The present study examined whether syntactic comprehension constitutes a source of individual differences separate from vocabulary and of relevance to reading comprehension. One hundred and sixty-one Danish Grade 6 students completed multiple tests of syntactic comprehension, vocabulary, decoding, and reading comprehension. Syntax measures were…

Previous studies uncover that vocabulary knowledge may be related to compound structure awareness (the awareness of relational structure embedded in compound words), and they both contribute to reading comprehension. Yet, limited studies have examined the dynamic relationship between vocabulary knowledge and compound structure awareness, or their…

This study investigates the role of diglossic and orthographic features in reading comprehension in Arabic. Specifically, it probes the independent contribution of language, metalinguistic, and decoding skills in the spoken language and in Standard Arabic to reading comprehension in the "abjad" writing system of Arabic. A sample of 112…

Young children of Color from minoritized communities can co-author decodable stories using phonics skills they have been taught, their lived experiences, and home languages, including nondominant English languages, to develop decoding skills using student-generated decodable readers. While traditional and curricular decodable readers are used…

Programs for teaching English reading, especially for students with dyslexia, and educational practice standards often recommend instruction on dividing polysyllabic words into syllables. Syllable division is effort intensive and could inhibit fluency when reading in text. The division strategies might still be useful if they work so consistently…

Researchers disagree about the value of controlling the decodability of texts for students with reading difficulty, specifically what type of text they should read: "decodable texts" (words limited to taught patterns), "nondecodable" texts (those not limited by instruction), or "both." We analyzed the effects of…

This study aimed to determine the dimensionality of morphological knowledge by examining different sources of variance. According to the Morphological Pathways Framework ("Levesque et al., Journal of Research in Reading," 44, 10-26, 2021), morphological awareness, morphological analysis and morphological decoding are related, but…

The teaching of L2 phonics, defined here as explicit instruction in the symbol-sound correspondences of a second or foreign language, has been enjoying growing popularity in recent years. This is associated with the reemphasis of phonological decoding in different aspects of L2 learning, and learners' difficulty in developing L2 decoding…

In this historical analysis, we examine the context of debates over the role of phonics in literacy and current debates about the science of reading, with a focus on the work and impact of the late literacy scholar Jeanne Chall. We open by briefly tracing the roots of the enduring debates from the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on beginning…

Studies on the relation between children's reading motivation and early developmental stages of reading competence are rare and have neglected on-line measures of reading skill (e.g., eye movements indicating word decoding). For this reason, we investigated the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation on the efficiency of reading…

Recently, the term "science of reading" has been used in public debate to promote policies and instructional practices based on research on the basic cognitive mechanisms of reading, the neural processes involved in reading, computational models of learning to read, and the like. According to those views, such data provide convincing…

Advocates of the science of reading have invoked the simple view of reading (SVR) to justify an approach that foregrounds decoding in early reading instruction. The SVR, which describes comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension, also served as the primary theoretical model underlying the Reading for Understanding (RfU)…

In the current study, we examined relations between text features (e.g., word concreteness, referential cohesion) and reading comprehension using multilevel logistic models. The sample was 158 native English-speaking students between 8 years, 8 months and 11 years, 2 months of age with a wide range of reading ability. In line with the simple view…

The simple view of reading is commonly presented to educators in professional development about the science of reading. The simple view is a useful tool for conveying the undeniable importance--in fact, the necessity--of both decoding and linguistic comprehension for reading. Research in the 35 years since the theory was proposed has revealed…

Definitions of dyslexia typically make reference to unexpected poor reading, although how best to operationalize unexpected remains an issue. When operationally defined as reading below expectations based on the level of oral language, cases of unexpected poor reading make up fewer than half of cases of poor reading, and cases of unexpected poor…