Word finding difficulties (WFDs) occur in more than a quarter of children who are receiving speech and language therapy. This study provides the first investigation of the continuity in WFDs and investigates whether WFDs are associated with phonological or semantically related abilities. Thirty-eight children with WFDs were seen at age 7;0 and at…

A 7-month study of 178 students in grades 1-4 at two Blue Ribbon schools compared two daily 20-minute treatments. Eighty-eight students used the 2000-2001 version of Project LISTEN's Reading Tutor (www.cs.cmu.edu/~listen) in 10-computer labs, averaging 19 hours over the course of the year. The Reading Tutor served as a computerized implementation…

Although phonological awareness (PA) is an essential preliteracy skill with well-established predictive validity for elementary school reading success, previous research indicates that PA intervention does not demonstrate long term effects on reading. The theory of automaticity was the underlying foundation used to understand the importance of…

In "Reading First" schools throughout the United States, literacy coaches administer the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS) as the sole measure of fluency and then offer instructional recommendations for students with reading difficulties based on those results. However, critics of DIBELS question its accuracy for…

Lack of psychometric equivalence of oral reading fluency (ORF) passages used within a grade for screening and progress monitoring has recently become an issue with calls for the use of equating methods to ensure equivalence. To investigate the nature of the nonequivalence and to guide the choice of equating method to correct for nonequivalence,…

Prosody is a means for "reading with expression" and is one aspect of oral reading competence. This theoretical inquiry asserts that prosody is central to interpreting text, and draws distinctions between "syntactic" prosody (for phrasing) and "emphatic" prosody (for interpretation). While reading with expression appears as a criterion in major…

Background: A significant number of pupils in UK schools learn English as an additional language (EAL). Relative differences between the educational attainment of this group and monolingual, English-speaking pupils call for an exploration of the literacy needs of EAL learners. Aims: This study explores the developmental progression of reading and…

This research investigates the ability of adult proficient readers to predict words that have been fully or partially deleted, without being able to read what came after the blank. Predictions were analyzed for accuracy and if inaccurate for their grammatical nature, syntactic and semantic acceptability, and retention of the author's meaning.…

In a cross-sectional study, we investigated the development of fluent reading and spelling in the first 3 years of learning Arabic. The goals of our study were to: (1) validate suitable measures for fluent reading and spelling in the first 3 years of learning Arabic; (2) trace the developmental course of the relationship between fluent reading and…

In this study, researchers examined whether tutoring implemented by volunteer tutors impacted struggling elementary readers' reading skills, their attitudes toward reading, and their self-confidence. The study involved two elementary schools and 30 students who were participating in the community based tutoring program and who were randomly…

Most research suggests professional development improves teachers' knowledge and pedagogy and enhances teachers' confidence to facilitate a positive attitude about student learning. This study attempted to investigate the connection between teacher professional development program and students' Learning. This study took Readers' Theater Teaching…

In 2013-14, Letterland had strong implementation, with moderate to high fidelity within approximately 90% of Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) K-1 classrooms. The impact of Letterland on students' reading achievement was neutral to positive. A significantly higher percentage of WCPSS kindergarten students were at or above benchmark mid-year…

If children do not learn how to read in the first few years of primary school, they will struggle to complete the cycle, and are at greater risk of dropping out. It is therefore crucial to identify and test interventions that have the potential of making a large impact, can be implemented quickly, and are affordable to be taken to scale. This is…

This study examined reading performance of 102 Chinese Mandarin-speaking 4th graders in their second language (L2, English) as a function of performance in their first language (L1, Chinese). The results revealed that for Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) and Rapid Alternating Stimulus (RAS) measures, the mean naming time decreased monotonically in…

This study examined the effects of scientifically research based (SRB) teaching strategies on the learning of students living in poverty in a Educational Service Center (ESC) Region VI of East Texas. By interviewing teachers within academically successful campuses with high economically disadvantaged student populations, an accurate assessment was…