Reading

Literacy instructors are encountering accumulative challenges in today`s classrooms. Large-scale high-stake assessments and managerial/parental expectations have doubled the pressure on teachers to produce high-achieving literacy learners. One of the chief aspects the teacher training programs have been focusing on lately has been the notion of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). This paper provides an overview of the PCK and how it can be used optimally in classrooms. This article is concluded by some suggestions and arguments on the reciprocal correlations between PCK and effective practice.

In this research, lexical and morpholexical reading in Italian children ages 8 to 10 years were investigated. Children and control adults were administered two tasks on words and pseudowords: visual lexical decision and naming. Word frequency effects in both lexical decision and naming were found in both children and adults. For all age groups pseudowords made up of roots and derivational suffixes were decided more frequently as possible words and were named more quickly and accurately than matched pseudowords with no morphological constituency. These results show that morpholexical reading is available and efficient in young readers of a shallow orthography, with similar patterns in children and adults.

The role of morphology in reading aloud was examined measuring naming latencies to pseudowords and words composed of morphemes (roots and derivational suffixes) and corresponding simple pseudowords and words. Three groups of Italian children of different ages and reading abilities, including dyslexic children, as well as one group of adult readers participated in the study. All four groups read faster

Suspendus aux lèvres d’un conteur, incapables d’interrompre la lecture d’un roman, captivés par un film haletant, nous faisons tous l’expérience quotidienne de ce plaisir apparemment paradoxal que nous tirons de notre insatisfaction provisoire face à un récit inachevé. Bien qu’une mode esthétique et théorique ait tenté de nous convaincre que ce plaisir était honteux, on peut néanmoins avoir l’intuition que le cœur vivant de la narrativité réside précisément dans ce nœud coulant, toujours plus serré à mesure que nous progressons dans l’histoire, qui nous attache à l’intrigue et creuse la temporalité par l’attente impatiente d’un dénouement. Si le récit a quelque chose à voir avec la manière dont nous éprouvons le temps, cette expérience n’apparaît jamais avec autant d’éclat que dans le suspense, la curiosité ou la surprise qui font la force des intrigues fictionnelles. La compréhension des fonctions narratives engage donc non seulement l’analyse littéraire, linguistique et sémiotique, mais aussi l’analyse cognitive et la psychologie des émotions.

As teacher quality becomes a central issue in discussions of children's literacy, both researchers and policy makers alike express increasing concern with how teachers structure and allocate their lesson time for literacy-related activities as well as with what they know about reading development, processes, and pedagogy. The authors examined the beliefs, literacy knowledge, and proposed instructional practices of 121 first-grade teachers. Through teacher self-reports concerning the amount of instructional time they would prefer ...

The present study seeks to contribute to our knowledge of the effectiveness of reading in the incidental learning of collocations. The study also addresses the question whether out-of-class exposure such as watching TV, listening to radio or music, reading English books and using social media plays a significant role in the learning of collocations. The research participants were 46 Arabic-speaking young adult EFL learners. They were asked to read a modified text containing 10 pseudo-word collocations and to verify that all were unfamiliar to them. One week later, they read a text containing the actual 21 target collocations, which had been selected on the basis of appearing in instructional materials and a reference corpus, as well as of frequency. Participants were then asked to complete a meaning-recall cloze test in the form of a gap-filling task in which the 21 target collocations were embedded in sentences. Subsequently they were administered a self-report survey about any incidental exposure to English. The analysis of the quantitative results revealed that the target collocations can be learned incidentally through reading although the level of mastery was limited. The survey data showed a positive correlation between the learners’ knowledge of collocations and activities such as watching TV, listening to radio and reading English books. The study also confirmed that collocations are particularly difficult for adult EFL learners and is thus an aspect of vocabulary knowledge in need of further empirical investigations.

This 8-minute mini-lecture describes the basic elements of the Four-Blocks approach to teaching reading and writing.  This is one of the best approach for helping students of varying levels because it recognizes that one size does not fit all.

Relationships between early motor development and language and reading skills were studied in 154 children, of whom 75 had familial risk of dyslexia (37 females, 38 males; at-risk group) and 79 constituted a control group (32 females, 47 males). Motor development was assessed by a structured parental questionnaire during the child's first year of life. Vocabulary and inflectional morphology skills were used as early indicators of language skills at 3 years 6 months and 5 years or 5 years 6 months of age, and reading speed was used as a later indicator of reading skills at 7 years of age. The same subgroups as in our earlier study (in which the cluster analysis was described) were used in this study. The three subgroups of the control group were 'fast motor development', 'slow fine motor development', and 'slow gross motor development', and the two subgroups of the at-risk group were 'slow motor development' and 'fast motor development'. A significant difference was found between the development of expressive language skills. Children with familial risk of dyslexia and slow motor development had a smaller vocabulary with poorer inflectional skills than the other children. They were also slower in their reading speed at the end of the first grade at the age of 7 years. Two different associations are discussed, namely the connection between early motor development and language development, and the connection between early motor development and reading speed.

METHODS. COMET enrolled 469 ethnically diverse children (ages, 6–11 years) with myopia between –1.25 and –4.50 D. They were randomly assigned to either progressive addition lenses (PALs) with a +2.00 addition (n = 235) or single vision lenses (SVLs; n = 234), the ...

This report examines the status of reading acquisition in Timor-Leste's primary schools. It is written for education stakeholders and policy makers in Timor-Leste, including government officials, politicians, educators, parents, Timor-Leste's donor partners and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) active in the country. Because the report is aimed at those who are already familiar with the education system in Timor-Leste, it will not attempt to describe the education system, its history, or the issues, with one important exception, that policy makers and stakeholders are currently confronting. One issue in Timor-Leste, however, merits special mention in the context of this analysis. Approximately 30 percent of primary school age children in Timor-Leste are not enrolled in primary school because they never started school or have dropped out. This study assesses the reading ability only of those children who are in school. The findings show significant problems with reading a...

Autistics often exhibit enhanced perceptual abilities when engaged in visual search, visual discrimination, and embedded figure detection. In similar fashion, while performing a range of perceptual or cognitive tasks, autistics display stronger physiological engagement of the visual system than do non-autistics. To account for these findings, the Enhanced Perceptual Functioning Model proposes that enhanced autistic performance in basic perceptual tasks results from stronger engagement of sensory processing mechanisms, a situation that may facilitate an atypically prominent role for perceptual mechanisms in supporting cognition. Using quantitative meta-analysis of published functional imaging studies from which Activation Likelihood Estimation maps were computed, we asked whether autism is associated with enhanced task-related activity for a broad range of visual tasks. To determine whether atypical engagement of visual processing is a general or domain-specific phenomenon, we examined three different visual processing domains: faces, objects, and words. Overall, we observed more activity in autistics compared to non-autistics in temporal, occipital, and parietal regions. In contrast, autistics exhibited less activity in frontal cortex. The spatial distribution of the observed differential between-group patterns varied across processing domains. Autism may be characterized by enhanced functional resource allocation in regions associated with visual processing and expertise. Atypical adult organizational patterns may reflect underlying differences in developmental neural plasticity that can result in aspects of the autistic phenotype, including enhanced visual skills, atypical face processing, and hyperlexia. Hum Brain Mapp, 2011 © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

A case study with a 12-year-old boy, R.F., who was a monolingual speaker of Greek is reported. R.F. showed slow word reading and a difficulty in spelling irregular words but not nonwords. Assessments revealed that R.F. did not appear to have a phonological deficit, but indicated impaired multicharacter processing ability for visually presented letter arrays. On the basis of previous research linking multicharacter processing and reading we developed an intervention aimed at improving R.F.’s ability to report letter arrays of increasing length. Following a 9-week programme, improvement was observed, and investigation of R.F.’s reading revealed gains in single word reading speed and accuracy. The findings support the significance of intervention studies for testing hypotheses regarding causal relationships among cognitive processes and the notion of specific profiles of developmental dyslexia/dysgraphia in both opaque and transparent orthographies.

■ Many previous studies have shown that predictable words are read faster and lead to reduced neural activation, consistent with a model of reading in which words are activated in advance of being encountered. The nature of such preactivation, however, has typ-ically been studied indirectly through its subsequent effect on word recognition. Here, we use magnetoencephalography to study the dynamics of prediction within serially presented adjective–noun phrases, beginning at the point at which the pre-dictive information is first available to the reader. Using corpus transitional probability to estimate the predictability of a noun, we found an increase in activity in the left middle temporal gyrus in response to the presentation of highly predictive adjectives (i.e., adjectives that license a strong noun prediction). Moreover, we found that adjective predictivity and expected noun frequency interacted, such that the response to the highly predictive adjec-tives (e.g., stainless) was ...

The Meaning Maintenance Model asserts that following a meaning threat, people will affirm any meaning,frameworks,that are available. Three experiments tested 1) whether people affirm alternative meaning,frameworks,after reading absurdist literature; 2) the role of expectations in determining whether absurdities are threatening; 3) whether people have a heightened need for meaning following exposure to absurdist art. In Study 1, participants who

Research in L2 reading motivation has gained impetus and provided many insights into understanding the components of motivation and factors that affect L2 learners in terms of reading motivation. Although many studies can be found on L1 reading motivation, studies on L2 reading motivation seem to be relatively meager. Since action research encompasses a sequence of events and an approach to problem solving, the present study addressed to examine whether; (1) this sample of Turkish University students differ in terms of their intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation and (2) a change in methodology has an impact on the L2 reading motivation. Participants responded to a Motivation for Reading Questionnaire (MRQ) and took part in focus group interviews. Results revealed that L2 reading motivation was affected by extrinsic factors mostly and the changes in methodology and the instructional elements had a crucial effect on intrinsic and mostly extrinsic motivation, reading amount and performance. Results foreshadowed insightful methodological changes.

The "average" patient has a literacy level of US grade 8 (age 13-14 years), but this may be lower for people with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Current guidelines suggest that patient education materials should be pitched at a literacy level of around 5th grade (age 10-11 years). This study aims to evaluate the readability of written materials targeted at patients with CKD. Systematic review. Patient information materials aimed at adults with CKD and written in English. Patient education materials designed to be printed and read, sourced from practices in Australia and online at all known websites run by relevant international CKD organizations during March 2014. Quantitative analysis of readability using Lexile Analyzer and Flesch-Kincaid tools. We analyzed 80 materials. Both Lexile Analyzer and Flesch-Kincaid analyses suggested that most materials required a minimum of grade 9 (age 14-15 years) schooling to read them. Only 5% of materials were pitched at the recommended level (grade 5). Readability formulas have inherent limitations and do not account for visual information. We did not consider other media through which patients with CKD may access information. Although the study covered materials from the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, all noninternet materials were sourced locally, and it is possible that some international paper-based materials were missed. Generalizability may be limited due to exclusion of non-English materials. These findings suggest that patient information materials aimed at patients with CKD are pitched above the average patient's literacy level. This issue is compounded by cognitive decline in patients with CKD, who may have lower literacy than the average patient. It suggests that information providers need to consider their audience more carefully when preparing patient information materials, including user testing with a low-literacy patient population.

Malgré le caractère déterminant des déficits phonologiques pour l’émergence de la dyslexie chez l’enfant, d’autres hypothèses d’explication sont possibles concernant l’origine de ce trouble durable de l’apprentissage de la lecture. La diversité des profils de dyslexie invite à s’intéresser à une variété de déficits visuo-attentionnels susceptibles de participer à des formes de dyslexies dites de surface, mais aussi phonologique ou mixte. Nous proposons d’en préciser la nature, de comprendre leurs retentissements sur la lecture et de fournir des pistes pour les dépasser. Ces déficits attentionnels seront regroupés en trois rubriques : certains perturbent le système d’analyse visuelle précoce spécialisé pour l’orthographe en amont des procédures d’adressage et d’assemblage, d’autres concernent l’orientation spatiale de l’attention, d’autres relèvent enfin de l’attention temporelle. La présentation de travaux sur les liens entre l’attention et les oscillations cérébrales permettra d’évoquer les bases neuronales de mécanismes attentionnels spatio-temporels, fondamentaux pour la dynamique de la lecture et perturbés dans les dyslexies.

We use conceptual and empirical lenses to examine synergies between inquiry science and literacy teaching and learning of K-12 (kindergarten through high school) curriculum. We address two questions: (i) how can reading and writing be used as tools to support inquiry-based science, and (ii) how do reading and writing benefit when embedded in an inquiry-based science setting? After elaborating the theoretical and empirical support for integrated approaches, we discuss how to support their implementation in today’s complicated curricular landscape.

This study investigated whether there are any significant differences between EFL and ESL readers in metacognitive reading strategies when they are reading academic texts in English. One hundred and ninety undergraduate students (96 Iranians and 93 Indians) completed an instrument designed to measure the students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies after performing a reading comprehension test. The result of this study indicated that the subjects in both groups reported a similar pattern of strategy awareness while reading academic texts although the two student groups had been schooled in significantly different socio-cultural environments. Regarding the difference existing among both groups, Indians reported more awareness and use of global support and total metacognitive reading strategies. Iranian students reported no significant difference in using problem-solving reading strategies. These findings explain some of the differences and similarities between EFL and ESL ...

This study examines the interaction between the fidelity of implementation of a set of research-based strategies-Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR)-and outcomes for students with mild to moderate disabilities using data from two nonoverlapping studies in middle school language arts and reading classrooms (Study 1) and middle school social studies and science classrooms (Study 2). The authors use a definition of fidelity that includes both the amount of CSR instruction delivered by teachers and the quality of implementation. Although there were no main effects for quality or amount of CSR instruction, in both studies there was an interaction effect between quality of implementation and special education status. The study used a within-groups design and multilevel analyses, and the results demonstrate that higher quality CSR instruction was associated with higher reading outcomes for students with disabilities. This finding was consistent across Study 1 and Study 2. Implications fo...

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