Journal of Research in Reading最新文献

Background

Spelling is a prevalent strategy to teach children to read. However, research on the mechanism underlying the contribution of spelling to reading comprehension in Chinese children is limited.

Methods

The primary aim of this study was to investigate the concurrent and longitudinal associations between spelling and reading comprehension and further test the mediating role of word reading fluency with 127 Chinese children (M_age = 76.01 months). Children were required to perform the tasks of nonverbal intelligence, expressive vocabulary, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic awareness, spelling, word reading fluency and reading comprehension at Grade 1. Then, reading comprehension was measured again 1 year later at Grade 2. The concurrent and longitudinal mediation models were fitted to the data by structural equation modelling.

Results

The results showed that spelling was related to reading comprehension concurrently, and it predicted reading comprehension 1 year later while controlling for nonverbal intelligence, age, expressive vocabulary, metalinguistic awareness and the autoregressive effect of reading comprehension. Moreover, word reading fluency played mediating roles in the influence of spelling on reading comprehension in the concurrent and longitudinal models.

Conclusions

These findings provided evidence that spelling is an important factor of reading comprehension and shed light on the nature of this association, highlighting the role of word reading fluency in linking spelling and Chinese children's reading comprehension.

Background

Arabic is recognised as diglossic; one manifestation of diglossia is the co-existence of two varieties of the language used in different social settings: standard (or literary) Arabic (StA) and spoken Arabic (SpA).

The study investigated the impact of lexical–phonological distance in Arabic (identical, cognate, unique, which are different types of words) on reading accuracy and fluency across grade levels.

Methods

The participants were 180 native Arabic-speaking children first and second graders. Participants were asked to read three-word lists comprising words of three different lexical distance from spoken Arabic (identical, cognates and unique) and three text selections representing similar lexical distance (mostly identical, mostly cognates and mostly unique).

Results

The findings showed a main effect of the word and text lexical distance fluency and accuracy reading scores. There was also a main effect of grade level on both scores. In addition, a significant interaction between the word and type words text lexical distance and grade level was found. The results revealed a more significant gap between the identical and the other two lexical distance categories (cognates and unique) in the second grade than in the first grade. Similarly, a more significant disparity was observed between the mostly identical type words and mostly cognate type word texts compared to unique type word texts in the second grade than in the first grade.

Conclusions

The results highlight the importance of StA knowledge and the centrality of diglossia lexical–phonological distance categories in reading, especially the contribution of reading StA words to text reading. The higher performance levels when reading identical compared to unique and cognate words and texts are discussed in light of the theoretical approaches to diglossic lexical–phonological distance. The results point to the centrality of diglossia lexical–phonological distance categories in reading.

Background

Letter knowledge is crucial in the first stages of reading development. It supports learning letter-sound mappings and the identification of the letters that make up words. Previous studies have investigated the longitudinal impact of early letter knowledge on children's further word reading abilities. This study employed an artificial orthography learning paradigm to explore whether the rate of letter learning modulates children's reading and word identification skills.

Methods

In an initial training phase, 8-year-old Spanish children (N = 30) learned nine artificial letters and their corresponding sounds (two vowels and six consonants). The letter learning rate was set according to the number of attempts needed to name at least seven letters (i.e., 80% correct). These ranged from 1 to 4. In a second training phase, children visualized words made up of the trained letters while listening to their pronunciations. Some words included a context-dependent syllable (i.e., leading to grapheme-to-phoneme inconsistency), and others had an inconsistent syllable (i.e., phoneme-to-grapheme inconsistency). The post-test consisted of a reading aloud task and an orthographic-choice task in which the target word was presented with a distractor equal to the target except for the substitution of a letter.

Results

Children showed a high accuracy rate in the post-test tasks, regardless of whether words contained context-dependent or inconsistent syllables. Critically, the letter learning rate predicted both reading aloud and identification accuracy of words in the artificial orthography.

Conclusions

We provide evidence for the vital role of letter knowledge acquisition ability in children's decoding and word identification skills. Training children on this ability facilitates serial letter-sound mapping and word identification skills. Artificial orthography paradigms are optimal for exploring children's potential to achieve specific literacy skills.

Background

Previous studies on reading engagement have generally used variable-centred approaches to examine whole-sample averages. Few have assumed a person-centred approach, especially latent profile analysis (LPA), to examine students' reading engagement profiles. Although one study employed LPA to identify the reading engagement profiles of Chinese adolescents, how engagement dimensions combine within individuals was not clear from its results.

Methods

This study used LPA to examine the reading engagement profiles of 12,058 Chinese adolescents based on their patterns of behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement. Additionally, how profile membership relates to self-concept and reading literacy was examined.

Results

Four reading engagement profiles were identified: engaged (moderate to high on all three dimensions), moderately engaged (moderate on all three dimensions), disengaged (low on all three dimensions) and moderately cognitively engaged (moderate cognitive engagement/low behavioural and emotional engagement). Students with a higher reading self-concept were more likely to exhibit a pattern of moderate to high engagement. Students with higher engagement patterns attained higher reading achievement.

Conclusions

Chinese adolescents showed multiple reading engagement profiles that were differently related to self-concept and reading literacy. Teachers should be aware of subgroups of students displaying different reading engagement patterns and be able to evaluate and then address them with appropriate instructional practices.

Background

Using a 1-year longitudinal design, we evaluated the effectiveness of an intervention programme to improve reading attainments among Chinese-as-a-second-language (CSL) learners. Using the simple view of reading as a theoretical framework, the intervention focused on students' orthographic knowledge, word reading and listening comprehension to facilitate reading comprehension.

Method

A total of 186 Grade 4 CSL students (mean age = 9.22, SD = 0.56) participated in the study and were grouped into the treatment (N = 96) and control (N = 90) groups. A range of Chinese language and literacy skills were assessed before and after the intervention.

Results

The path analysis showed that the intervention significantly affected orthographic knowledge, word reading and listening comprehension directly and reading comprehension indirectly through the three componential skills after controlling for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary and autoregressors.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that orthographic knowledge, word reading and listening comprehension may be promising targets for instructing young CSL learners.

Background

A significant portion of adults struggle to read at a basic level. Word reading (defined here as decoding and word recognition) appears to play a pivotal role for this population of readers; however, less is known about how word reading relates to other important semantic processes (e.g., vocabulary, sentence processing) known to account for a large portion of variance in reading comprehension. This study used the Reading Systems Framework to explore the extent that moderational and mediational relations existed between word reading and semantic processing abilities in predicting reading comprehension.

Methods

Participants (N = 169) completed the Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation, which consists of a series of subtests intended to measure decoding/word recognition, vocabulary, sentence processing and reading comprehension.

Results

A moderated mediation model was constructed to assess the extent to which moderational and mediational relations between word reading and semantic processing were predictive of comprehension. Results suggested that word reading moderated the effect of vocabulary knowledge on comprehension among struggling adult readers. Additionally, semantic processing at the word (i.e., vocabulary) and sentence level both significantly mediated the relation between word reading and comprehension.

Conclusions

Word reading moderated the relation between vocabulary and comprehension for struggling adult readers. Readers with greater word reading ability benefited most from having a higher degree of vocabulary knowledge. Vocabulary and sentence processing mediated the relation between word reading and comprehension. Thus, word reading appears to serve as an important gateway for struggling readers, and, as such, interventions targeting component skills of reading may have a limited impact on reading literacy tasks until word reading skills are developed.