From the Editors

Abstract

Dear Colleagues, The investigations in this issue of Reading Research Quarterly span early childhood through high school and include research examining a wide range of cognitive processes and teacher practices that potentially influence literacy acquisition and proficiency. Existing theory is expanded, new constructs are developed, and promising models are tested, as topics as broad as comprehension and as specific as syllable awareness are considered in innovative ways. Among the authors contributing to this issue is Meghan D. Liebfreund, the recipient of the ILA Outstanding Dissertation Award for 2015. We are pleased to include a summary of her dissertation, “Success With Informational Text Comprehension: An Examination of Underlying Factors.” With the increased (and justified) emphasis on informational text across grades, understanding the factors that contribute to the comprehension of such text is essential. Using hierarchical linear regressions, Liebreund investigates the impact and predictive value of vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge, decoding efficiency, and motivation on the informational text comprehension of students in grades 3–5. Comprehension ability is also a key variable in the next article. Framing the nuances of comprehension in terms of a battery of mental exercises, Carolyn A. Denton and colleagues examine the cognitive processes that adequate and poor comprehenders use when reading accessible and challenging passages of both narrative and informational text. The authors employ a think-aloud protocol to investigate the conscious engagement of inference generation, paraphrasing, text repetition, and text monitoring of seventh-, ninth-, and 11th-grade students during reading tasks. A nonparametric canonical discriminant analysis was performed to shed light on the differences among groups based on reader ability and passage genre. New insights are gained, including challenges to some generally held notions. Cognitive considerations also figure in Lindsay Clare Matsumura, Richard Correnti, and Eaine Wang's study of writing task quality and fifth-grade students’ analytic text-based writing. The authors, conceptualizing writing task quality in terms of the cognitive demand of the task and the grist of the text, examine the quality of writing assignments given to students and the impact that task quality has on analytic text-based writing. The results of this study suggest that the way in which tasks are structured has greater impact on students’ writing development than the quality of a text in and of itself. Findings regarding teachers’ perceptions of what constitutes high-quality writing highlight a potential need for professional development specific to the increasing expectations for writing and higher order thinking. The next three articles turn our focus to the emergent and early literacy skills of young children. Molly Welsh Chilton and Linnea C. Ehri report on an experiment in which vocabulary instruction using random exemplar sentences is compared with instruction using cohesively themed exemplar sentences. Third-grade students were randomly assigned to one of these two conditions and taught six novel verbs. Findings from the study illuminate a variety of predictive factors for vocabulary learning and support the hypothesis that vocabulary learning is facilitated for students who receive instruction that includes the target vocabulary imbedded in related sentences depicting a familiar scenario. In a study of 5- and 6-year-old Korean children, Young-Suk Grace Kim explores text-reading fluency by examining the complexities of its relation to other literacy constructs, how those relationships evolve over time, and the ways in which text-reading fluency is different from word-reading fluency and reading comprehension. Data collected at two points eight months apart were primarily analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. In addition to addressing a gap in the research regarding reading comprehension's relation to text-reading fluency while accounting for listening comprehension, and vice versa, Kim's research provides an interesting opportunity for comparison of emergent literacy in a transparent orthography (Korean) versus that in an opaque orthography (English). Heidi Anne E. Mesmer and Thomas O. Williams assert that “the early literacy instruction of letters, phonemes, names, and sight words makes little sense to the child”—that is, when children lack knowledge of how words are organized and represented in print. Pressing this notion, the authors provide a sound theoretical framework for justifying concept of word as a research construct worthy of empirical attention and offer a model of concept of word that integrates syllable awareness, beginning sound awareness, and knowledge of letters. Structural equation modeling was implemented to test the model, and multiple indexes were used to assess goodness of fit. The research presented in this issue offer critically relevant studies exploring cognitive factors related to literacy. They span age/grade designations, as well as particular skills that are critical for success in reading and writing proficiency. We are sure that you will find something that captures your attention in these informative studies.