Giving quizzes to get students to read may continue to be misunderstood, even grossly undervalued. Using a quiz to encourage (enforce) reading plays a significant role not only in students learning content of their chosen field, but also as the critical first step toward an awakening of the mind--or, at the very least, the mind being more…

Howard, Overstreet, and Ticknor build on the framework they established in their first book "It's Not 'One More Thing'." They extend their practical how-to strategies for enacting culturally responsive and affirming literacy instruction in K-12 classrooms specific to literacy assessment, engaging texts used for literacy instruction, and…

Oral reading fluency is recognized as an important variable associated with the assessment of reading proficiency. Frequently, fluency assessments distill a child's overall reading fluency to a single numerical score. Even when multiple dimensions are considered, the processes informing the nuance of the reading fluency variations are ignored. In…

As literacy researchers continue to investigate how young students make sense of texts, specifically picture books, attention has expanded beyond the role that written language plays in reading comprehension to the various ways that visual images, typography, design elements, and digital devices support and challenge young readers during the act…

Two experiments investigated the extent to which the concreteness of titles affects metacognitive text expectations, study motivation, and comprehension test performance. Sixty-three American and 61 German students were presented with three titles (either concrete or abstract), based upon which the students estimated their expected…

The purpose of the present study is to determine if there is a relationship between oral narrative production and the reading comprehension of expository text. The researcher measured both overall and component scores for expository text comprehension and oral narrative production ability of 40 typically-developing fifth grade students. Findings…

Background: The gender gap in reading literacy is repeatedly found in large-scale assessments. This study compared girls' and boys' text responses in a reading test applying natural language processing. For this, a theoretical framework was compiled that allows mapping of response features to the preceding cognitive components such as micro- and…

The present research presents a novel method for investigating how characteristics of texts (words, sentences, and passages) and individuals (verbal and general cognitive skills) jointly influence eye-movement patterns over the time-course of reading, as well as comprehension accuracy. Fifty-one proficient readers read passages of varying…

This study was conducted to identify the kinds and frequencies of comprehension strategies mathematics and psychology students employed while reading specialised and nonspecialised English texts. It also investigated whether the two groups differed in the amount and frequency of using the strategies. Ten graduate students (five majoring in…

Purpose: Scholars who advocate for equity-oriented educational practices have argued that the accountability era in the USA, now in place for two decades, has failed in its intended goal to improve student performance for traditionally marginalized student populations. This study aims to use a sociocultural lens to trace how a century-old…

This study reports the outcomes of research investigating the relationship between two variables; percentage of word knowledge in an academic English text and reading comprehension scores the participants got for the same text. The study was conducted at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, Preparatory Year Deanship, during the first semester…

This study raises the question what makes school texts comprehensible by analyzing whether students' genre expectations about literary or expository texts moderate the impact of different forms of text cohesion on reading comprehension, even when the texts are similar regarding their genre. 754 students (Grade 9) from comprehensive schools read…

The widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards in the US has prioritized rigorous reading of complex texts. The emphasis on text complexity has led to instructional and assessment materials that constrain critical literacy practices by emphasizing quantitative features of text, such as sentence length, and a static list of text…

A model-based approach for matching language learners to texts of appropriate difficulty is described. Results are communicated to test takers via a targeted reading range expressed on the reporting scale of an automated text complexity measurement tool (ATCMT). Test takers can use this feedback to select reading materials that are well matched to…

Since understanding reading assignments is important to succeeding in school, improving the way that text is arranged in books would be an efficient way to help students better understand the material and perform well on tests. In this study, we asked students to read two original and two rearranged historical passages, in which rephrased…