July 9th ~ Should teachers be accurate or (overly) positive?; Growth Trajectories and Cognitive Predictors of Reading; Effects of Silent Independent Reading + so much more!
The Weekly Email That Keeps you Informed of the Latest Reading Research
Welcome! This is Volume 2, Issue No. 7
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.
Updates
There were a lot of new studies released these past two weeks! Some of the studies in the highlights section were holdovers from last week…but I don’t think I am going to “hold” studies any more, because this week was also super busy in terms of new studies released and then it makes the Highlights section super long. Anyways, I tried to group them by topic (comprehension, brain imaging etc.) to make it easier to navigate.
Word Reading/Fluency
The Relative Effects of Instruction Linking Word Reading and Word Meaning Compared to Word Reading Instruction Alone on the Accuracy, Fluency, and Word Meaning Knowledge of 4th-5th Grade Students With Dyslexia
“This within-subjects experimental study investigated the relative effects of word reading and word meaning instruction (WR+WM) compared to word-reading instruction alone (WR) on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th graders with dyslexia…Findings support the premise that word meaning knowledge facilitates accurate and fluent word reading, and that instruction explicitly integrating word reading and word meaning may be an effective support for upper elementary students with dyslexia.”
Examining the Growth Trajectories and Cognitive Predictors of Reading in a Consistent Orthography: Evidence from a 10-year Longitudinal Study (open access preprint- in press at Applied Psycholinguistics)
“Phonological awareness predicted the initial status of nonword reading fluency in the first developmental period and the initial status of word- and text-reading fluency in the second developmental period. None of the cognitive skills predicted the growth rate in reading skills. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.”
Examining the Effects of Silent Independent Reading on Reading Outcomes: A Narrative Synthesis Review from 2000 to 2020
“Encouraging children to read extensively has been a widely recommended approach to developing reading. The National Reading Panel published a review study reporting inconclusive findings regarding the benefits of such an approach. In this systematic narrative synthesis review, we provided an update and an extension of the NRP’s review. We examined the effects of silent independent reading practices on reading outcomes for students in Grades K through 12, reviewing experimental and quasi-experimental studies between 2000 and 2020. We also incorporated a quality evaluation of primary studies. A systematic search of peer-reviewed articles was conducted, using identical procedures as in the National Reading Panel review. Our results from 14 primary studies comprising 5,522 participants in the treatment group and 4,966 in the control group alluded to no meaningful beneficial effects of independent reading on reading outcomes. However, due to a lack of primary studies adhering to the highest quality standards and implementation, it is impossible to determine whether such a result is universal or whether there might be conditions under which independent reading could be effective.”
Comprehension
What an interesting and practically important study:
Should teachers be accurate or (overly) positive? A competitive test of teacher judgment effects on students’ reading progress
“Previous findings on effects of teachers' judgments on student learning have been contradictory leading to the question of what kinds of judgments are most beneficial: accurate or (overly) positive ones?…Response Surface Analyses combined with an information-theoretic approach for model comparison revealed no evidence of positive effects of judgment accuracy or overestimation of student performance by teachers. Instead, progress in reading fluency and reading comprehension was best predicted by students' prior achievement. For reading comprehension, the positivity of teachers' judgments was additionally beneficial: The higher a teacher judged a student's performance, the more the student learned.”
The Impact of Growth Mindset Instruction on the Vocabulary Acquisition and Comprehension of First Grade Students
“This study investigated whether students who receive a growth mindset intervention in addition to regular vocabulary instruction would make greater gains in vocabulary development. First grade students (N = 61) were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions providing vocabulary instruction, with one condition providing additional instruction in growth mindset, and a business as usual comparison group. The vocabulary intervention yielded moderate effects on comprehension, however, there were no significant differences for vocabulary learning. The mindset intervention had little impact on increasing student persistence. A moderator analysis indicated that word reading abilities influenced vocabulary learning; students who started with lower word-level skills benefited more from instruction.”
The Contribution of Text Characteristics to Reading Comprehension: Investigating the Influence of Text Emotionality (open access)
“In line with the simple view of reading, decoding ability and language comprehension were associated with reading comprehension performance. Text characteristics, including indices of word frequency, number of pronouns, word concreteness, and deep cohesion, also predicted unique variance in reading comprehension performance over and above the simple view’s components. Additionally, the emotional charge of text (i.e., lexical ratings of arousal) predicted reading comprehension beyond traditional person-level and text-based characteristics.”
Influences from Working Memory, Word and Sentence Reading on Passage Comprehension and Teacher Ratings (open access)
“Our results underline that the role of word reading accuracy for reading comprehension quickly diminishes during elementary school and that teachers base their assessments mainly on the current reading comprehension skill.”
Family socialization and loneliness correlate with third graders’ reading comprehension
“This study examined the relations among family socialization, loneliness, linguistic skills, and reading comprehension in 78 Mandarin-speaking Chinese third graders with a mean age of 8.67 years old. The participants were administered a battery of tasks to assess their non-verbal intelligence, linguistic-skills, word reading, and Chinese reading comprehension, and asked to complete loneliness, trait anxiety, family socialization, and demographic questionnaires. Regression analysis showed that family socialization, loneliness, and linguistic-skills were significant predictors of reading comprehension after controlling for SES, non-verbal intelligence, trait anxiety, and word reading. Mediation analysis showed that linguistic skills fully mediated the relation between loneliness and reading comprehension after accounting for the variance of controlled variables. These findings suggest that family socialization and loneliness significantly affect the development of reading comprehension.”
Brain Imaging
Structural brain dynamics across reading development: A longitudinal MRI study from kindergarten to grade 5 (open access)
“This suggests that the natural plasticity window for reading is within the first years of primary school, hence earlier than the typical period for reading intervention. Concerning neurotrajectories in children with dyslexia compared to typical readers, we observed no differences in gray matter development of the left reading network, but we found different neurotrajectories in right IFG opercularis (during the early reading stage) and in right isthmus cingulate (during the advanced reading stage), which could reflect compensatory neural mechanisms.”
Other Reading Topics…
Observing Two Reading Intervention Programs for Students with Dyslexia
“This exploratory study examined the nature of instruction provided in two reading intervention programs designed for elementary-grade students with dyslexia (The Multisensory Teaching Approach and Reading RULES!)…There were many similarities between the two programs (e.g., both were explicit, systematic, and sequential; both included curriculum-based measures of student learning that informed instruction; both dedicated approximately equal amounts of time to decoding and encoding instruction). However, our observations indicated a statistically significant difference between the programs (p < .002) in proportion of time dedicated to letter-name knowledge, text reading, and comprehension instruction. The programs also differed in their emphasis on articulating/applying orthographic rules and on particular procedures for decoding and encoding words.”
What’s in a word? Effects of morphologically rich vocabulary instruction on writing outcomes among elementary students
“These results suggest that teacher-delivered morphological instruction can improve the writing of upper elementary students, at least at the word and sentence level, in addition to previously documented positive effects on reading.”
Reading Skills of Children with Dyslexia Improved Less Than Expected during the COVID-19 Lockdown in Italy (open access)
“We performed neuropsychological tests to explore reading skills and an ad hoc questionnaire to explore how parents and children had experienced the measures taken to reduce spreading of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Between 59 to 63% of children with dyslexia did not reach the average expected increase of reading skills. According to their parents, they also showed greater social isolation and fewer worries about the pandemic and the school’s closure. Our data indicate that children with dyslexia are at increased risk of consequences on their learning potential in case of school closure.”
Reading Experiences and Reading Efficiency Among Adults with Dyslexia: An Accessibility Study (open access)
“The findings indicate that the participants do not prefer narrow line lengths. However, the results show no significant impact of line lengths on reading speed or comprehension. The main conclusion is that line lengths seem to affect reading motivation, but not performance.”
Attention Components and Spelling Accuracy: Which Connections Matter?(Open Access)
“Attention and working memory are cross-domain functions that regulate both behavioural and learning processes. Few longitudinal studies have focused on the impact of these cognitive resources on spelling skills in the early phase of learning to write. This longitudinal study investigates the contributions of attention and working memory processes to spelling accuracy and handwriting speed in 112 primary school children (2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade; age range: 7.6–9.4 years) learning to write in the Italian transparent orthography. Standardised batteries were used to assess their attention and working memory skills, as well as their spelling. Homophone and non-homophone errors were measured, as they may involve different attentional and working memory processes. The results showed that, for 2nd grade children, selective attention shifting, planning, and inhibition predicted non-homophone errors, whereas sequential working memory predicted homophone errors and writing speed was explained by planning and selective attention. In 3rd grade, only homophone errors were predicted by planning and inhibition. No significant relationships were found in 4th grade, nor in the transition across grades. Dynamic and diversified roles of attentional and working memory processes in predicting different writing skills in early primary school years emerged, with a gradual decrease in the attention–writing relationship with age.”
Systematic Review of Studies on Visual Phonics
Dissertations/Masters Theses (Not yet peer-reviewed)
Virtually Delivered Reading Fluency Interventions for Students with ADHD
An Applied Research on Promoting Proficiency in Fourth-Grade Reading
A Program Evaluation of Fundations in a Private Urban Elementary School
The Effects of Using Reading Comprehension Strategies to Solve Math Word Problems
Exploring sources of poor reading comprehension in English language learners.
Li, M., Geva, E., D’Angelo, N., Koh, P. W., Chen, X., & Gottardo, A. (2021). Exploring sources of poor reading comprehension in English language learners. Annals of Dyslexia, 299–321. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-021-00214-4
DeAnne Hunter created the following summary for the Recap this week. I love how she decided to put the “Key Takeaways” right at the top!
Key Takeaways
What seems to make the difference in reading comprehension ability for English language learners (ELL)? The three measures that differentiated ELL poor comprehenders from their average and good comprehender peers were vocabulary breadth, listening comprehension and morphological awareness.
ELL average comprehenders were distinguished from ELL good comprehenders based upon three measures of higher-level skills: inference, conjunction use and comprehension monitoring. ELL and monolingual poor comprehenders did not differ in higher-level skills. The researchers suggest that this may be indicative that these skills do not have a notable impact on reading comprehension until after a certain level of proficiency has been reached.
What’s New and different about this work?
These researchers divided participants into groups of not just poor and good comprehenders, but also included “average” comprehenders to allow for comparisons along more of a continuum of reading comprehension ability. They also used raw scores and statistical analyses, rather than standardized cutoffs which may not be as accurate for ELL readers, to categorize participants.
Background
This study is focused on “poor comprehenders” who are English language learners. The behavioral profile of these individuals is that their struggle with reading comprehension is not at the word level, e.g. decoding, but rather at a higher level. A number of “higher level” candidates have been put forward and studied over the years, i.e. oral language, metalinguistic awareness, working memory and other high-level skills.
Functional definitions for this study:
Oral language: vocabulary and listening comprehension
Metalinguistic awareness: the ability to think critically and reflectively about the language one uses
Working memory: the ability to retain and manipulate information
Higher level processes: self-monitoring, use of conjunctions and the generation of inferences about what is being read
Typically, these poor comprehenders are identified using standardized tests with cut scores, but this method has not been shown to be effective in more recent research given the high level of variability within this group. Researchers instead have relied on statistical analyses of a complete profile of language, cognitive and reading ability to identify those who are poor comprehenders based upon their performance relative to average and good comprehender peers.
Rationale
Each of the candidates outlined above warrant additional investigation for different reasons.
Vocabulary has been identified as a prominent source of difficulties that impact a developmental pattern of oral language in ELLs that is comparable to their monolingual peers. The impact of vocabulary on language and reading ability has also been demonstrated in monolingual individuals, but results vary.
Most research on differences in metalinguistic awareness between ELLs and monolingual individuals has been done using cut scores.
Most working memory assessments used to compare ELLs with their monolingual peers have been done with verbal working memory assessments. Of these, while differences are found in measures that rely on reading ability, demonstrable differences have not been reported on digit span measures which are not necessarily constrained by knowledge of a specific language.
There is limited research on the impact of higher-level skills on reading comprehension in ELL poor comprehenders, but what few studies have been done suggest that this may have a significant impact.
Researchers were also specifically interested in group level comparisons not just between the extremes of poor and good comprehenders but also individuals whose reading level was average for their age group.
Research Questions
1. “Do ELL poor comprehenders differ in oral language, metalinguistic skills, working memory, and higher-level processing skills from ELL average and good comprehenders?”
2. “Are there similarities and differences in reading comprehension profiles between ELL and [monolingual English speaking] poor comprehenders?”
Methods
Participants
124 English language learners (60 males and 64 females) whose first language is Chinese and 79 monolingual English speakers (36 males and 43 females) were recruited in Ontario, Canada. The mean age of ELLs was 10;6 (SD = 10.6 months) and monolingual English speakers was 10;8 (SD = 10.7 months). Language status was determined via school files, teacher report and a parent questionnaire.
Measures
Measures of nonverbal reasoning, word reading, oral language, metalinguistic skills, working memory and higher-level reading skills were administered to both groups.
Procedure
All assessments were administered during the spring semester by trained research assistants.
Results
Analyses were conducted on raw scores rather than standard scores to mitigate bias from norms based on monolingual populations.
Group Status and Reading Comprehension Level
To rule out word-reading ability as a primary contributor to reading comprehension scores, some participants were excluded from analysis due to having either extremely poor or extremely good word reading scores. Regression-based statistics and post analysis evaluations were used to identify whether participants belonged in the poor, average or good comprehender groups, rather than making use of standardized criteria or results from previous research. Participants in both the ELL and monolingual English-speaking groups were matched on age, nonverbal ability, word reading accuracy, and word reading fluency for all three levels of reading comprehension (poor, average and good). Additionally, participants in the ELL group were matched for exposure to English.
Research Question 1: “Do ELL poor comprehenders differ in oral language, metalinguistic skills, working memory, and higher-level processing skills from ELL average and good comprehenders?”
Oral Language. Poor comprehenders had lower scores for vocabulary breadth and listening comprehension than average and good comprehenders. There were no significant differences between average and good comprehenders. There were no notable differences in vocabulary depth.
Metalinguistic Skills. Poor comprehenders had lower scores for morphological awareness than average and good comprehenders. There were no significant differences between average and good comprehenders. There were no notable differences in syntactic awareness.
Working Memory. Poor and average comprehenders had lower scores for working memory than good comprehenders. There were no significant differences between poor and average comprehenders.
Higher-Level Skills. Poor and average comprehenders had lower scores for inference, conjunction use and comprehension monitoring than good comprehenders. There were no significant differences between poor and average comprehenders.
Research Question 2: “Are there similarities and differences in reading comprehension profiles between ELL and [monolingual English speaking] poor comprehenders?”
Oral Language. ELL poor comprehenders had significantly lower scores on vocabulary breadth and listening comprehension than their monolingual peers with poor comprehension. Average and good comprehenders from each group (ELL average vs. monolingual average; ELL good vs. monolingual good) did not differ significantly.
Metalinguistic Skills. ELL poor comprehenders had significantly lower scores on morphological awareness than their monolingual peers with poor comprehension. Average and good comprehenders from each group (ELL average vs. monolingual average; ELL good vs. monolingual good) did not differ significantly.
Higher-Level Skills. Poor, average and good comprehenders from each group (ELL poor vs monolingual poor; ELL average vs. monolingual average; ELL good vs. monolingual good) did not differ significantly for any of the measures.
Working Memory. There were no significant differences for working memory scores between the ELL and monolingual groups.
Limitations
The sample size for this study was relatively small, which limits how much we can say this research generalizes. More research is needed to corroborate the results found here. The researchers also do note that although they did not find significant differences in measures of syntactic awareness, this may be a limitation of their measures and not fully representative of syntactic awareness in these groups. They stress that future work should expand into additional measures of syntactic awareness to explore this as a factor in reading comprehension profiles.
Complete List of measures
Control Measures
Nonverbal Reasoning: Matrix Analogies Test
Word Reading Accuracy: Woodcock Johnson-III Tests of Academic Achievement
Word Reading Fluency: Test of Word Reading Efficiency – Sight Word Efficiency
Oral Language Measures
Vocabulary Breadth: Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV Form A; Dunn & Dunn, 2007)
Vocabulary Depth: Multiple meaning vocabulary test designed by Biemiller and Slonim, (2001)
Listening Comprehension: Woodcock-Johnson Listening Comprehension Test (Woodcock, 1998)
Metalinguistic Measures
Morphological Awareness: Derivational morphological awareness task – based on Carlisle (2000)
Syntactic Awareness: An experimental measure in which children were asked to make grammaticality judgements and reflect on them.
Working Memory Measures
Working Memory: The Auditory Working Memory test from the Test of Cognitive Ability, Woodcock Johnson–III (WJ-III, (Woodcock et al., 2001))
Higher-Level Measures
Inference: Children read five passages from the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test II ((MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1992); Level D4, Form 4) and were asked to draw inferences from the text
Conjunction Use: Two narrative cloze tasks in which children filled in blanks that took specific conjunctives - adapted from a measure developed by Geva and Ryan (Geva & Ryan, 1985).
Comprehension Monitoring: Children read short stories and were instructed to underline the portions that did not make sense.
Reading Outcome
Reading Comprehension: Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test II ((MacGinitie & MacGinitie, 1992); Level D4—D5/6, Form 3)
References
Biemiller, A., & Slonim, N. (2001). Estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: Evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93,498–520.
Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: impact on reading. Read. Writ., 12,169–190.
Geva, E., & Ryan, E. B. (1985). Use of conjunctions in expository texts by skilled and less skilled readers. Journal of Reading Behavior, 17, 331–346
MacGinitie, W. H., & MacGinitie, R. K. (1992). Gates-MacGinitie Reading Tests (2nd ed.). Scarborough, ON: Nelson Canada.
Naglieri, J. (1989). Matrix Analogies Test. New York: The Psychological Corporation.
Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R. K., & Rashotte, C. (1999). Test ofWord Reading Efficiency. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Woodcock, R. (1998). Woodcock reading mastery tests – Revised. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services.
Woodcock, R. W., McGrew, & Mather, N. (2001). Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Achievement. Itasca, IL: Riverside Publishing.
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