Advanced Reading Research Articles

Structural brain dynamics across reading development: A longitudinal MRI study from kindergarten to grade 5.

Primary education is the incubator for learning academic skills that help children to become a literate, communicative, and independent person. Over this learning period, nonlinear and regional changes in the brain occur, but how these changes relate to academic performance, such as reading ability, is still unclear. In the current study, we analyzed longitudinal T1 MRI data of 41 children in order to investigate typical cortical development during the early reading stage (end of kindergarten–end of grade 2) and advanced reading stage (end of grade 2–middle of grade 5), and to detect putative deviant trajectories in children with dyslexia. The structural brain change was quantified with a reliable measure that directly calculates the local morphological differences between brain images of two time points, while considering the global head growth. When applying this measure to investigate typical cortical development, we observed that left temporal and temporoparietal regions belonging to the reading network exhibited an increase during the early reading stage and stabilized during the advanced reading stage. This suggests that the natural plasticity window for reading is within the first years of primary school, hence earlier than the typical period for reading intervention. Concerning neurotrajectories in children with dyslexia compared to typical readers, we observed no differences in gray matter development of the left reading network, but we found different neurotrajectories in right IFG opercularis (during the early reading stage) and in right isthmus cingulate (during the advanced reading stage), which could reflect compensatory neural mechanisms.

The Effectiveness of Problem-Based Learning on Advanced Reading Comprehension Skill in Online Arabic Language Teaching

Reading proficiency is considered as one of the language skills that must be mastered by prospective Arabic educators or practitioners. Besides, in the era of industry 4.0, students not only require core competencies from the field of study they are studying but also have a lifelong character of a learner. The conditions found in the field, as well as in previous studies, showed that learning in higher education currently tends to be centred on lecturers rather than on the students. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of the implementation of a student-centred learning method in the form of a problem-based learning method with seven-jumps (seven-steps) approach in increasing the reading proficiency in Arabic. The subjects of this research were 50 people of Muthala’ah Mukatsafah class, and the test and non-test were employed as instruments. The reading proficiency test prepared by the researcher was used to figure out the subjects’ reading ability. Meanwhile, the subjects’ characters or soft skills were measured through a non-test instrument in the form of a questionnaire. The design applied in this study was a group design (one group pretest-posttest design). The data analysis was performed through a significance test before and after treatment. The results show that there are differences in the subjects’ advanced reading proficiency level as well as an increase in empathy soft skill before and after the implementation of the learning method.

Child-Centred Teaching: Helping Each Child to Reach Their Full Potential

Research has shown that schoolteachers often prepare children for success in standardized reading assessments by ‘teaching to the test.’ Concurrently, research exploring children’s emergent literacies and ‘school readiness’ has shown that early childhood teachers often feel pressured to ‘prepare’ children for school and may do so by focusing on print-related literacies, to the detriment of earlier stages of the oral-to-print continuum. This raises the concern that teaching children as a group, preparing them for the next ‘stage of education,’ will disadvantage children who are working below or above expected levels of development. Our study explores the teaching approaches used with a group of foundation-year children who achieved more advanced reading outcomes than children from four adjacent classrooms in their first year of schooling. We collected the reading and letter-identification outcomes of 16 children in the teacher’s foundation-year class and interviewed her about her practices. Findings showed that the teacher used her knowledge of what the children should achieve in standardized assessments as a minimum expectation and moved beyond the content of such assessments when warranted, as determined by informal assessments. As a result, every child in the class met, and many exceeded, minimum reading standards by year’s end. We conclude that using an individualized, child-centred pedagogy, informed by a combination of standardized and informal assessments, allowed the teacher to support her students to develop a range of reading abilities and to reach their full potential.

Reading Strategies Used by College English Students

The research was aimed to acknowledge and know the reading strategies and in what stage the students mostly used reading methods by English Language and Literature major students, English Department, Universitas Negeri Padang. This research used descriptive quantitative. The population was the students who had taken and passed Basic Reading, Intermediate Reading, Advanced Reading, and Critical Reading and the sample of the research was 228 students of the total population. In collecting the data, the researcher asked the students to fill out the questionnaire given by the researcher. The results were divided into three divisions and they were pre-reading strategies, while-reading strategies, and post-reading strategies. It was found the pre-reading strategies had 66.62%, whilst-reading strategies was 71.59%, and post-reading strategies was 69.45%. It had indication that the students were aware of the strategies in reading and they had tendency to implement all of the strategies in reading English.

THE EFFECT OF THE USE OF PORTABLE READING TOOLS ON IMPROVING THE ABILITY TO READ AWARENESS WRITINGS OF LOW VISION STUDENTS

Low vision learners experience obstacles in reading the writing of caution, this happens also to one of the students who are in SLBN A pajajaran Bandung. With this condition, research creates a plan that aims to improve the ability to read it. In this thesis, researchers tested reading aids to determine the effect of using portable reading lights on improving the reading ability of low vision learners. Research using quantitative approach with Single Subject Research (SSR) method. The design used is A-B design. The subject of the study was a visually impaired student in grade 11 at SLBN A Pajajaran Bandung. Data collection by conducting tests to learners using advanced reading instruments. The data obtained is analyzed through descriptive statistics and displayed in the form of graphs and tables. The results showed a positive influence on improving the ability to read the writing after being given a portable reading light. This can be seen with a stable value at the time of intervention, as well as an increase in the middle value (mean) that is when the baseline phase has a middle value of 27.5% ¬and in the intervention phase has a middle value of 81.25%. The influence can also be seen from the percentage of overlap. The percentage of overlap between the baseline condition and the intervention phase is 0, which means that the smaller the percentage of overlap, the better the effect of the intervention. Based on the data obtained, the researchers concluded that portable reading lamps can be used for low vision learners who have difficulty reading in low light conditions. Thus, researchers recommend to the school and teachers to provide portable reading light aids to low vision learners to support in learning activities, especially reading writings.

THE EFFECT OF COMPUTER ASSISTANT INSTRUCTION ( CAI ) ON ADVANCED READING

The study was conducted to find out the significant influence of Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) on advanced reading at fourth semester of English Department Muhammadiyah University of Metro. Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) is a technique to give instruction by using computer to the students and instructional approach where a computer is used to evaluate the learning outcomes. This research is an experimental research and the subject of the research are 40 students at fourth semester of English department. There are two 20 students for control group and 20 students for experimental group. The result of average score of pre-test at experimental group and control group are 1.36 and 1.39. It shows that the control group is higher than the experimental group. However, the result of the post test of the experimental group is higher the control group, they are 1.71 for the experimental group and 1.41 for the control group. It can be conclude that, there is significant influence in students’ reading comprehension after being taught by using Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI )

A three-time point longitudinal investigation of the arcuate fasciculus throughout reading acquisition in children developing dyslexia

Although the neural basis of dyslexia has intensively been investigated, results are still unclear about the existence of a white matter deficit in the arcuate fasciculus (AF) throughout development. To unravel this ambiguity, we examined the difference in fractional anisotropy (FA) of the AF between children developing dyslexia and children developing typical reading skills in a longitudinal sample with three MRI time points throughout reading development: the pre-reading stage (5–6 years old), the early reading stage (7–8 years old) and the advanced reading stage (9–10 years old). Applying along-the-tract analyses of white matter organization, our results confirmed that a white matter deficit existed in the left AF prior to the onset of formal reading instruction in children who developed dyslexia later on. This deficit was consistently present throughout the course of reading development. Additionally, we evaluated the use of applying a continuous approach on the participants’ reading skills rather than the arbitrary categorization in individuals with or without dyslexia. Our results confirmed the predictive relation between FA and word reading measurements later in development. This study supports the use of longitudinal approaches to investigate the neural basis of the developmental process of learning to read and the application of triangulation, i.e. using multiple research approaches to help gain more insight and aiding the interpretation of obtained results.

Bayesian Approach to Analyze Reading Comprehension: A Case Study in Elementary School Children in Mexico

In the educational field, reading comprehension is connected to learning achievement, and through it, one can interpret, retain, organize and value what has been read. It is an essential ability for the understanding and processing of information in learning. Furthermore, it is an essential skill to developing sustainable education. In this sense, sustainable development needs an advanced reading comprehension ability at elementary school in order to teach and learn future knowledge areas such as climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, poverty reduction, and sustainable consumption. Nevertheless, there have been few works focused on analyzing reading comprehension, particularly in Mexico, where the reference is the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test on how well the Mexican students have developed this skill. Hence, this article shows the usefulness of employing Bayesian techniques in the analysis of reading comprehension at elementary school. The Bayesian network model allows for the determination of the language and communication level of achievement based on parameters such as learning style, learning pace, speed, and reading comprehension, obtaining an 85.36% precision. Moreover, the results confirm that teachers could determine changes in lesson planning and implement new pedagogical mechanisms to improve the level of learning and understanding contents.

Radiology Reporting in the Era of Patient-Centered Care: How Can We Improve Readability?

Radiology reports are consumed not only by referring physicians and healthcare providers, but also by patients. We assessed report readability in our enterprise and implemented a two-part quality improvement intervention with the goal of improving report accessibility. A total of 491,813 radiology reports from ten hospitals within the enterprise from May to October, 2018 were collected. We excluded echocardiograms, rehabilitation reports, administrator reports, and reports with negative scores leaving 461,219 reports and report impressions for analysis. A grade level (GL) was calculated for each report and impression by averaging four readability metrics. Next, we conducted a readability workshop and distributed weekly emails with readability GLs over a period of 6months to each attending radiologist at our primary institution. Following this intervention, we utilized the same exclusion criteria and analyzed 473,612 reports from May to October, 2019. The mean GL for all reports and report impressions was above 13 at every hospital in the enterprise. Following our intervention, a statistically significant drop in GL for reports and impressions was demonstrated at all locations, but a larger and significant improvement was observed in impressions at our primary site. Radiology reports across the enterprise are written at an advanced reading level making them difficult for patients and their families to understand. We observed a significantly larger drop in GL for impressions at our primary site than at all other sites following our intervention. Radiologists at our home institution improved their report readability after becoming more aware of their writing practices.

The Importance of Making-While-Reading for Undergraduate Readers: An Example of Inductive SoTL

This paper gives an example of an inductive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) process, adapting Anthony Ciccone’s five conditions of a meaningful SoTL question. Presenting a study on pre-class reading in an undergraduate religion class, I describe how my question went through five life stages. I began with nine different pre-class reading assignments. Students judged the “map” assignment to be most helpful. This led to a further question: why maps? In a close reading of students’ reading reflections, two themes stood out: students experienced maps as helping them create a mental overview of the reading, and maps facilitated greater ownership of the act of reading. In conclusion, I argue that humanities instructors who wish to teach advanced reading skills can start by providing pre-class assignments that allow for making-while-reading, and that this making should not be merged with other reading steps. In an epilogue I reflect on the inductive research process. I suggest that SoTL scholars who use this process may reach an impasse when deciding how to present meaningful answers because their conceptual answers will stand in tension with SoTL’s practical orientation. I propose focusing on conceptual generalization (rather than empirical generalization), while still foregrounding a balance between “what works” and “what is.”

The Importance of Making-While-Reading for Undergraduate Readers: An Example of Inductive SoTL

This paper gives an example of an inductive Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) process, adapting Anthony Ciccone’s five conditions of a meaningful SoTL question. Presenting a study on pre-class reading in an undergraduate religion class, I describe how my question went through five life stages. I began with nine different pre-class reading assignments. Students judged the “map” assignment to be most helpful. This led to a further question: why maps? In a close reading of students’ reading reflections, two themes stood out: students experienced maps as helping them create a mental overview of the reading, and maps facilitated greater ownership of the act of reading. In conclusion, I argue that humanities instructors who wish to teach advanced reading skills can start by providing pre-class assignments that allow for making-while-reading, and that this making should not be merged with other reading steps. In an epilogue I reflect on the inductive research process. I suggest that SoTL scholars who use this process may reach an impasse when deciding how to present meaningful answers because their conceptual answers will stand in tension with SoTL’s practical orientation. I propose focusing on conceptual generalization (rather than empirical generalization), while still foregrounding a balance between “what works” and “what is.”

Book Parts

Book Parts

Review of BAUMWOLL & SAITZ (1978): Advanced Reading and Writing : Exercises in English as a Second Language

Review of BAUMWOLL & SAITZ (1978): Advanced Reading and Writing : Exercises in English as a Second Language

Exploring EFL university learners’ acquisition of advanced reading skills in the Yemeni context

Reading is an essential language skill for enhancing learners’ performance at various levels of study. However, EFL learners at the tertiary level encounter reading difficulties, particularly in acquiring advanced reading skills, which have affected their reading comprehension and resulted in low academic performance achievement. This is probably attributed to various factors, including learners’ lack of effective reading strategies. A study that exclusively explores reading difficulties encountered by EFL university learners, reasons for the difficulties, and strategies adopted to overcome the difficulties and develop advanced reading skills seem to be scarce in the literature. Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to explore the acquisition process of advanced reading skills in EFL tertiary context at a private university in Yemen from learners’ perspective. The study adopted a qualitative approach to gather data from EFL tertiary learners through a focus group discussion. The data were analyzed manually using the indexing approach. Findings revealed that learners face reading difficulties such as inference making, getting the gist of the text, and managing the reading tasks. These difficulties were attributed to linguistic and non-linguistic reasons, and metacognitive, cognitive, and social-affective strategies were used in reading. The study recommends engaging EFL learners in intensive and extensive reading to help them apply the strategies they learn and develop advanced reading skills and better academic performance. Future research studies may focus on strategies for reading fluency.

The effects of creative writing activities on narrative text writing skills and advanced reading awareness

The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of creative writing exercises on narrative text writing skills and advanced reading awareness. To do that one of the mixed research designs, "exploratory sequential design" was used. The quantitative part of the study, in which a pretest post-test research design was used, consisted of 66 7th grade students of a secondary school in the city center of Elazig. The participants were divided into two groups: The Experimental Group (N=35), and the Control Group (N=31). In addition, 15 participants in the Experimental Group took part in the qualitative part. The data were obtained through the Narrative Text Writing Skills Rubric, Advanced Reading Awareness Scale, and Semi-Structured Interview Guide for Creative Writing Studies. The descriptive statistics, Independent Groups t-test, dependent groups t-test, Two-Way Variance Analysis for Mixed Measurements and Wilcoxon Signed Sequences Test were used in the analysis of quantitative data. The qualitative data were analyzed with the Content Analysis. The results of the quantitative data showed that the narrative text writing skills of the Experimental Group were statistically and significantly higher the Control Group. Furthermore, it was found that the advanced reading awareness levels of the Experimental Group increased more than the Control Group; however, this increase was not statistically significant. In addition, participans stated in the interviews that their narrative text writing skills improved, they gained courage and positive attitude towards writing, they formed a reading habit, they preferred books with events, their imagination developed, they gained the power to share and express. In sum, it was concluded that creative writing activities significantly improved narrative writing skills and improved to some extent advanced reading awaraness though a statistical significane was not found.

The Effect of Mobile Learning on Students’ Reading Self-Efficacy: A Case Study of the APP “English Liulishuo”

A number of studies have been conducted regarding self-efficacy in the field of foreign language learning. Yet, with the popularity of mobile learning, research on the relationship between mobile learning and self-efficacy in this field is still limited. To bridge the gap, the study aims to investigate the effects of mobile learning on students’ reading self-efficacy, i.e. whether the use of mobile learning can improve students’ English reading self-efficacy. A questionnaire is employed to collect data from 294 non-English major students in universities. To survey the effect of mobile learning on students’ reading self-efficacy, the data is accessed by the software SPSS 20.0. Results of independent T test demonstrate that for overall students, reading self-efficacy for students who have used the app is significantly different from those who haven’t in overall reading skills and in the four dimensions of reading skills, i.e. basic reading skills, applied reading skills, reading task skills, and advanced reading skills. As for students with relatively better reading performance, the results are consistent. However, for students with relatively weak reading performance, the reading self-efficacy of students who have used the app only shows significant differences in overall reading skills and in the two dimensions of basic reading skills and applied reading skills, but shows no difference in the dimensions of reading task skills and advanced reading skills. Finally, practical suggestions for mobile learning and students’ English reading are given.

Utterance-focusing multiway-matching network for dialogue-based multiple-choice machine reading comprehension

Dialogue-based multiple-choice machine reading comprehension (MRC) is one of most difficult and novel tasks because it requires more advanced reading comprehension skills, such as speaker’s intention analysis, non-extractive reasoning, commonsense knowledge. Previous models usually only compute attention scores from the fixed representation of entire dialogue, and also do not fully consider the contribution of dialogue, question, options, and their combinations respectively. In this paper, we introduce Utterance-focusing Multiway-matching Network (UMN), a simple but effective human mimicking model for dialogue-based multiple-choice MRC. First, two utterance-focusing mechanisms called ParaUF and AutoUF are proposed to extract the utterances that are most relevant to the question and option: ParaUF gets the bilinear weighted distance between each utterance of dialogue and question and option during training while AutoUF obtains the scores by the relevance, overlap and coverage (ROC) rules before training process. Second, we adopted the multiway-matching mechanism to capture the relationship among the question, option and selected utterances through calculating the attention weights between the quadruplet of four sequences: utterances, question, option and the concatenation of each two. We evaluate the proposed model on dialogue-based multiple-choice MRC tasks, DREAM, and outperformed recently published methods under the same pre-trained model. A series of detailed analysis is also conducted to interpret the differences of two utterance-focusing mechanisms and the effectiveness of the proposed multiway-matching mechanism.

A Study on Career Reading Scheme in the Situation of free course selection system - Step-by-step career advanced reading for humanities high school students -

A Study on Career Reading Scheme in the Situation of free course selection system - Step-by-step career advanced reading for humanities high school students -

SCALE DEVELOPMENT STUDY OF SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS FOR ADVANCED READING AWARENESS

Reading is defined as the reader perceiving and interpreting written symbols using their physical and mental processes. Reading is one of the four basic language skills and it is also a type of communication between the reader and the writer. Many concepts such as “critical reading, strategic reading, implicit reading, advanced reading” have come to the fore about the reading process carried out by the reader. Forward reading, which is one of the prominent concepts, is the way of reading that is carried out by using appropriate strategies in the whole reading process, before reading, during reading and after reading, and one of the strategies used in reading forward is metacognition strategies. The concept of metacognition can be referred to simply as thinking about thinking. In this study, it was aimed to develop the Advanced Reading Awareness Scale, which aims to measure the advanced reading awareness of middle school students using metacognition strategies. In order to determine the construct validity of the developed scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis was performed with the data obtained from a group of 513 students formed by middle school students, and then Confirmatory Factor Analysis with data obtained from a different group of 141 people. After applying the scale in two different groups of middle school students, the reliability of the scores was determined by calculating the Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficients. As a result of Exploratory Factor Analysis, it was determined that the draft scale of 58 items consisted of 21 items and three dimensions. The Confirmatory Factor Analysis also confirmed the three-factor structure of the Advanced Reading Awareness Scale, consisting of 21 items. The scale consists of three dimensions: “pre-reading (planning), reading order (process monitoring) and post-reading (evaluation)”. When the reliability evidences and validity evidences obtained as a result of these analyzes are evaluated together, the Advanced Reading Awareness Scale, which was developed, was found to be a valid and reliable scale that can be used in future studies. Article visualizations:

Quality and Readability of Online Information on Ankle Instability

Category:Ankle; Sports; TraumaIntroduction/Purpose:Ankle sprains are among the most common sports injuries and up to 60% of patients experience long- term ankle disability or develop chronic ankle instability. Proper patient information is essential in both conservative and surgical treatment. The rising role of the internet has revolutionized the way patients acquire health-related information. Nevertheless, inaccurate or outdated online resources could lead to misinformation about the nature of ankle instability and the treatment options. Aim of this study was to evaluate the quality, accuracy and readability of free available online resources regarding ankle instability.Methods:Three search terms (‘ankle instability’, ‘ankle instability treatment’, ‘ankle laxity’) were searched using the three biggest search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo). Quality and accuracy of online patient information was evaluated by using the EQIP36 and a custom 25-item list based on recommendations of the AOFAS. Readability was assessed by evaluating the Flesch-Kincaid score.Results:A total of 102 online resources were included in this study. The mean 25-item-score was 9.45 (range 1-22) and the mean EQIP 36-score was 40.72 (range 17.65-65.71). The average Flesch-Kincaid score reached 110.60 (range 10-176) and 97% of evaluated websites exceeded the recommended 8th grade reading level for patient information. Quality was significantly higher with reading levels of college graduates (p<0.001). There was no difference regarding search terms or search engines.Conclusion:Available online information on ankle instability showed huge differences regarding the quality, readability and accuracy. Inappropriate advanced reading levels of high-quality websites could be incomprehensible to patients. Foot and ankle specialists should be aware of the low quality and readability of the majority of online resources and provide patients with adequate website-links.