The purpose of this study was to determine whether third-grade teachers' instructional actions during reading comprehension lessons contributed to their students' reading comprehension achievement. Our framework focused on teachers' emphasis on three dimensions of instruction (pedagogical structure, teacher-directed instruction, and support for…

This research synthesis examines whether the association between print exposure and components of reading grows stronger across development. We meta-analyzed 99 studies (N = 7,669) that focused on leisure time reading of (a) preschoolers and kindergartners, (b) children attending Grades 1-12, and (c) college and university students. For all…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among oral and silent reading fluency and reading comprehension for students in Grades 6 to 8 (n = 1,421) and the use of fluency scores to identify middle school students who are at risk for failure on a high-stakes reading test. Results indicated moderate positive relations between…

In a longitudinal intervention study, the effects of three intervention strategies on the reading skills of children with reading disabilities in Grade 2 were analyzed. The interventions consisted of computerized training programs: One bottom-up intervention aimed at improving word decoding skills and phonological abilities, the second…

This article presents a study of ethnic Differential Item Functioning (DIF) for 4th-, 7th-, and 10th-grade reading items on a state criterion-referenced achievement test. The tests, administered 1997 to 2001, were composed of multiple-choice and constructed-response items. Item performance by focal groups (i.e., students from Asian/Pacific Island,…

The Problem: The study examined the difference that animal interactions had on the reading comprehension growth skills of students in the seventh grade. Method: A quasiexperimental study was conducted with two seventh-grade classes at William Howard Taft Middle School. One class received daily 20-minute animal interaction experiences for 5 days.…

This paper considers how some features of our recent schooling improvement research in New Zealand could be thought of using a Reading Recovery lens. Three powerful Reading Recovery concepts (among many in the Reading Recovery theoretical base) are used to reflect on our research and development work to increase achievement in reading…

Reading is an important component of academic success and a skill required for many adult responsibilities. Many strategies exist that claim to increase reading comprehension. However, in contrast to foundational reading skills (e.g., vocabulary, fluency, decoding), there is relatively little research that has been done on reading comprehension…

As students transition from primary to intermediate grades, the kind of materials that they are expected to read and write become more heavily dominated by expository texts. Expository texts contain grammatical patterns that are distinct from those used in primary-grade storybooks. These linguistic features pose new comprehension challenges for…

This study compared normally achieving fourth-grade ''Phoenician'' readers, who identify nonwords significantly more accurately than they do exception words, with ''Chinese'' readers, who show the reverse pattern. Phoenician readers scored lower than Chinese readers on word identification, exception word reading, orthographic choice, spelling,…

A growing number of reading professionals have advocated teaching literacy through music and song; however, little research exists supporting such practices. The purpose of this study was to determine if sung story book readings would enhance story comprehension and narrative re-tellings in children with histories of speech and language delay.…

This paper investigates how the study of English literature at senior secondary level might be construed in ways that are congruent with current poststructuralist understandings about texts, reading and writing. As an example we analyse an innovative English literature course, whose students develop a theorized understanding of a range of reading…

Readers comprehend narrative texts by constructing a series of mental models of the situations described in the text. These models are updated when readers encounter information indicating that the current model is no longer relevant, such as a change in narrative time. The results of four experiments suggest that readers perceive temporal changes…

O'Brien, Rizzella, Albrecht, and Halleran (1998) demonstrated that when a protagonist is introduced with information that is inconsistent with an action described in a subsequent target sentence, reading times on that sentence were disrupted. This occurred even when the inconsistent information was followed by consistent information that outdated…

The current study aimed to diagnose the probable significant differences in the use of language learning strategies among medical-text readers of opposite sex from different levels of proficiency. 120 (N = 120) participants were randomly selected from Azad Medical University of Mashhad: 60 medical students (age range 23-25; 30 = male and 30 =…