Erratum to: Evaluating Effectiveness of Two Types of Chinese Remedial Materials for Low-Achieving and Disadvantaged Second Graders

Abstract

Having access to research-based materials is an essential component for designing effective interventions for low-achieving and disadvantaged students. The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of two types of reading material intervention for low-achieving and disadvantaged students. The students were divided into experimental (n = 29) and control (n = 27) groups. The students in the control group received the alternative remediation program provided by the school. The experimental group was divided into two subgroups: 19 students received “auxiliary” reading remediation materials (the AUX group), while the other 10 received “adjusted” reading remediation materials (the ADJ group). Data were gathered from the pre and post-test results of a variety of reading and writing tests. There were three major findings. First, both the AUX and ADJ groups showed advantages in attaining results, but there were no significant differences between them in terms of promoting language skills. Furthermore, the AUX group had a slight advantage with regard to overall progress and peer catch-up rate, while the ADJ group showed higher effectiveness than the AUX group in the enhancement of academic performance. Second, the language skills of the students in the two experimental groups have relatively closed the gap with the norm. Specifically, over 50 % of the students in the AUX group achieved peer-level character recognition and dictation abilities in the second-term posttest. Third, both experimental groups demonstrated better reading skills than the control group, but there were no significant differences in terms of reading comprehension. Implications of the study will be discussed based on the findings from this study.