Purpose: Pitch perception is important for speech sound learning, and reading acquisition requires integration of speech sounds and written letters. Many individuals with dyslexia exhibit auditory perception deficits that may therefore contribute to their reading impairment given that complex pitch perception is crucial for categorizing speech…

This paper describes the benefits of a psychometric analytic approach when studying students' ability to comprehend texts. A reading comprehension measure consisting of four text passages with 32 questions was developed, and analyses using a mean-based approach and linear logistic test (LLTM) method were performed. According to ANOVA, eighth-grade…

Use of the term Background knowledge, in conjunction with Reading Comprehension, has become convoluted and vague over the past several decades of research. Showing the abundance of uses of the term in multiple domains and disciplines has relegated it to being an automatic inclusion in key notes and conclusions of research on the topic of improving…

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many students had their educational experiences disrupted as schools became shuttered and for some students virtual schooling began. When school facilities closed and online began, families had increased responsibilities for their children's education. Subsequently, there is an increase in attention to…

More U.S. community college students are enrolling without the requisite reading skills to be successful. Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students are following a similar pattern with a little less than half requiring remedial instruction when entering college. College-age readers were the first population that we studied to learn about reading and…

This chapter offers an integrated review and discussion of the major advances in theory and practice in the area of literacy, with particular focus on the work since 2014 onward. For the purposes of this review, it approaches Literacy as the ability to read and write. For reading, the chapter highlights theoretical advances that expand the view of…

The objectives of the study are to investigate the most significant contributory factors affecting Engineering students' reading ability in regard to journals, and to identify the problems thus encountered when they read English language journals. The participants in this study consisted of 60 Engineering students who were majoring in Industrial…

A wealth of research has been conducted into emergent literacy (i.e., precursors to formal reading) skills and development in typically developing (TD) children. However, despite research suggesting children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at risk of reading challenges, limited research exists on their emergent literacy. Thus, we aimed to…

Traditional measures of reading ability designed for younger students typically focus on componential skills (e.g., decoding, vocabulary), and the items are often presented in a discrete and decontextualized format. The current study was designed to explore whether it was feasible to develop a more integrated, scenario-based assessment of…

Traditional measures of reading ability designed for younger students typically focus on componential skills (e.g., decoding, vocabulary) and the items are often presented in a discrete and decontextualized format. The current study was designed to explore whether it was feasible to develop a more integrated, scenario-based assessment of…

Tasks provide engaging ways to involve learners in meaningful, real-world activities with the foreign language (FL). Yet selecting classroom tasks suitable to learners' linguistic readiness is challenging, and task-based research is exploring the relationship between learners' overall abilities (e.g., reading, grammatical) and the complexity and…

The study categorizes cultural background knowledge used by Latino students as they read history texts. The analysis revealed that participants made a large amount of connections attributed to their cultural experiential knowledge. The study also suggests reading ability does not limit the amount and quality of connections students make to their…

With 97 learners in an advanced Spanish course, the study examines the effects of textual enhancement adjuncts, prior subject knowledge, first language (L1) reading ability, and second language (L2) Spanish proficiency on L2 comprehension of scientific passages. Readings included two texts with two types of embedded questions: a pause or written…

Bernhardt (2005) proposed a compensatory model of second language reading. This model predicted that 50% of second language (L2) reading scores are attributed to second language knowledge and first-language (L1) reading ability. In this model, these two factors compensate for deficiencies in each other. Although this model explains a significant…

English Learners experience challenges related to comprehension of science text particularly at the high school level. The language of science differs significantly from that of conversation and expository text. Students benefit from collaborative interpretation of readings. Additionally, there appears to be a need to train adolescents in the oral…