David Stephens, a 4th grade teacher in Washington State, was preparing a lesson plan about desert wildlife (all names are pseudonyms). He was planning on assigning his students the chapter book, "Desert Giant: The World of the Saguaro Cactus." The students had divergent knowledge about the topic. For example, Maryam had grown up in…

The present study employed regression analyses to examine the influence of cognitive competencies (decoding ability, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge) and intrinsic motivation (curiosity and involvement) on the comprehension of narrative and informational texts. Participants included 104 students in grades four and five. Results showed…

This study examined the role of science domain knowledge, reading motivation, and decoding skills in reading comprehension achievement in third-grade students who are English learners (ELs) and students who are monolingual, using a nationally representative data set. Multigroup probit regression analyses showed that third-grade science domain…

Research with school-age readers suggests that the contributions of reading and language skills vary across reading comprehension assessments and proficiency levels. With a sample of 168 struggling adult readers, we estimated the explanatory effects of decoding, oral vocabulary, listening comprehension, fluency, background knowledge, and…

Research with school-age readers suggests that the contributions of reading and language skills vary across reading comprehension assessments and proficiency levels. With a sample of 168 struggling adult readers, we estimated the explanatory effects of decoding, oral vocabulary, listening comprehension, fluency, background knowledge, and…

Expository texts contain rhetorical devices that help readers to connect text ideas (within a text and with prior knowledge) and to monitor reading. Rhetorical competence addresses readers' skill in detecting, understanding and using these devices. We examined the contribution of rhetorical competence to reading comprehension on two groups of 11-…

This study was conducted to examine the factors that influence informational text comprehension and to determine how these vary for students with higher and lower component skills. The sample included 177 students in grades 3-5. Regression analyses were used to predict informational text comprehension with decoding efficiency, vocabulary…

This purpose of this study was to develop a clearer understanding of the complex, interrelated factors that lead to successful informational text comprehension and to determine if or how these factors vary for higher and lower comprehenders. Participants (N = 177) were in grades three through five and were predominately African American (61%) and…

Existing reading assessments have increasingly been criticized by researchers, educators, and policy makers, especially regarding their coverage, utility, and authenticity (e.g., Magliano, Millis, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2007; Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001; Rupp, Ferne, & Choi, 2006). Specifically, there is concern that current…

This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global…

We examined text memory in children with word reading deficits to determine how these difficulties impact representations of text meaning. We show that even though children with poor word decoding recall more central than peripheral information, they show a significantly bigger deficit relative to controls on central than on peripheral…

The present study reports the development of a theoretically motivated measure that provides estimates of a preschooler's ability to recall auditory text, to make text-based inferences, to access knowledge from long-term memory, and to integrate this accessed knowledge with new information from auditory text. This new preschooler component…

Failure to "activate" relevant, existing background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure may cause particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. Conversely, teaching how to use background knowledge in the context of gap-filling inferences could improve reading comprehension in…

Research supports the need for active vocabulary learning across grade levels and subject areas to help increase readers' comprehension of diverse texts that they encounter. Given the increasing emphasis on decoding and reading comprehension, the relative importance of vocabulary instruction has been diminished in recent years. The authors argue…

The democratic aim of American education is to provide "all" students with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to become informed, effective, and responsible citizens. Like civic education itself, literacy education can be embraced by all teachers across all disciplines. There are strategies that all teachers can use to help address…