This study investigated the strength of lexical and non-lexical processing among Arabic (L1) English (L3)-speaking children (fourth and fifth grades, N = 532) in two writing systems that vary in terms of transparency. Children were assessed using word reading, phonological and vocabulary measures. In Arabic, the study focused on standard form.…

Effects of semantic versus syntactic constraints on resolution of Hebrew heterophonic-homographic words were examined at three reading skill levels. Fourth-and sixth-grade students and a group of adults read aloud sentences containing two types of heterophonic-homographs: noun-noun (e.g., BYCH [Hebrew characters] is read as beitsa 'egg' and bitsa…

Reading acquisition involves connections between the spoken language and the writing system. The English-language writing system holds an inconsistent alphabetic system, thus encouraging readers to develop representations between the grapheme and the word. Reading in English as a Foreign language supposes a challenge, especially when the reader's…

This study investigated how word and child characteristics affect children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words. Participants were fourth- and fifth-graders representing native English speakers (NE) and bilingual learners with fluent English proficiency (FEP) and designated English Learners (EL). Students were taught the meanings of a…

A 3-year longitudinal study among 239 Chinese students in Grades 2-4 was conducted to investigate the relationships between orthographic skills (including positional and functional knowledge of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals, and orthographic memory of radicals) and Chinese literacy skills (word reading, word spelling, reading…

Increasingly, reading research has begun to address how students' linguistic environments may explain their reading achievement. In this exploratory analysis, we investigated how the rates of specific instructional talk moves predicted student reading comprehension achievement. Transcripts from third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms (teacher…

The mental lexicon plays a central role in reading comprehension (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014). It encompasses the number of lexical entries in spoken and written language (vocabulary breadth), the semantic quality of these entries (vocabulary depth), and the connection strength between lexical representations (semantic relatedness); as such, it…

Many students struggle with gaining knowledge and writing about content text material and therefore require effective intervention. In a randomized controlled trial study, 77 low-achieving fourth-grade students received reading comprehension instruction or reading comprehension plus writing instruction or were assigned to a no-treatment control.…

The present study investigated the role of vocabulary depth in reading comprehension among a diverse sample of monolingual and bilingual children in grades 2-4. Vocabulary depth was defined as including morphological awareness, awareness of semantic relations, and syntactic awareness. Two hundred ninety-four children from 3 schools in a…