This study compared the effects of social persuasion from parents and teachers on students' self-efficacy in reading comprehension in English as a foreign language. Ninety-nine Grade 8 Chinese students in a secondary school in Hong Kong completed a questionnaire with six scenarios which tapped their self-efficacy after receiving positive and…

This study explores the co-development of two related but separate reading skills, reading fluency and reading comprehension, across Grades 1-4. A bivariate biometric dual change score model was applied to longitudinal data collected from 1,784 twin pairs between the ages of 6 and 10 years. Grade 1 skills were influenced by highly overlapping…

We examined whether identification of and personalized outreach to a group of students with a history of reading difficulties would impact their use of support services and academic outcomes. Using a brief self-report questionnaire, we identified students with a history of reading difficulties (n = 175) and a comparison group of university…

The data featured in this article were gathered during a classroom-based research project with Grade 2 (six- and seven-year-old) children. The overall purposes of the study included exploration of how the development of young children's understanding of elements of visual art and design would affect their comprehension, interpretation, and…

Two experiments explored the effects of reading digital storybooks on tablet computers with 25 preschoolers, aged 4-5. In the first experiment, the students' word recognition scores were found to increase significantly more when students explored a digital storybook and employed the read-aloud function than when they were read to from a comparable…

In this study we explore students' reading rates in grades 1-3. We begin with a short history of reading rate as an assessment measure in the early grades. Next, we share rate data from a recent study (N = 305) where children's contextual reading was assessed with a traditional passage-reading inventory. A comparison of our average grade-level…

Reading that is the activity of identifying and interpreting the symbols in a text is essential in terms of broadening the horizon of individuals through learning new words, acquiring new understandings, and developing the creativity. Because reading is a learning domain that provides significant contribution upon mental development, it takes…

Background: A teaching method to improve students' ability to communicate ideas in genetics across the macro-micro levels of organisation was investigated in this study. Purpose: It is designed to help students deconstruct the level of organisation of each tier of a genetic diagram, as the symbols used in such diagrams (i.e. lines and letters) can…

An emerging body of research has evaluated the role of growth mindset in educational achievement, yet little work has focused on the unique role of mindset to standardized reading outcomes. Our study presents 4 key outcomes in a sample of 195 fourth-grade students. First, we evaluated the dimensionality of general and reading-specific mindset and…

Being notably absent from many classrooms and largely unaware of by many language learners, metacognitive reading strategies have attracted a keen interest of scholars and have been extensively researched in very diverse contexts. Thus, the primary goal of this research is to determine the overall usage of different types of metacognitive reading…

This article describes the findings of a study aimed at producing a set of cultural literacy-oriented critical reading teaching material. This material is developed as a countermeasure to the increasingly thin sensitivity of society, especially the students toward noble values of religion, custom, and culture. With this material student get a…

This study investigated the contribution of linguistic comprehension to the decoding skills of struggling readers. Participants were 36 children aged between eight and 12 years, all below average in decoding but differing in linguistic comprehension. The children read passages from the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability and their first 25 miscues…

To examine the effects of listening test preparation, we had three groups, two experimental and one control (63 learners total), partake in three types of instruction sandwiched between two equally difficult listening tests (pretests and posttests). The first experimental group took four practice tests and received "explicit"…

This article presents an evaluation of the first 2 years of a research-based summer learning program that provided self-selected and developmentally appropriate books to students in low-income and low-resource elementary schools by a local philanthropic organization in a large urban district. The evaluation found evidence of a positive effect of…

Recent research shows that reading comprehension relies heavily on prior knowledge. Far more than generic "reading skills" like drawing inferences, making predictions, and knowing the function of subheads, how well students learn from a nonfiction text depends on their background knowledge of the text's subject matter. And in a cyclical…