January 8th ~Teaching Bilingual Learners; Phonological Processing for Children with Separate or Co-Occurring Dyslexia; The Simple View for Struggling Adult Readers
Welcome to the Reading Research Recap, a weekly newsletter featuring the latest reading research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The goal of the Recap is to share recent scientific findings and foster an appreciation of science as a way to navigate the world. I try to make this one of the most informative emails you get each week. If you enjoy this issue, please share it. I am always interested in improving the newsletter and welcome feedback.
Welcome! This is Issue No. 33
Happy New Year!
There’s a lot of new research that came out over the past two weeks!
Research Highlights 📚
Is retell a valid measure of reading comprehension?
“Overall, the moderate magnitude of the relation between retell and other measures of reading comprehension indicates caution for using retell as the sole measure of reading comprehension. The results also indicate a need for a better understanding about more systematic approaches to retell assessment (e.g., number and kind of prompts in the case of oral retell) as a measure of reading comprehension.”
Multidimensional morphological assessment for middle school students
“Results indicate morphological knowledge is multidimensional and best represented via a bifactor model of four skills as well as task‐related variance. These skills are Skill 1: Morphological Awareness; Skill 2: Morphological‐Syntactic Knowledge; Skill 3: Morphological‐Semantic Knowledge; and Skill 4: Morphological‐Orthographic/Phonological Knowledge. The assessment designed after this model, called Monster, PI, was shown to be both reliable and valid, with each morphological knowledge skill explaining unique variance in standardised reading vocabulary.”
Unpacking the Simple View of Reading for Struggling Adult Readers
“Structural equation modeling showed significant main effects of decoding and listening comprehension, but not oral vocabulary, on reading comprehension. In addition, the interaction among the SVR components did not uniquely contribute to variance in reading comprehension.”
The Simple View of Reading in Italian beginner readers: Converging evidence and open debates on the role of the main components
“Findings supported the relevance of listening comprehension and vocabulary, and of interventions on these skills, for reading comprehension in beginner readers of a highly transparent orthography.”
Orthographic learning and transfer of complex words: Insights from eye tracking during reading and learning tasks
“Further, data from both dictation and eye movements recorded during the orthographic choice task suggested stronger learning of morphologically than orthographically complex pseudowords after four encounters. Finally, results suggested that learning transfer occurred, with similar levels of accurate recognition of new pseudowords that were morphologically or orthographically related to pseudowords learned during the reading phase than of new pseudowords never read.”
The effect of altered Lexile levels of the same text on reading comprehension (open access preprint, not peer-reviewed (?) yet)
“Regression analysis showed no significant contribution of text level to overall comprehension scores. This study is important because it raises questions about our decision-making in choosing leveled texts for reading instruction.”
Using magnetoencephalography to examine word recognition, lateralization, and future language skills in 14-month-old infants (open access)
“In the current study we focus on 14-month-old infants in the earliest stages of word learning using infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain imagining to characterize neural activity in response to familiar and unfamiliar words…Importantly, brain activity in the right frontal cortex in response to familiar words was highly correlated with vocabulary growth at 18, 21, 24, and 27 months. Specifically, higher activation to familiar words in the 150–300 ms interval was associated with faster vocabulary growth, reflecting processing efficiency, whereas higher activation to familiar words in the 600–900 ms interval was associated with slower vocabulary growth, reflecting cognitive effort.”
Socioeconomic status and response to a reading intervention: A quantile regression approach (open access- looks like a preprint- can’t tell if peer-reviewed yet)
“Results indicated that higher family-SES was more strongly associated with greater responsiveness to intervention for both the decoding and expressive vocabulary skills measured. We conclude with a call to more thoroughly consider predictors of individual differences in response to intervention.”
Letter Naming Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, and Spelling Knowledge of Kindergarten Children at Risk for Learning to Read (open access)
“A series of regression analyses revealed that by the end of kindergarten both letter naming and phonological awareness were significant predictors of spelling knowledge (β=.332 and .518 for LK and PA, resp.), explaining 52.7% of the variance.”
Features of Known and Unknown Words for First Graders of Different Proficiency Levels in Winter and Spring (open access)
“The most prominent feature of unknown words in winter and spring for the middle group of students was the presence of multiple syllables. The lowest-performing group of students continued to be limited by word length and frequency in their recognition of words, but on both features, their proficiency increased from winter to spring.”
Individual Differences Modulate the Effects of tDCS on Reading in Children and Adolescents with Dyslexia
“…the effect of tDCS [transcranial direct current stimulation] and reading training tasks on word reading fluency depended on reading at baseline with age and IQ. Thus, the present study provides research-based selection criteria for potential responders to tDCS and encourages tailored intervention based on individual characteristics.”
Parent and Teacher Ratings of Behavioral Executive Functioning for Students With Dyslexia
“One key finding was that children and adolescents with dyslexia were rated by both parents and teachers as having more frequent cognitive, behavioral, and emotional EF difficulties in home and school compared with TD peers. However, teachers often reported greater severity of impairments than parents did across several EF domains, potentially suggesting a differential pattern of EF difficulties between home and school.”
Selective Inhibition of Mirror Invariance for Letters Consolidated by Sleep Doubles Reading Fluency
“Targeted training prevents mirror confusion for letters (b = d) in first graders…Sleep boosts the magnitude, automaticity, and duration of this learning…Training followed by sleep doubles reading fluency in first graders (in Brazil).”
Identifying and Teaching Students with Significant Reading Problems (open access editorial)
Dimensions of Skilled Reading Connecting to Educators’ Critical Background Knowledge (open access chapter)
Deeper Dive
In-Depth
This summary was created by DeAnne Hunter (Thanks, DeAnne!)
Proctor, C. P., Silverman, R. D., Harring, J. R., Jones, R. L., & Hartranft, A. M. (2019). Teaching Bilingual Learners: Effects of a Language-Based Reading Intervention on Academic Language and Reading Comprehension in Grades 4 and 5. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), 95-122. doi:10.1002/rrq.258 (Open Access!)
Background
With the population of bilingual students enrolled in schools in the United States growing at a large rate, it is important that educators be provided the necessary resources to support these students. Mastery of academic language in the language of instruction has been shown to be a key contributor to the success of students across demographics. For bilingual students, the concurrent acquisition of two languages requires a shift in instructional strategies to support the development of academic language skills such as morphology, syntax, semantics, and vocabulary. This study investigated a literacy intervention designed for students in 4th and 5th grade.
Rationale
Previous research has demonstrated that the most successful literacy interventions for this age group (4th – 5th grade) focus on both vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction. This intervention was designed to bring together both language and literacy instruction practices supported by the literature.
This intervention was developed based on*:
Systematic functional linguistics, which emphasizes explicit instruction in the characteristics of language used in specific disciplines (e.g., the language of math vs. the language of science),
Core academic language skills (CALS) which synthesizes best practices from research on second language acquisition, systematic functional linguistics and reading comprehension instruction
Cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), which emphasizes the role of academic language for students’ success, and
The interaction between reader, text and activity across sociocultural settings.
The research team “designed CLAVES to leverage how the readers (Spanish– and Portuguese–English bilingual fourth and fifth graders), the texts (selected or written by the research team), and the activities (targeting text-based vocabulary, morphology, syntax, discussion, and writing) interacted with one another across a variety of schooling (monolingual and bilingual education) and linguistic (Spanish– and Portuguese–English bilingualism) contexts, in the service of critically promoting academic language and reading comprehension” (p. 98, bolding added).
*References for each of these are available under References at the end of this summary.
Research Questions
Using standardized measures of academic language and reading comprehension:
RQ1. Does the intervention improve language and literacy skills in bilingual children when compared to those receiving “business-as-usual” instruction?
RQ2. Does the language proficiency and reading comprehension ability of individual students prior to the start of the intervention significantly impact the effectiveness of the intervention?
Sample
Two groups: business as usual (N = 120) and intervention (N = 119). Students were either Spanish-English or Portuguese-English bilinguals. Each of these students were categorized or formerly categorized as English learners (ELs) by their schools and not fully proficient in English as measured by the WIDA (2015) ACCESS for ELLs assessment.
Intervention
CLAVES (Comprehension, Linguistics Awareness, and Vocabulary in English and Spanish) was developed over the course of two years with teacher and student input before this implementation. It focuses specifically on English language arts (ELA) and social studies. CLAVES is broken down into three thematic units comprised of three instructional cycles. Each lesson is 30 minutes in length and conducted with small groups of 4 – 6 students. CLAVES is designed specifically to draw helpful connections between the languages to improve linguistic awareness.
Cycles 1 – 2: Language-based reading instruction
Days 1 – 2: Academic vocabulary + Reading Comprehension
Day 3: Morphology
Day 4: Syntax
Day 5: Small group discussion
Cycle 3: Writer’s workshop
Day 1: Planning
Day 2: Drafting and revision
Day 3: Publishing
The intervention was administered by teachers who were trained in a summer workshop and supported by the research team throughout implementation.
Measures**
Fall Measures
Expressive Vocabulary: Woodcock–Muñoz Language Survey–RevisedPicture Vocabulary subtest
Morphology: Extract the Base measure
Syntax: Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language Grammaticality Judgment subtest
Spring Measures
Academic Language: CALS assessment
Fall and Spring Measures
Reading Comprehension: Gates–MacGinitie Reading Tests fourth edition
**References for each of these are available under References at the end of this summary.
Main Result
Results showed meaningful, but small, improvements in both academic language and reading comprehension for students in the intervention group.
Take-Home Message
Although the improvements demonstrated in this study were admittedly small, the take-aways from this study are still meaningful. This paper outlines important considerations for education as evidence-based support for students multicultural and multilingual backgrounds becomes a particular area of focus.
The authors of this paper put forth five major take-aways from their study:
Literacy instruction has been shown to be most effective when instructional texts are rich and maximize student engagement.
Use larger themes to provide a meaningful focus for literacy instruction.
A broad focus on components of language (e.g., morphology, syntax) is critical.
Students should be encouraged to talk as a part of their active engagement.
Writing is an essential extension of talk.
Other Important Notes
The privileged position that academic language has been given in schools is contested by some who argue that interpersonal communication skills, such as those developed on the playground, are of equal importance. They caution that this privileging can be misleading, suggesting that they require remediation rather than adaptive instruction.
While academic language is the focus of this intervention, the authors emphasize that the development of interpersonal communication skills is of equal importance in language development and essential to students’ success.
References:
Core Academic Language Skills:
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research, 49(2), 222–251. https ://doi.org/10.3102/00346 54304 9002222
Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children. In E. Bialystok (Ed.), Language processing in bilingual children (pp. 70–89). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
Systemic Functional Linguistics:
Bailey, A.L. (2007). The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Gibbons, P. (2009). English learners’ academic literacy and thinking. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Schleppegrell, M.J. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
RAND Reading Study Group (reader + text + activity):
RAND Reading Study Group. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency:
Uccelli, P., Barr, C.D., Dobbs, C.L., Phillips Galloway, E., Meneses, A., & Sanchez, E. (2015). Core academic language skills: An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school relevant language proficiency in preadolescent and adolescent learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(5), 1077–1109. https ://doi.org/10.1017/S0142 71641 400006X
Uccelli, P., Phillips Galloway, E., Barr, C.D., Meneses, A., & Dobbs, C.L. (2015). Beyond vocabulary: Exploring cross-disciplinary academic-language proficiency and its association with reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 50(3), 337–356. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.104
Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey
Woodcock, R.W., Muñoz-Sandoval, A.F., Ruef, M.L., & Alvarado, C.G. (2005). Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey–revised. Itasca, IL: Riverside.
Extract the Base Test
Anglin, J.M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10). https ://doi.org/10.2307/1166112
August, D., Kenyon, D., Malabonga, V., Louguit, M., & Caglarcan, S. (2001). Extract the Base Test. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Carlisle, J.F. (1988). Knowledge of derivational morphology and spelling ability in fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9(3), 247–266. https ://doi.org/10.1017/S0142 716400007839
The Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language
Carrow-Woolfolk, E. (1999). The Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language. San Antonio, TX: Pearson.
Gates–MacGinitie Reading Tests
MacGinitie, W., MacGinitie, R., Maria, K., & Dreyer, L. (2002). Gates–MacGinitie Reading Tests (4th ed.). Itasca, IL: Riverside.
References
Proctor, C. P., Silverman, R. D., Harring, J. R., Jones, R. L., & Hartranft, A. M. (2019). Teaching Bilingual Learners: Effects of a Language-Based Reading Intervention on Academic Language and Reading Comprehension in Grades 4 and 5. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), 95-122. doi:doi:10.1002/rrq.258