To truly comprehend and appreciate texts, we need to read more slowly. Schools should provide a counterbalance to our increasingly hectic digital environment, where so many of us read and write in abbreviated messages and through clicks of the mouse. To help students reclaim the acoustical properties of written language and appreciate the passages…

Text comprehension plays a fundamental role in the processes of acquisition, sharing, and construction of knowledge. Most definitions share the focus on the interaction between text and reader's prior knowledge. In this paper both direct and indirect effects of prior knowledge on reading comprehension have been analyzed, along with other…

The authors claim that assessing spelling in Grades 3-12 has utility. They base their claim on data from 875,040 students in Grades 3-12 in 52,923 classes in 840 Florida schools who took the Reading Comprehension, Maze, and Word Analysis spelling portions of the "Florida Assessments for Instruction in Reading" during the 2009-2010 school…

The current investigation explored the diagnostic utility of reading fluency measures in the identification of children with reading disabilities. Participants were 50 children referred to a university-based clinic because of suspected reading problems and/or a prior diagnosis of dyslexia, where children completed a battery of standardized…

Memory for objects helps us to determine how we can most effectively and appropriately interact with them. This suggests a tightly coupled interplay between action and background knowledge. Three experiments demonstrate that grasping circumference can be affected by the size of a visual stimulus (Experiment 1), whether that stimulus appears to be…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the variables of reading motivation, reading amount, and text comprehension in deaf and hearing adults. Research has shown that less than 50% of deaf students leave high school reading at or above a fourth-grade level (Allen, 1994). Our question is, how does this affect the levels of…

This study explored the potential effect of college students' self-generated computerized mind maps on their reading comprehension. It also investigated the subjects' attitudes toward generating computerized mind maps for reading comprehension. The study was conducted in response to the inability of the foundation-level students, who were learning…

The read-aloud accommodation (RA) is frequently provided to students with high-incidence disabilities to facilitate their access to learning opportunities during instruction and to allow them to demonstrate knowledge and skills during testing. Empirical support for this accommodation has been somewhat mixed, and has primarily focused on…

Teaching young students to think critically has always been important, however, as the United States transitions to a national set of learning standards which emphasizes higher-order thinking, it becomes essential. In this quasi-experimental study we evaluate the effects of exposure to the Journeys and Destinations (J&D) unit from the William…

Is there an achievement gap for online reading ability based on income inequality that is separate from the achievement gap in traditional, offline reading? This possibility was examined between students in two pseudonymous school districts: West Town (economically advantaged) and East Town (economically challenged; N = 256). Performance-based…

Imagery training has been shown to improve reading comprehension. Recent research has also shown that the quality of visual mental imagery used is important for reading comprehension. A review of literature shows that there has been relatively little detailed research on the quality of imagery used by learners, especially in the case of students…

This NFER report has been produced for the Education Endowment Foundation and its evaluation of a speaking and listening intervention combining two programmes: the Vocabulary Enrichment Intervention Programme (VEIP) and the narrative Intervention Programme (NIP). The intervention was used with pupils who needed extra support to improve their…

Catch Up® Literacy is a structured one-to-one literacy intervention for pupils between the ages of 6 and 14 who are struggling to learn to read. It teaches pupils to blend phonemes (combine letter sounds into words), segment phonemes (separate words into letter sounds), and memorise particular words so they can be understood without needing to use…

This early efficacy study examined the effects of an automated storybook intervention designed to promote school readiness among at-risk prekindergarten children. Story Friends is a small-group intervention in which vocabulary and question-answering lessons are embedded in a series of storybooks.A randomized group design with an embedded…

The study investigates the interrelationships between different on-line and off-line measures for assessing metacognition. The participants were 47 fifth grade elementary students. Metacognition was assessed through two off-line and two on-line measures. The off-line measures consisted of a teacher rating scale and a self-report questionnaire. The…