Recent evidence suggests that invented spelling is valuable in predicting reading development, revealing which prereading skills children possess and still need to learn, and promoting development of early literacy skills. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of letter-sound knowledge, phoneme awareness, and word reading…

Background: In England, there are concerns about boys' under-achievement in reading, and girls consistently do better than boys in national reading tests taken by 11-year-olds. At the same time, there have been accusations of bias in the content of the reading tests. Purpose: This article looks at the performance of boys and girls on the 2008…

The authors investigated the relation of foreign language attitudes and perceptions to reading and spelling skills for 278 English-speaking college students enrolled in 100- and 200- level foreign language classes, using the Foreign Language Attitudes and Perceptions Survey (R. Sparks & L. Ganschow, 1993b), the Test of Dyslexia-Rapid…

This study investigated the relationships among Hong Kong Chinese students' reading attainment in Chinese and English, their attitudes toward reading, and their self-concept as readers. The sample consisted of 1,232 fourth-grade students from thirty-eight primary schools. Predictably, the students' reading attainment was better when tested in…

This study investigated degrees of mutual intelligibility among 3 structurally related languages in South Africa: Sepedi, Sesotho, and Setswana. To compare reading proficiency of mother-tongue speakers who enrolled for freshman courses at the University of Limpopo, 4 reading experimental conditions, in the 3 languages and 1 in a harmonized text,…

The attentional blink refers to a reduction in accuracy that occurs when identifying the second of two targets presented within approximately 500 msec of each other. This research explored individual differences in the attentional blink in a sample of 86 children (aged 8-10) with normally developing reading skills. The attentional blink was…

Self-concept is linked to student achievement in many domains. In this study, we examined reading self-concept's (RSC) and RSC calibration accuracy's links to reading achievement across different contexts via multi-level analyses of 34 countries' 158,848 fifteen-year-olds' reading tests and questionnaire responses. Students with higher RSC, higher…

The United States' National Institute for Literacy's (NIFL) review of adult literacy instruction research recommended adult education (AE) programs assess underlying reading abilities in order to plan appropriate instruction for low-literacy learners. This study developed adult reading ability groups using measures from power tests and speeded…

The disparity between the results of state accountability tests in reading and the fourth-grade National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has left many educators dismayed and concerned. In this article the authors describe a comparison of assessment approaches evident in NAEP to the approaches taken in a sample of state tests. The authors…

Background: Dyslexics read concrete words better than abstract ones. As a result, one of the major problems facing dyslexics is the fact that only part of the information that they require to communicate is concrete, i.e. can easily be pictured. Method: The experiment involved dyslexic third-grade, English-speaking children (8-year-olds) divided…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the learning of basic reading literacy skills in a contextualized, educational career technical training program, specifically the School to Work Program. The study explores whether adult literacy rates can change through students' participation in a contextualized, educational…

This study was an investigation of the effect of English Learning in the Elementary School (ELES) on both English language skills and affective variables. The participants were 145 public junior high school students in Grades 7 and 8; 72 participants received English language instruction once a week in the local public elementary schools in…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to determine the effects of implementing the instructional program "Dr. Cupp's Readers," a multiple intelligences learning approach, in conjunction with a textbook that follows a more traditional approach to reading instruction. Twenty students who were identified as being at-risk and…

Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between rich and poor? Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? We use administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that document broad…

This handbook describes the responsibilities of district and school assessment coordinators in the administration of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA). This updated guidebook contains the following sections: (1) General Assessment Guidelines for All Assessments; (2) Writing Specific Guidelines; (3) Reading and Mathematics…