Background: To succeed in school, young children must acquire the domain and vocabulary knowledge needed to read complex texts. Despite the growing literacy demands in the 21 century, fewer than 5% of US school children in the early elementary grades can evaluate complex nonfiction texts and there are larger gaps based on family income and student…

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of parallel reading text (English and Arabic) on English as a Foreign language (EFL) Intermediate II level students? at Birzeit University in terms of reading comprehension, vocabulary retention, and sentence structure awareness. The sample for this study is 38 undergraduate students of the…

We report two text change-detection studies in which we investigate the influence of reading perspective on text memory. In Experiment 1 participants read from the perspective of one of two characters in a series of short stories, and word changes were either semantically close or distant. Participants correctly reported more changes to…

To date, little is known about the high-level language skills and cognitive processes underlying reading comprehension in children. The present study aimed to investigate whether children with high, compared with low, reading comprehension differ in their sequencing skill, which was defined as the ability to identify and recall the temporal order…

Access to age-appropriate literature is often difficult for students with significant disabilities without sufficient support. The picture plus discussion (PPD) intervention is an emerging research-based strategy used to increase comprehension of age-appropriate unadapted texts read aloud. While peer supports have been successfully used to…

This article explores the ways in which transmediation (Suhor, 1984), the translation of meaning from one sign system into another, can support students in developing their confidence and capabilities as readers. The author, a 10th grade English teacher, details a literature workshop (Blau, 2003) unit in which students worked collaboratively to…

The purpose of this yearlong study was to examine literate identity development of first-grade students in a student-centered, literature-based classroom where meaning making was privileged over decoding skills. This cross-case analysis traced the identity trajectories of two case studies: one student with strong decoding skills (above grade level…

With the advent of new research paradigms and the prevalence of diverse influential factors, the intriguing issue nowadays is to identify what actually determines English as a second language (ESL) learners' reading comprehension. This study examined gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and ethnicity as predictors of ESL learners' reading age and…

This study investigated the effects of Reading Strategy Instruction (RSI) on reading performance and attitude toward reading strategies while reading texts of different difficulty levels. Fifty-five university students studying Political and Basic Sciences took part in this study. After homogenizing the participants, 24 students were in the…

Increasingly, children enter the school system with a home language that differs from the language of the majority. Consequently, classrooms have students with diverse language backgrounds and teachers must develop reading comprehension instruction that meets the needs of all their students. To successfully plan instruction, it is critical for…

Assessments of oral reading rate in words correct per minute (WCPM) have proliferated in elementary classrooms. This study explores the similarities and differences among students at the end of second grade who demonstrate low WCPM. Using latent profile analysis, readers with low WCPM compared to peers were identified (n = 2,191) from a state-wide…

This three-year follow-up study investigated the associations of narrative and reading skills in typically developing Finnish children. Twenty children performed narrative retelling and story generation tasks twice, at five and eight years of age. Reading comprehension and word recognition tests were performed at the age of eight. Narratives were…

Background: Syntax is a language skill purported to support children's reading comprehension. However, researchers who have examined whether children with average and below-average reading comprehension score significantly different on spoken-syntax assessments report inconsistent results. Aims: To determine if differences in how syntax is…

Vocabulary learning has always been a great concern and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Among the vocabulary learning hypotheses, "involvement load hypothesis" and "technique feature analysis" have been proposed which attempt to bring some concepts like noticing, motivation, and generation into focus. In the…

Prior work has shown intriguing differences between first language (L1) and second language (L2) comprehension priming of relative clauses. We investigated English reduced relative clause priming in Chinese adult learners of English. Participants of different education levels read sentences in a self-paced, moving window paradigm. Critical…