Motivated by mixed evidence on the effectiveness of reading companions on children's reading performance, as well as the clear and present need for libraries to conduct literacy education, this study sought to investigate the feasibility of using social robots in library literacy activities and to extract the essential functions of effective…

International assessments show that 20% of adolescents cannot read simple texts with understanding. Despite this, research has focused on early reading in childhood and skilled reading in adulthood, neglecting reading development during adolescence. We report a longitudinal study assessing reading and vocabulary development at 12, 13 and 14 years…

This paper seeks to identify threshold concepts in academic reading. It builds on existing research on the subject by working in collaboration with three groups of academic readers (1: academic staff and subject lecturers; 2: learning developers and librarians; 3: students) to co-identify a list of potential threshold concepts of academic reading.…

Working memory training has been shown to improve performance on untrained working memory tasks in typically developing children, at least when compared to non-adaptive training; however, there is little evidence that it improves academic outcomes. The lack of transfer to academic outcomes may be because children are only learning skills and…

As a picture of childhood composed from the point of view of a young boy named Freddie, who suffers the effects of repeated and ongoing trauma, the experience of reading "The Freddie Stories" presents a number of interpretive challenges: its main character is often split and in various states of disassociation, the difference between…

This study, besides focusing on the applicability of computer-mediated Dynamic Assessment (DA), attempts to investigate the impacts of mediation provision in three different, albeit related, manners, that is, through computer, human, and mixture of both human and computer, on reading comprehension of L2 learners. In this mixed-methods study, a…

Background: As the life expectancy of adults with intellectual disability has increased, experience of familial bereavement is becoming more frequent. However, this group may not receive adequate information and support to enable them to understand and cope with the experience of loss. Method: This narrative review examined the impact of…

The present study investigated the role of Arabic diacritics in word recognition and their impact on Arabic L2 learners' reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension at different stages of Arabic L2 acquisition. Fifty-four English L2 learners of Arabic from 3 proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) participated in the study. They…

Over the past two decades, reading fluency has been increasingly recognized as an important instructional variable for success in reading. Yet, this has not always been the case. This article presents a historical review of the nature and role of fluency instruction in the United States. The roots of oral reading fluency began in an age when texts…

In this study, it was aimed to investigate possible impact of using the KWL reading strategy in teaching the topic of "fractions and operations with fractions" to the 4th graders on students' problem-solving achievement. A quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group (CG) was employed in the study. The study group…

This article represents the findings from the qualitative portion of a mixed methods study that investigated the impact of middle school students' spatial skills on their plate tectonics learning while using a computer visualization. Higher spatial skills have been linked to higher STEM achievement, while use of computer visualizations has mixed…

When hearing an object label, a specific object may come to mind. With the phrase, "There was a balloon in the pack/air" the representation of balloon varies based on the implied shape (deflated vs. inflated). The current study investigated whether the implied shape affects sentence-picture verification for adults and preschool children.…

The interaction between language proficiency and discipline-related background knowledge is an important feature of LSAP (Languages for Specific Academic Purposes) tests and is viewed as a necessity in these tests unlike general purpose language tests which try to diminish the potential effect of discipline-related knowledge. Therefore, variables…

The purpose of this study was to improve fourth grade students' listening comprehension with digital listening texts. An experimental research design was used to compare student outcomes with digital listening texts and outcomes for students who completed the same texts as traditional classroom activities. The digital listening texts included…

This study investigated the contribution of both physiological and behavioural process data to the comprehension of conflicting digital texts. We measured skin conductance level (SCL) as an index of arousal and the first-pass and look-back fixation times as indices of visual behaviour while reading. Forty-eight seventh graders read four webpages…