A recent hypothesis proposes that reading depends on writing in a logographic language--Chinese. We present a Chinese individual (HLD) with brain damage whose profile challenges this hypothesis. HLD was severely impaired in the whole process of writing. He could not access orthographic knowledge, had poor orthographic awareness, and was poor at…

The National Assessment of Title I, Final Report reported discrepancies in sustaining gains in the reading achievement of 4th grade students who have received Title I intervention services and sustaining those gains when students return to general education classroom. This study was based on a differentiated theory that includes instructional…

Despite its importance of academic language, research on academic language is often limited to academic vocabulary and focused on the English language learners. Informed by systemic functional linguistics, this study examined adolescents' use of academic language and the relationships between its use and students' reading ability and their writing…

Inquiry-based history instruction is rare in most school settings, but particularly in classes of students who are perceived to be "low achieving." Students with low reading abilities or test scores typically receive instruction focused on rote recall of historical information. Teachers and students face great obstacles in inquiry based learning,…

A large-scale randomised-controlled trial of reading tutoring in 80 schools in Scotland used the Paired Reading (PR) technique. On long-term evaluation, cross-age PR was significantly better than regular teaching, but same-age was not. On short-term evaluation, PR pupils did significantly better than control pupils in both years, and cross-age and…

An experiment with random assignment examined the effectiveness of a strategy to learn unfamiliar English vocabulary words during text reading. Lower socioeconomic status, language minority fifth graders (M = 10 years, 7 months; n = 62) silently read eight passages each focused on an unknown multi-syllabic word that was underlined, embedded in a…

Homework is an instructional staple for most classroom teachers; however, considerable debate over the effectiveness of homework has been at the center of discussions among researchers, administrators, educators, parents, and students. Rather than continuing the battle as to whether or not homework enriches learning, it appears the more…

Teacher judgments about students' academic abilities are important for instructional decision making and potential special education entitlement decisions. However, the small number of studies evaluating teachers' judgments are limited methodologically (e.g., sample size, procedural sophistication) and have yet to answer important questions…

It is essential to provide high quality interventions designed to improve struggling readers' reading comprehension while making use of limited resources. This study explored, through an holistic, multiple-case study design, volunteer-student interactions and activities in an after school reading program utilizing minimally-trained volunteers. The…

This study was born from the idea that valid comparison research can be conducted with students who are placed into and exempt from required developmental reading courses and that these groups do contain students with similar reading ability. This overlooked population consists of students with placement test scores that hover tightly on either…

While there is evidence for an association between the development of reading and arithmetic, the precise locus of this relationship remains to be determined. Findings from cognitive neuroscience research that point to shared neural correlates for phonological processing and arithmetic as well as recent behavioral evidence led to the present…

Background: A strong link between phonological awareness (PA) and literacy exists, but the origins of this link are difficult to investigate, since PA skills are hard to test in young, pre-literate children, and many studies neither include such children nor report children's initial literacy levels. Aims: To examine PA and literacy in children…

We investigated whether phonological deficits are a consequence of magnocellular processing deficits in dyslexic and control children. In Experiment 1, children were tested for reading ability, phonological awareness, visuo-magnocellular motion perception, and attention shifting (sometimes considered as magnocellular function). A two-step cluster…

Purpose: This article provides information about the Head Start Family and Children Experiences Survey (FACES). It also presents the findings of a study that capitalizes on the strengths of the data from FACES to investigate the impact of child and family characteristics, speech-language impairment, and the home literacy environment on the…

Researchers have raised questions regarding the connection between learner familiarity with computers and performance on computerized tests virtually since interest arose in studying the applicability of computers for assessment purposes. However, despite this longstanding attention, at present, there has been a surprising lack of research that…