Effective writing instruction for students in grades 6 to 12: a best evidence meta-analysis
AbstractThe current best evidence meta-analysis reanalyzed the data from a meta-analysis by Graham et al. (J Educ Psychol 115:1004 –1027, 2023). This meta-analysis and the prior one examined if teaching writing improved the writing of students in Grades 6 to 12, examining effects from writing intervention studies employing experimental and quasi-experimental designs (with pretests). In contrast to the prior meta-analysis, we eliminated all N of 1 treatment/control comparisons, studies with an attrition rate over 20%, studies that did not control for teacher effects, and studies that did not contain at least one reliable ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 24, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The representation of Chinese phonograms and their radicals during the visual word recognition
This study, employing unmasked priming lexical decision tasks, examines the possible effects of the phonogram properties on the representation of Chinese phonograms and their radicals. In Experiment 1, the representation of radicals (semantic radical and phonetic radical) and their host phonograms is compared under various phonograms types. Experiment 2 utilizes synonyms of semantic radicals and homophones to phonetic radicals as targets to further investigate whether the activation of radicals involves the representation of phonetic and semantic information. The representation of phonograms forms a continuum modulated by ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 24, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
What can writing-process data add to the assessment of spelling difficulties?
AbstractSpelling difficulties are commonly associated primarily with spelling errors. However, it is not uncommon for spelling challenges to transform the whole writing process into a formidable struggle. This paper delves into the exploration of whether and to what extent analyses of children ’s writing processes can enhance our understanding of their difficulties, potentially contributing to the assessment of spelling challenges. We focused particularly on the degree of hesitation within words and the ability to detect and correct spelling errors among children with and without readin g and spelling difficulties, as we...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 22, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Phonological decoding does not affect incidental Chinese novel word learning in Uyghur readers: evidence from eye movements
AbstractVocabulary is an important foundation for reading skills. Dual-route cascaded model believes that when form-sound correspondence is irregular, phonetic decoding is a necessary but not sufficient condition for word acquisition. Lexical access in syllabic scripts involves a morphological-phonetic-semantic approach, where phonological decoding is crucial. However, in ideographic scripts, pronunciation plays a relatively small or even no role. Further exploration is needed to determine whether the morphological-phonetic-semantic approach is commonly used as a lexical access strategy in second language learning, particu...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 20, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The contributions of transcription skills to paper-based and computer-based text composing in the early years
In this study, we examined the unique contributions of transcription skills (i.e., handwriting automaticity, keyboarding a utomaticity and spelling) in predicting Grade 2 students (N = 544) paper-based and computer-based writing performance (i.e., compositional quality and productivity) after controlling for other student-level factors (i.e., gender, word reading, reading comprehension, and attitudes towards writing ) and classroom-level factors (i.e., amount of time teaching handwriting, keyboarding, and spelling). Multilevel modelling showed that, compared to handwriting automaticity, spelling skills accounted for a ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 20, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Investigating the features of mathematics writing among chinese students
This study aimed to conduct a comprehensive investigation into the Mathematics Writing (MW) of Chinese students. We conducted a comparison between MW and general writing on organizational features. The analysis was based on a sample of 138 sixth-grade students. Our findings revealed: (a) students demonstrated significantly higher performance in all organizational features of general writing than MW; (b) students utilized a few mathematics vocabulary and displayed one to two grammatical errors in MW, indicating challenges in these areas; (c) students often used procedural knowledge in their MW. Collectively, these findings ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 20, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Exploring the writing attainment gap: profiling writing challenges and predictors for children with English as an additional language
This study examines whether writing presents a specific challenge for children with EAL beyond their oral language and reading skills, and whether the factors affecting writing skills differ between EAL and EL1 groups. In a longitudinal design, 100 children aged 9 to 10 years completed a fiction writing task and single-word spelling task twice over a school year. They also completed a non-fiction writing task, and measures of nonverbal intelligence, receptive vocabulary, expressive and receptive oral language, decoding, and reading comprehension. Children with EAL demonstrated lower general writing performance than monolin...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 17, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Spatial biases in processing mirror letters by literate subjects
AbstractPreschool children often confuse letters with their mirror images when they try to read and write. Mirror confusion seems to occur more often in line with the direction of script (e.g., left-to-right for the Latin alphabetic script), suggesting that the processing of letter orientation and text directionality may be interrelated in preliterate age. When children go to school, mirror mistakes in writing/reading letters disappear. Here we ask whether the processing of letter shapes and text direction are still related in readers at different proficiency levels. Literate subjects – school children from the 1st and 4...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 17, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Correction: Developing a multi-dimensional phonological and morphological framework for understanding reading and spelling acquisition: A study in Malayalam literacy learning
(Source: Reading and Writing)
Source: Reading and Writing - April 17, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
The meta-linguistic and domain-specific executive function profile of children with decoding or comprehension difficulties
This study aimed to investigate the meta-linguistic and executive function profile for different subtypes of reading difficulties (RD) among upper-elementary students. Based on 1,112 third- to fifth-grade Chinese-speaking children, we identified 72 with decoding difficulties (DD), 74 with comprehension difficulties (CD), and 29 reading-level-matched typically developing (R-TD) peers. All children were assessed on four meta-linguistic measures (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and orthographic awareness) and three sets of four executive function measures (working memory, inhibition,...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 16, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Co-occurrence and cognitive basis of low language and low reading skills in children speaking a transparent language
AbstractWe investigated the comorbidity of low language and reading skills in 6- to 8-year-old monolingual Polish-speaking children (N = 962) using three different approaches: norming data to determine the prevalence of co-morbid difficulties, group comparisons of profiles on key cognitive-linguistic measures, and a case series analysis examining the frequency of single versus multiple deficits. We identified four groups of ch ildren based on their oral language and reading skills: children with low oral language skills alone, low reading skills alone, comorbid low language/reading skills, and typically developing chro...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 16, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Typical spelling errors of Grade 1 spellers of Polish: An exploratory study adapting the POMAS classification to the Polish orthography
AbstractThis paper presents the adaptation of the POMAS classification of spelling errors (Silliman et al., Developmental Neuropsychology 29:93 –123, 2006, Bahr et al., Journal of Speech, Language& Hearing Research 55:1587 –1599, 2012; International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 18:73–91, 2015) to Polish orthography. We identified the most common phonological, orthographic, and/or morphological errors committed by Polish Grade 1 spellers based on a writing-to-dictation task. Some of the error typ es were included in the original POMAS; some we added, following the classification rationale, to ad...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 15, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Proficiency and compensatory strategies in bilingual children ’s Mandarin Chinese narrative
AbstractNarrative skills play an important role in children ’s reading, communication, and critical thinking. Most studies on narrative skills are based on monolingual children from middle- to upper middle-class populations and few have examined bilingual children’s narratives outside of the western context. These factors may impose different sociocultur al influences on children’s storytelling abilities. The current study focuses on English–Mandarin bilingual children in Singapore and explores: (1) how English–Mandarin bilinguals apply their Mandarin lexical-grammatical proficiency to a given narrative task and ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 12, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Continuous texts or word lists? Exploring the effects and the process of repeated reading depending on the reading material and students ’ reading abilities
This study tested whether the effects of RR depend on the reading material and whether these effects interact with students ’ prior abilities.N = 304 primary school students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) a repeated reading group receiving continuous texts (RR-T), (2) a repeated reading group receiving word lists (RR-W), and (3) a control group (CG). Before and after the training (M = 13 sessions), students’ reading fluency and reading motivation were assessed. In both RR-groups, the average level and growth in (a) words read correctly per minute and (b) affect were recorded during each ...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 11, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
Assessing penmanship of Chinese handwriting: a deep learning-based approach
In this study, we adopted a similar approach, developing a CNN-based automatic assessment system for penmanship in traditional Chinese handwriting. Utilizing an existing database of 39,207 accurately handwritten characters (penscripts) from 40 handwriters, we had three human raters evaluate each penscript ’s penmanship on a 10-point scale and calculated an average penmanship score. We trained a CNN on 90% of the penscripts and their corresponding penmanship scores. Upon testing the CNN model on the remaining 10% of penscripts, it achieved a remarkable performance (overall 9.82% normalized Mean Abso lute Percentage Error)...
Source: Reading and Writing - April 10, 2024 Category: Child Development Source Type: research
