Comprehensive Ability Research Articles

Oral Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Persons with Alexia and Aphasia

ABSTRACT Purpose This study examined word list and connected text oral reading fluency of persons with alexia and aphasia and whether fluency predicts reading comprehension abilities. Method Twelve individuals with chronic alexia and aphasia and twelve neurotypical, age- and education-matched individuals read aloud real and non word reading lists and paragraphs to elicit measures of fluency. Participants answered comprehension questions following the paragraphs. Descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, and multiple linear regression were used to analyze fluency and comprehension. Results Neurotypical adults read significantly more fluently than persons with alexia and aphasia for word lists and paragraphs. For both participant groups, comprehension was not found to be significantly influenced by oral non word list fluency, oral real word list fluency, or oral paragraph reading fluency. Conclusions Though results are interpreted with caution due to study limitations, the study provides an initial framework for characterizing fluency and comprehension of oral single word list and oral paragraph reading in persons with alexia and aphasia. Clinical implications include caution with use of list reading for assessing reading ability, as well as the need for better assessments for diagnosing alexia.

Making The Best Use Of Ads In Flipped Classroom For Improving Critical Reading Comprehension

Modern pedagogy emphasizes strongly on interactive learner-centred teaching and Flipped Method is fast becoming popular in language teaching programs. The language of ads, being rich in its ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings, offers ample resources for improving critical reading ability. This study attempts to blend these two important phenomena of modern life: Flipped Method and advertisements. Considering the richness of the ad’s language, the researcher conducted this exploratory study and showed that the analyses of the ad’s language on the three levels of Hallidayan paradigm can greatly improve learners’ critical comprehension ability. T[1]he research relies heavily on Dell Hymes’s idea of language as a social construct. The researcher’s objective was to explore how far the Critical Discourse Analyses of ad’s linguistic elements can enhance the critical reading ability of the learners if the attempt exploits the advantages of Flipped Method. The linguistic analyses of two ads on the theoretical framework of Halliday indicated that the linguistic resources are exploited dexterously to achieve the desired locution, ill-locution and perlocution and the successful readers can improve their critical skill through interactive analyses of ads.

The effect of perceived social support and health literacy on parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitation in preschool children: a cross-sectional study

Children are generally susceptible to COVID-19, and infection with COVID-19 may cause serious harm to children. COVID-19 vaccination is an effective way to prevent infection at present, and many factors affect children's COVID-19 vaccination. This study aimed to explore the effects of perceived social support and health literacy on hesitancy towards first and second vaccine dose. This cross-sectional study was conducted in the Minhang District of Shanghai, China, in October 2022. A total of 1150 parents of preschool children from 10 kindergartens participated. The survey encompassed four sections, capturing data on sociodemographic attributes, health literacy, perceived social support, and parental COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Health literacy was measured using a self-designed questionnaire consisting of four dimensions. Perceived social support was assessed using the MSPSS questionnaire. Hierarchical multiple logistic regression was used to examine the relationship between the independent variables and parental hesitancy towards the first and second doses of COVID-19 vaccine. Parental hesitancy rate for the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine was 69.6%, and for the second dose, it was 33.1%. The final integrated model showed that parental hesitancy towards the first and the second dose of COVID-19 vaccine was associated with parental educational level, allergy in children, information decision-making and information comprehension ability, perceived social support from family and friends. Health literacy and perceived social support are influence factors for parental hesitancy towards COVID-19 vaccine for preschool children. The findings will provide insights for future intervention studies on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and inform the development of vaccination policies.

The Practical Application of Satir’s Iceberg Theory in Contemporary Education: Study Based on the Teacher-Pupil Relationship and Students’ Learning Efficiency of High School

Education plays a crucial role in people’s lives throughout history. Nowadays, all countries over the world attach great importance to education unprecedentedly, but teaching practice is far from many emerging advanced educational theories. Thus, educational theory and practical application must constantly reconcile and innovate. After collecting and analyzing relevant literature, this article adopts a case study, interview method and participatory research based on Satir’s iceberg theory to investigate the educational application practice in the stages of high school, where the most prominent contradiction has long existed. The objective of the study is to better achieve the goal of education, which means not only to impart knowledge but, more importantly, to cultivate students’ comprehensive qualities and abilities by teaching innovation. It explores the practical application of Satir's iceberg theory in contemporary education and combines specific cases to enrich it in order to provide new ideas and methods for educators. The results of the study revealed that positive and good interaction can improve the teacher-pupil relationship and students’ learning efficiency in high school, and educators can use Satir’s iceberg theory to touch the psychological world beneath the iceberg of students.

Analysis of Reading Comprehension In Narrative Text At Eleventh Grade Students of SMA N1 Slogohimo

This study aims to analyze the students reading comprehension ability on narrative text based on the four levels of comprehension skills at eleventh Grade Students of SMA N1 Slogohimo. This research used qualitative descriptive research To describe the students reading comprehension in narrative text based on the four level comprehension skill for eleventh Grade Students of SMA N1 Slogohimo. To collect the data, the researcher used questionnaires and interview with the teacher and students. After collecting the data the researcher analyzed the data by using via data triangulation to analyzed qualitative data. To collect the data of questionnaire and interview, the researcher use questionnaire by Google Form. The data from questionnaire were analysed by using Likert scale. The result of this research showed that the students’ skill in understanding the implicit facts stated in an informational text, characters in a story, and any other information such as facts, vocabulary, times, and locations was quite high. It could be seen from the score distribution obtained by the students. The research showed that the students level of comprehension skills in comprehending narrative text is average. It can be concluded that the students had difficulties in creative comprehension skill, therefore the students should focus and pay attention on terms of identify reference without ignoring the other aspect of narrative text.Keyword: level of comprehension skill, reading, narrative text

Exploration and Practice of Interdisciplinary Teaching Models in Art Appreciation Courses

Art appreciation courses, as an essential component for cultivating students' aesthetic abilities and artistic perceptions, face the challenge of how to comprehensively incorporate knowledge from various disciplines and stimulate students' interdisciplinary thinking. This research, through field investigations and classroom practices, explores the possibilities and practical effects of introducing interdisciplinary teaching models into art appreciation courses. The study combines content from disciplines such as art, literature, history, and science, employing diverse teaching activities aimed at inspiring students' multidimensional thinking. It also assesses the impact of this interdisciplinary teaching model on students' learning outcomes and the development of their comprehensive abilities.

A Dual-Branch Spatio-Temporal-Spectral Transformer Feature Fusion Network for EEG-Based Visual Recognition

Recognizing visual objects from single-trial electroencephalograph (EEG) signals is a promising brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. However, due to the redundant features from noisy multi-channel EEG signals, it is still a challenging task to achieve high precision recognition. Recent deep learning approaches commonly extract spatio-temporal features of EEG signals, which neglect important spectral-temporal features and may degrade the EEG recognition performance. To address the deficiency, we propose a novel channel attention weighting and multi-level adaptive spectral aggregation based dual-branch spatio-temporal-spectral Transformer feature fusion network (CAW-MASA-STST) for EEG-based visual recognition. Specially, we first develop a channel attention weighting (CAW) to automatically learn the channel weights of EEG signals. Then, a graph convolution-based multi-level adaptive spectral aggregation (MASA) is employed to aggregate spectral-temporal features of different sub-bands. Finally, a spatio-temporal-spectral Transformer (STST) is designed to fuse spatio-temporal and spectral-temporal features, which enhances the comprehensive learning ability by modeling the temporal dependencies of the fused features. Competitive experimental results on two public datasets demonstrate that the proposed method is able to achieve superior recognition performance compared with the state-of-the-art methods, indicating a feasible solution for visual recognition-based BCI technology. The code of our proposed method will be available at <uri xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">https://github.com/ljbuaa/VisualDecoding</uri> .

Collaborative Optimization of Learning Team Formation Based on Multidimensional Characteristics and Constraints Modeling: A Team Leader-Centered Approach via E-CARGO

With the massive popularization of e-learning, collaborative learning via learning teams has become indispensable to enhancing the learning efficiency and learning quality of overall learners. The team leader usually plays a key role in collaborative learning. However, the existing research ignores the key characteristics of learners and constraints relevant to e-learners when identifying appropriate team leaders and compatible members. A novel collaborative optimization approach to learning team formation is proposed based on a refined learner model and the environments—classes, agents, roles, groups, and objects (E-CARGO) model. With the proposed approach, a learner is modeled by combining 5-D characteristics (i.e., cognitive ability, leadership, sociability, learning style, and personality) and three types of constraints (e.g., conflicts, genders, and the number of members), and an assessment mechanism is designed to measure the comprehensive abilities of learners for identifying an ideal team leader and selecting the team members for a team. By innovatively introducing the role-based collaboration theory and E-CARGO model, the leader-centered learning team formation problem is formalized as a collaborative optimization problem. The mathematical model and the constraint relations are established for this problem, which is solved based on the IBM CPLEX package. Finally, a case study and experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach is efficient and feasible, in favor of improving the satisfaction degree of learners.

Cognitive processes in EFL learners' reading comprehension: A comparative analysis of WhatsApp and traditional group-driven reading

WhatsApp (WA) has become increasingly popular in second language (L2) instructional practices, primarily for assessing L2 learners’ outcomes. Despite this popularity, there remains a significant gap in the literature regarding well-documented inquiries into the cognitive processes and reading comprehension of L2 learners. This study aimed to explain L2 learners’ reading comprehension abilities, and explore their cognitive processes between L2 learners who were taught using WA reading groups and those taught using the traditional group-driven reading approach. A mixed quantitative using an experimental design with 32 learners (12 males and 20 females) and a qualitative design was applied to address the two research purposes. The study results illustrated that learners' cognitive process in the WA reading group was effective, and their reading comprehension scores were higher than the traditional reading group. The effective cognitive strategies were visualized from learners’ WA chat histories. The WA reading group's cognitive process involved content discussion, self-reflection, and interpretation during online reading activities. They did not discuss from word to passage, but they tended to discuss the text's content and logical flow without finding the same difficult word for all group members. Conversely, the traditional reading group cognitive processes were less effective since the group member roles were not identified, such as all learners starting to find similar unfamiliar words and then discussing them again before interpreting the content of the texts. Study limitations and pedagogical implications from the study are adequately discussed.

Theoretical Approaches and Teaching Suggestions for High School English Writing

Writing is an important skill in the process of learning English. It reflects students’ comprehensive ability in English. However, writing has always been a difficult problem for students and teachers in high school English teaching. This paper focuses on combining the current mainstream writing teaching methods, aiming at the problems existing in the current writing teaching methods and proposing effective measures to improve the level of high school English writing teaching.

Compréhension écrite en français langue de scolarisation chez des enfants de langue d’origine arabe : contribution de facteurs cognitifs et linguistiques

Reading comprehension, i.e., the ability to extract and construct meaning through the reader’s interaction and involvement with written language, results from the mobilization of linguistic and cognitive factors necessary, among other things, for the construction of the microstructure (local meaning) and the macrostructure (global meaning) in reading ( Kintsch, 1998 ). This ability is a prerequisite for learners’ academic success ( Bialystok, 2001 ). However, heritage language children, i.e., those from a migrant background who speak or at least understand their language of origin, which is different from the majority language and from the language of instruction ( Valdés, 2001 ), often have a disadvantage in reading comprehension compared to native speakers of the language of instruction. This is generally attributed to linguistic or cognitive differences ( Lervåg and Aukrust, 2010 ). Our research investigated the relationship between reading comprehension, linguistic factors (oral comprehension and metasyntactic ability) and cognitive factors (working memory and phonological memory) in 62 heritage language children of Arab origins, attending French schools in Montreal. The results highlighted significant differences in the contribution of the targeted variables in the construction of the microstructure and the macrostructure in reading.

The Application of Schema Theory in Teaching Continuation Writing for Senior High School Students

With the continuous advancement of education and teaching reform, higher requirements have been put forward for English teaching. In China, the continuation task has been incorporated into the National Matriculation English Test for testing students’ comprehensive English ability since 2016. However, it also has become a burden that most teachers and students are anxious about. In senior high school English classrooms, teachers are required to integrate reading and writing effectively so as to achieve the purpose of cultivating students’ core competency. Hence, based on schema theory, this paper explores the teaching strategies of English continuation writing in senior high school in order to improve students’ ability of continuation writing and improve their comprehensive use of language.

IMPROVING STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY MASTERY IN READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH GAMES AT SMPN 259 JAKARTA

This research aims to improve mastery of English vocabulary in reading comprehension through the use of game methods at SMPN 259 Jakarta. The type of research used is classroom action research using the Kemmis and McTaggart model. The subjects in this research were 33 students in class VIII at SMPN 259. The research took place over three cycles and each cycle consisted of one meeting. Data collection techniques use observation techniques and need analysis tests. Data analysis techniques use quantitative descriptive and qualitative descriptive. The results of the research show that the use of the games method can improve vocabulary mastery and students' learning outcomes in reading comprehension. In the pretest vocabulary activity, the class average score was 71.75, while the reading value was 68.18. After being given treatment for 3 cycles, the average post-test vocabulary score was 91.13 and the post-test reading score was 86.95. With this, it can be concluded that through the game method, students' reading comprehension ability increased by 27%.

Automated Think-Aloud Protocol for Identifying Students with Reading Comprehension Impairment Using Sentence Embedding

The think-aloud protocol is a valuable tool for investigating readers’ cognitive processes during reading. However, its reliance on experienced human evaluators poses challenges in terms of efficiency and scalability. To address this limitation, this study proposes a novel application of natural language processing to automate the think-aloud protocol. Specifically, we use a sentence embedding technique to encode the stimulus text and corresponding readers’ responses into high-dimensional vectors, and the similarity between these embeddings serves as a feature. The properties of the feature are investigated for word-frequency-based and contextualized embedding models. Differences in the sentence embedding-based feature between poor comprehenders and normal readers are investigated. Using these features, seven machine learning models were trained to classify readers into normal and abnormal groups. The highest F1 score of 0.74 was achieved with the contextualized embedding and random forest classifier. This highlights the effectiveness of the embedding technique in extracting useful features for automating the think-aloud protocol for assessing reading comprehension abilities. The potential benefits of this automated approach include increased efficiency and scalability, ultimately facilitating the early diagnosis of reading comprehension impairment and individualized interventions.

Research on Innovative Ways to Integrate "Curriculum Ideological and Political Education" into Higher Vocational English Education

In the educational context of the new era, the development of English education in higher vocational colleges has received increasing attention. Integrating it with "curriculum ideological and political education" has become an inevitable trend in cultivating the all-round development of high-quality talents. The integration of higher vocational English into "ideological and political courses" is not only a need to meet the needs of the times but also an important way to improve students' ideological and political literacy and comprehensive English ability. Based on this, this article first analyzes the significance and existing problems of integrating higher vocational English into "curriculum ideological and political education", and then elaborates on specific implementation measures, aiming to provide new ideas and strategies for the development of higher vocational English education.

Predictive factors for reading comprehension ability in indigenous high school students instructed through various teaching methods

Predictive factors for reading comprehension ability in indigenous high school students instructed through various teaching methods

A Study on Teachers’ Questioning Strategies for the Purpose of Improving Students’ Thinking Quality in Senior High School English Reading Teaching

Thinking quality is a key element in developing students’ creativity, critical thinking skills and critical thinking. In high school English teaching, questioning is an important means to develop students’ reading comprehension ability. However, the traditional way of teachers’ questioning is usually aimed at expressing the answers, neglecting the cultivation of thinking quality. The purpose of this paper is to explore the current situation and reasons of questioning in high school, and to explore the specific questioning strategies that can effectively train students’ thinking quality in high school English classes.

The Effect of Directed Reading and Thinking Activity (DRTA) Learning Model assisted by Padlet on Learning Motivation and English Reading Comprehension Ability of Grade IX Students at SMP Negeri 5 Kubu

This study aims to analyze the differences in reading comprehension ability and learning motivation between students who follow the Directed Reading and Thinking Activity (DRTA) model assisted by Padlet and students who follow the direct learning model. This research is a quasi-experiment with Non-Equivalent Pretest-Posttest Control Group Design. The population in this study were ninth-grade students of SMP Negeri 5 Kubu in the 2022/2023 academic year consisting of three classes. The sample selection was carried out using Classroom Random Sampling technique and two classes were selected as samples, one class as the experimental group and the other class as the control group. Data collection was carried out using a reading comprehension ability test and a learning motivation questionnaire. The data obtained were analyzed by MANCOVA with initial reading comprehension ability and initial learning motivation as covariates. The results showed that: First, there is a significant difference in reading comprehension ability and learning motivation together between students who follow the DRTA model assisted by Padlet and students who follow the direct learning model. Second, there is a significant difference in reading comprehension ability between students who follow the DRTA model assisted by Padlet and students who follow the direct learning model. Third, there is a significant difference in learning motivation between students who follow the DRTA model assisted by Padlet and students who follow the direct learning model. The implication of this research shows that to improve learning motivation and reading comprehension ability we can use DRTA model learning assisted by Padlet.

Action Observation and Motor Imagery as a Treatment in Patients with Parkinson's Disease.

Action observation (AO) and motor imagery (MI) has emerged as promising tool for physiotherapy intervention in Parkinson's disease (PD). This narrative review summarizes why, how, and when applying AO and MI training in individual with PD. We report the neural underpinning of AO and MI and their effects on motor learning. We examine the characteristics and the current evidence regarding the effectiveness of physiotherapy interventions and we provide suggestions about their implementation with technologies. Neurophysiological data suggest a substantial correct activation of brain networks underlying AO and MI in people with PD, although the occurrence of compensatory mechanisms has been documented. Regarding the efficacy of training, in general evidence indicates that both these techniques improve mobility and functional activities in PD. However, these findings should be interpreted with caution due to variety of the study designs, training characteristics, and the modalities in which AO and MI were applied. Finally, results on long-term effects are still uncertain. Several elements should be considered to optimize the use of AO and MI in clinical setting, such as the selection of the task, the imagery or the video perspectives, the modalities of training. However, a comprehensive individual assessment, including motor and cognitive abilities, is essential to select which between AO and MI suite the best to each PD patients. Much unrealized potential exists for the use AO and MI training to provide personalized intervention aimed at fostering motor learning in both the clinic and home setting.

The Digital Ideological and Political Platform of Second Classroom Empowers Five Education and its Long term Mechanism

Since the implementation of the "Five Education" policy in universities, universities in various regions have actively established relevant systems for the second classroom, developed second classroom activities, and cultivated comprehensive development of students in morality, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics, and labor. As a comprehensive ability exercise independent of the "first classroom", the "second classroom" not only promotes the development of comprehensive quality, but also bears the important responsibility of moral education. Digital empowerment of precise ideological and political education in universities can achieve precise grasp of educational objects, precise supply of educational content, precise evaluation of educational effects, and precise control of educational processes, which helps to make up for many shortcomings of traditional ideological and political education. This article takes the "Ruichuan University" Second Classroom Transcript Digital Ideological and Political Platform of Sichuan University as an example to analyze the mechanism of the "Second Classroom" digital ideological and political platform, represented by it, to empower five educations, and to analyze the methods to promote its long-term operation based on its operational status.