online peer feedback asynchronous...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 13, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Adolescent reading and math skills and self-concept beliefs as predictors of age 20 emotional well-being
This study examines longitudinal associations among reading skills, math skills and emotional well-being in a Finnish sample (n = 586) followed from the end of comprehensive school (Grade 9, age 15–16) to age 20. In particular, we determine whether the associations between skills and well-being are mediated by self-concept beliefs. In Grade 9, the participants’ reading fluency, PISA reading comprehension and math sk ills were assessed in classrooms, and questionnaires were used to assess self-concept (global and skill-specific) and internalising problems. At age 20, questionnaires were used to self-report emotiona...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 10, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Effects of SRSD writing interventions in grade 3: examining the added value of attention vs. transcription training components
This study compared the effects of SRSD interventions that taught students a planning strategy and how to use it compose text, with additional components of attention (via focused meditation exercises) or transcription (via copy and alphabet exercises). We used a quasi-experimental design with three groups of Portuguese third graders: SRSD + attention (n = 42), SRSD + transcription (n = 37), and wait list (n = 34). Measures of transcription, executive functions, motivation, written production, and academic achievement were collected before and after the interventions. Analyses of co-variance revealed th...
Source: Reading and Writing - July 3, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Intensive and explicit derivational morphology training in school-aged children: an effective way to improve morphological awareness, spelling and reading?
AbstractMorphological awareness has been shown to contribute to the acquisition of literacy in various languages. The current study focuses on an explicit derivational morphology training program in French-speaking fourth graders with the aim of measuring direct effects on morphological awareness and transfer effects on spelling and reading. The intensive training given in class consisted of (1) learning how to segment words into smaller units and (2) understanding the meaning of affixes in relation to words. Thirty-six children received the morphology training and 34 age-matched participants followed an alternative visuo-...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 16, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Contributions of cognitive flexibility to reading comprehension in chinese beginning readers
AbstractThe present study examined whether and how early cognitive flexibility, metalinguistic awareness, including phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA), Chinese word reading (CWR), and listening comprehension (LC) influenced Chinese children ’s later reading comprehension. In total, 153 Chinese children were recruited. Path analysis showed that cognitive flexibility measured when the children were in Grade 1 (Mage = 85.92 months,SD = 4.36) significantly explained the variance of later reading comprehension at Grade 3 (Mage = 103.03 months,SD = 3.80) and all concurrent domain-spe...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 15, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Teaching writing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2021 –2022 school year
This study examined if in-class, online, and hybrid (in-class and on-line) instruction provided to middle and high school students in the U.S. differed during the third school year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also provided a description of how writing was taught to secondary students. Thirty-eight middle and high school teachers (32 female, 6 male), who mostly taught languages arts (84%), were asked to complete a survey each day during the 2020/2021 school year for a single class that best represented how they taught writing. The survey included questions about mode of instruction (in-class at school, online, and hybrid),...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 15, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Teaching argument writing in math class: challenges and solutions to improve the performance of 4th and 5th graders with disabilities
We report the relative number of higher-order mathematical content questions that teachers asked during instruction, from among three different-level question types: Level 1: yes/no questions focused on the mathematics content; Level 2: one-word responses focused on the mathematics content; and Level 3: higher-order open-ended responses centered around four mathematical practices from the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Within a well-controlled single-case multiple-baseline design, seven special education teachers were randomly assigned to each PBPD + FACT-R2C2 intervention tier. Results indicated that: (...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 9, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Effects of teacher knowledge of early reading on students ’ gains in reading foundational skills and comprehension
This study explored the effect of teachers ’ knowledge of language and literacy on their students’ reading outcomes in foundational skills and reading comprehension. Data from 9,640 students and 512 classroom teachers in 112 schools were analyzed using multi-level mixed effects modeling to account for the nested data. After controlling f or student and teacher-level variables, results showed that teachers’ knowledge of language and literacy reliably predicted students’ spring foundational skills scores, but not reading comprehension scores. These findings support the idea that more knowledgeable teachers generate s...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 9, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A longitudinal intervention study of the effects of increasing amount of meaningful writing across grades 1 and 2
AbstractThe current study examined the effectiveness of awriting is caught approach with young developing writers in Norway. This method is based on the premise that writing competence is acquired naturally through real use in meaningful contexts. Our longitudinal randomized control trial study tested this proposition by examining if increasing first grade students ’ opportunities to write in various genres for different purposes and for a range of audiences over a two-year time period improved the quality of their writing, handwriting fluency, and attitude towards writing. The study included data from 942 students (50.1...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 8, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Crosslinguistic influence on spelling in written compositions: Evidence from English-Spanish dual language learners in primary grades
We examined what types of spelling errors students made, whether they made spelling errors that could be due to crosslinguistic influence, and whether errors were associated with instructional pr ogram, English learner status, and grade level. Compositions were transcribed and coded using the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) software. Spelling errors were suggestive of crosslinguistic influence that was mostly unidirectional from one language to the other rather than bidire ctional. Spelling errors were related to instructional program such that students in Spanish-English dual immersion made more English...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 7, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Supporting multilingual children at-risk of reading failure: impacts of a multilingual structured pedagogy literacy intervention in Kenya
AbstractMany children living in linguistically diverse low- and middle-income countries learn to read and write in multiple languages. Recent research provides implications for effective reading instruction with multilingual learners (e.g., Hall et al. in New Dir Child Adolesc Dev 166:145 –189, 2019). However, there is limited empirical evidence on effective instructional practices for multilingual early grade learners who are at-risk of reading failure. The goal of our research was to examine the effect of a structured literacy intervention on literacy skills for a cohort of first grade children at-risk of reading failu...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 5, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
A multi-dimensional framework for characterizing the role of writing system variation in literacy learning: a case study in Malayalam
AbstractMost children across the world learn to read and write in non-alphabetic orthographies such as abjads (e.g., Arabic), abugidas (e.g., Ethiopic Ge ’ez), and morphosyllabaries (e.g., Chinese). However, most theories of reading, reading development, and dyslexia derive from a relatively narrow empirical base of research in English—an outlier alphabetic orthography—and a handful of mainly Western European Roman alphabets. Consideration of t he full spectrum of the world’s writing systems reveals multiple dimensions of writing system complexity, each of which could possibly create obstacles for the developing re...
Source: Reading and Writing - June 3, 2023 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
