Inferential Reading Research Articles

L1-L2 Reading Comprehension Transferability in Factual and Inferential Tasks

The current study aimed to investigate the transferability of reading comprehension abilities from L1 to L2 between languages with distant orthographies. Furthermore, this study examined the degree of transferability based on different levels of tasks and different L2 proficiency groups. The scores of sixty-five Korean EFL high school students’ Trial-CSAT of English and Korean language tests were used as criteria for their level of L2 proficiency and L1 reading comprehension, in addition to a self-designed English reading test with factual and inferential tasks as L2 reading comprehension. This study has statistically analyzed the acquainted data and identified the following research findings: (1) Korean EFL students’ L1 reading comprehension ability did transfer to their English reading comprehension ability; (2) Korean EFL students’ L1 inferential reading comprehension ability was more transferable to L2 reading comprehension than their L1 factual reading comprehension ability; (3) A meaningful transferability of Korean inferential reading comprehension ability in English reading comprehension test (especially in English inferential reading tasks) was observed on the lower proficiency EFL learners, whereas no obvious transferability of Korean reading comprehension ability was found in higher proficiency EFL learners.

Experiencing Differentiated Instructions as the Effort of Promoting Reading Comprehension Level

The current study explored the usefulness of differentiated instruction in the promotion of English learners reading comprehension in higher educational system. One TOEFL preparation class of a language center at University of Muhammadiyah Jember was chosen as the research participants. The students were taught through the strategies of differentiated instruction, viz. flexible grouping, tiered instruction, and tiered assignments, in the areas of content, process, and product. The outcomes of descriptive statistics from comparing pre-test and post-test results indicated that the students were having a positive experience with differentiated instruction in relation to their reading comprehension level. Further, the results also revealed that students also performed better in literal and inferential reading comprehension after experiencing differentiated instruction in the classroom.Keywords: differentiated instruction, reading comprehension.

Strategy training and mind-mapping facilitates children’s hypertext comprehension

Children in primary school read hypertext for comprehension. However, children typically are taught reading strategies for linear text, while these strategies are not automatically transferrable one-to-one to hypertext. In the present study, a training group of 55 sixth-graders were taught four hypertext reading strategies (planning, monitoring, evaluation and elaboration) via mind mapping and the usage of a prompting paper-card. A control group of 29 children received no strategy training. We examined to what extent strategy training influenced children’s strategy use and learning outcomes: (1) number of pages read and reading time per text, (2) literal / inferential reading comprehension scores and (3) knowledge representations (relatedness judgment task and mind maps). At posttest, the training group showed higher scores on a self-reported strategy usage questionnaire, and higher comprehension scores as compared to the control group. Hypertext strategy training in combination with mind-mapping supports children’s hypertext comprehension.

A Linguistic Integrative Model for Enhancing College Students’ English Reading Competence

<p>This quantitative correlational research focused on investigating the relationship between linguistic technology-based integrative teaching approaches and college students’ reading competence. The study occurred in five phases. The first phase involved observing four reading classes to collect data on teachers’ teaching methodologies. The second phase was based on identifying the problems that affect students’ English reading performance. The researcher selected a random sample of 100 female freshmen students from the College of Languages and Translation at Al-Imam Mohamed Ibn Saud Islamic University (IMAMU Univ.), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The participants responded to a Likert questionnaire regarding their reading problems and strategies. In the third phase, the participants took a reading comprehension exam to determine their exact reading levels. The preliminary data showed the presence of a high degree at the scale of difficulties that students faced in reading comprehension. Students had problems in loud and silent reading, reading speed, and critical and inferential reading, which reflected students’ weak reading skills. The study also pointed to the ineffective traditional teaching strategies as the main cause of this problem. Traditional teaching strategies which depend on general lectures and explaining the mechanical structure of the reading passages did not help students use their cognitive abilities to improve their reading comprehension. The fourth phase of the present study required selecting an experimental group of 35students from the same sample to be taught using the linguistic integrative model for five weeks. At the end of the fifth week, a reading comprehension exam was given to the group to determine the impact of the new teaching methodology on students’ reading competence. The comprehension test was adopted from ACCUPLACER, an integrated computer-assessment designed to evaluate students’ reading skills. The test is designed by Board College in USA, which is a specialized agency in college students’ exams, and it offers diagnostics and intervention support to help students prepare for academic course work. The reading exam covers six skills, including: understanding the text’s purpose and tone; identifying the central ideas; recognizing supporting details; understanding sentences and vocabulary relationships; distinguishing illustration, comparison and contrast, and cause and effect relationships; and understanding inferential meanings. The data analysis showed a significant difference in favor of students who used the linguistic integrative model, indicating the positive impact of technology-based teaching approaches on students’ proficiency in reading. Based on the results of this study, the researcher made the following recommendations: integrate educational technology into teaching the reading courses at the college; provide professional programs for teachers to train them to use the linguistic integrative approaches; and provide linguistic laboratories that are equipped with modern technologies, including reading software, to intensify students’ reading practices. The significance of this study is that it is a contribution in the field of teaching English as a foreign language in general, and reading in particular since it provides a new model that integrates the technology of hypertexts, e-learning, and data mining analysis into a number of linguistic theories including schema theory, the information processing theory, and Krashen’s (1981; 1995) language theory. Providing teachers with training pertinent to the integration of technology into teaching is an important step towards implementing cognitive and metacognitive teaching methods, which will reinforce the efforts of the College of Languages and Translation towards achieving international accreditation.</p>

Strategies Training in the Teaching of Reading Comprehension for EFL Learners in Indonesia

<p>This study investigated the effect of reading strategies training on the students’ literal and inferential reading comprehension. The training involved three concrete strategies: predicting, text mapping, and summarizing. To achieve the purpose of this study, a quasi experimental design was selected with the experimental group being given reading strategies training and the control group being treated in a ‘business as usual’ mode. The subjects were students of two classes in a vocational senior high school in East Java, Indonesia (N=71). The students’ scores in the mid-semester teacher made test of English were used as the covariate to control possible initial differences between the two groups. Moreover, a test of reading comprehension was developed to measure the effect of the treatment. The analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) yielded that the experimental group outperformed the control group in both literal and inferential reading comprehension levels. Implications of this finding for classroom teaching are then discussed.</p>

언어적, 인지적, 정의적, 사회적 요인이 대학생들의 사실적 및 추론적 영어 읽기에 미치는 영향

언어적, 인지적, 정의적, 사회적 요인이 대학생들의 사실적 및 추론적 영어 읽기에 미치는 영향

AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT IN LITERAL AND INFERENTIAL READING COMPREHENSION FOR UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

The teaching of English as a foreign language in Indonesia is widely developed time to time. In the teaching of English, reading comprehension has an important role, because through reading the text the students will acquire the knowledge of science and technology. Furthermore, the teachers have also have to measure the students’ performance in comprehending the reading text. The use of authentic assessment in the literal and inferential reading comprehension can help the students and also the teachers in comprehending what they learn in the text. The authentic assessment will reduce the tension of the students while they do reading test. Teachers also can implement the teaching learning process and the assessment efficiently. This paper aim to give some contribution to the readers how to select a good reading assessment that should be given for the university students. Hopefully, this paper can give a contribution to the teachers in Indonesia to be wise in selecting a good reading text and reading assessment in order to get the purpose of reading itself.

PENGEMBANGAN TES READING FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES UNTUK PROGRAM EAP DI IAIN SURAKARTA

The objective of this study is to devise standardized test for Reading for Academic Purposes (WAP). The test was focused on WAP as the main competency of reading for EAP and elaborated sub-competencies into literal, inferential, and critical reading. The items of the test were developed from 9 passages before trials to explore critical reading as main academic literacy of EAP program. A quantitative approach was used in this study emphasizing statistical analysis for manual and SPSS program. Subjects of this study for three time trials were 30 students of EAP class at IAIN Surakarta. Each trial involved 10 students. The study revealed that of 40 items of reading test, 24 items derived from 6 passages performed accepted validation showing five criteria: difficulty indexes, degrees of difficulty, distractor effectiveness, validity, and reliability.

Inference Instruction for Struggling Readers: a Synthesis of Intervention Research

Skill in generating inferences predicts reading comprehension for students in the elementary and intermediate grades even after taking into account word reading, vocabulary knowledge, and cognitive ability (Cain et al., Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 671–81, 2004; Kendeou et al., Journal of Research in Reading, 31, 259–72, 2008; Oakhill and Cain, Scientific Studies of Reading, 16(2), 91–121, 2012; Oakhill et al., Language and Cognitive Processes, 18, 443–468, 2003). While research shows that struggling readers are less likely than proficient readers to make inferences when reading text (Cain et al., Memory and Cognition, 29, 850–859, 2001; Oakhill, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 54, 31–39, 1984), struggling readers may also benefit more from inference instruction than do proficient readers (Hansen and Pearson, Journal of Educational Psychology, 75(6), 821–829, 1983; McGee and Johnson, Educational Psychology, 23(1), 49–59, 2003; Raphael and Pearson, American Educational Research Journal, 22(2), 217–235, 1985; Yuill and Oakhill, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2, 33–45, 1988). This synthesis assessed (a) the effectiveness of inference instruction in improving reading outcomes for struggling readers and (b) the features of instructional interventions (e.g., duration, type of instruction) that were associated with improved outcomes. One single-case design and eight experimental group design studies were synthesized. Mean effect sizes for group design studies ranged from g = 0.72* to g = 1.85* for researcher-developed measures of inferential reading comprehension and from g = −.03 to g = 1.96* for standardized measures of reading comprehension. The percentage of non-overlapping data for the study that employed a single-case design was 100 % for all measures.

Unique Contribution of Korean Literal, Inferential, and Evaluative Comprehension Skills to English Reading Comprehension

The present study was designed to examine the relationship between Korean literal, inferential, and evaluative comprehension skills and English reading comprehension, compared to English linguistic knowledge, in Korean EFL context. Furthermore, unique predicting power of each Korean comprehension skill in explaining English reading comprehension was measured. For this study, fifty four Korean middle school students were recruited as participants, and their Korean comprehension skills (literal, inferential, and evaluative skills), English linguistic knowledge (vocabulary and grammar), and English reading comprehension performance were assessed and analyzed. The findings of this study demonstrated that all variables were significantly correlated to English reading comprehension, but English linguistic knowledge was more predictable in accounting for English reading comprehension than Korean comprehension skills. In addition, among Korean comprehension skills, only Korean literal comprehension skill explained uniquely and significantly English reading comprehension. Some speculations regarding the findings were discussed in the latter part of the article.

Lo sviluppo delle abilità inferenziali di lettura nella scuola dell’infanzia con l’utilizzo della LIM: le premesse di una ricerca

The Development of Inferential Reading Skills in Kindergarten by Means of IWB: A Preliminary Research The article describes the communicative and interactive processes in groups of kindergarten children engaged in text reading/understanding tasks through the functional use of IWB. The aim is to use specific methodologies and teaching aids to assess whether and how it is possible to stimulate and facilitate inferential skills development with the learner’s active involvement. In this understanding process, the basic function is carried out by an adult who controls the interaction between peers during the reading step and the way the children are engaged to participate and act. The research project consists of meetings during which children are invited to read animated figures or static picture sequences. The experimental design envisages a control group in which a teacher introduces materials without the aid of IWB, and an experimental group in which children work on the same materials presented through IWB. Moreover, the research aims to show how the use and sharing of soundgraphic texts can enhance the children’s analytical competence and heuristic processes.

Writing-Reading Relationships: Effectiveness of Writing Activities as Pre-Reading Tasks to Enhance L2 Inferential Reading Comprehension

The study examines the interaction between reading and writing processes in general and more specifically the impact of pre-reading tasks incorporating writing tasks (referred to as “prw tasks”) in helping the development of inferential reading comprehension. A sample of 70 first year ESL students of the University of Kelaniya were initially selected with one group (experimental group) engaging in “prw tasks” while the other group (control group) performing the tasks without a pre-reading component. The intervention was for 6 sessions (one hour in each session). At the end of each session, the performance of the two groups was measured and the test scores were analyzed using the data analysis package SPSS to determine the effectiveness of the intervention. The results indicated that the experimental group had significantly performed better than the control group which indicated the effectiveness of the prw tasks in improving reading comprehension.

Spanish inferential and mirative futures and conditionals: An evidential gradable modal proposal

Spanish future and conditional morphemes may display inferential readings: Elena ganaría la carrera ayer, as in ‘Helen must have won the race yesterday’, a present deduction about a past event. They may also display readings known as concessive, dubbed ‘mirative’ here: Elena ganaría la carrera ayer, pero no está contenta ‘Helen might have won the race yesterday, but she is not satisfied’. The proposal is that such futures and conditional affixes encode an evidential modal involving a body of indirect information, which the speaker may vouch for or not. This modal contributes to propositional content and can be syntactically and semantically embedded, so is not an illocutionary marker. It is a degree expression that does not reduce to necessity or possibility, so is reminiscent of gradable adjectives such as tall or probable. It displays the flexible anchoring characteristics of predicates of personal taste such as tasty, so may partially differ from canonical epistemic modals. Ordering sources and anchoring behavior combine in such a modal to trigger various levels of confidence in the information, resulting in variability in force, which may range from certainty/necessity to doubt/possibility in both inferentials and miratives.

Comparación de la comprensión lectora en alumnos de cuarto año de secundaria de centros educativos estatales y no estatales de Lima Metropolitana

Objetivos: a. Estudiar el desarrollo de la comprensión lectora en alumnos de cuarto año de secundaria. b. Analizar el nivel de desarrollo de la comprensión de los alumnos de centros educativos estatales y no estatales en cuarto de secundaria. c. Comparar el nivel de desarrollo de la comprensión lectora por género en cuarto año de secundaria. d. Establecer las propiedades psicométricas del instrumento utilizado. e. Construir los baremos para los alumnos del cuarto año de secundaria, considerando las variables género y tipo de gestión del centro educativo. f. Estudiar el modelo del constructo de la comprensión lectora utilizando el análisis factorial confirmatorio. Diseño: Estudio descriptivo comparativo, llevado a cabo en alumnos de cuarto año de secundaria considerando centros educativos estatales y no estatales, y considerando el género. Material y Métodos: Muestreo por conglomerados en dos etapas, con probabilidades proporcionales al tamaño; la muestra estuvo constituida por 613 participantes de las siete UGEL de Lima Metropolitana. Se elaboró una Prueba de Comprensión Lectora para el cuarto de secundaria. Se llevó a cabo el estudio psicométrico del instrumento para evaluar la validez y la confiabilidad. Asimismo, se llevó a cabo el estudio descriptivo e inferencial de las variables estudiadas. Resultado: el 64,77% de los alumnos de cuarto año de secundaria pertenecían a colegios estatales mientras que el 35,23% provenían de colegios privados. El 46,33% de los estudiantes de cuarto de secundaria fueron varones mientras que el 53,67% fueron mujeres. Conclusiones: se ha encontrado que el instrumento creado es válido y confiable. Se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el nivel de comprensión lectora entre los alumnos de colegios estatales y no estatales. Se han elaborado baremos diferenciados para cada tipo de colegio.

The Effect of Classroom Performance Assessment on EFL Students' Basic and Inferential Reading

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of classroom performance assessment on the EFL students' basic and inferential reading skills. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was employed in the study. The subjects of the study consisted of 64 first year secondary school students in Menouf Secondary School for Boys at Menoufya Directorate of Education (Egypt) during the academic year 2006/2007. These subjects were divided into an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested to measure their basic and inferential reading skills before conducting the experiment. During treatment, students in the experimental group used the KWL chart and the self-assessment checklist for assessing their own reading strategies and comprehension in each reading lesson. The KWL chart and the self-assessment checklist were then compiled in a portfolio for each student. This portfolio was read by the teacher every week to provide both feedback and feedforward for improving each student's reading strategies and comprehension. Students in the control group answered a traditional discrete item test at the very end of each lesson and unit. This traditional test focused mainly on the phonological, lexical and grammatical elements of the reading skill, and students were judged on the basis of how well they achieved as compared to each other. The experiment lasted for six months. After treatment, the same pretests were re-administered to both groups. The collected data were analyzed using the t-test. The pretest data analysis revealed that there were no significant differences in the basic and inferential reading skills between the experimental group and the control group (t=0.48, p greater than 0.05; t=-0.46, p greater than 0.05, respectively). However, the post-test data analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups of the study in the basic reading skills in favor of the control group and in the inferential reading skills in favor of the experimental group (t=-2.61, p=0.01; t=7.75, p=0.000, respectively). These findings suggest that classroom performance assessment is less effective in improving secondary school EFL students' basic reading skills, but more effective in developing their inferential reading skills than traditional assessment. In light of these findings, the researcher recommends that a multi-dimensional comprehensive approach to classroom assessment is more likely to improve both the basic and inferential reading skills of intermediate-level EFL students. The KWL chart and the self assessment checklist are appended.

The Effects of the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity on EFL Students' Referential and Inferential Comprehension

A study investigated the effects of the Directed Reading Thinking Activity on Egyptian first-year secondary stage EFL students' referential and inferential reading comprehension. The study utilized a pretest-posttest control group experimental design. The subjects consisted of 72 first-year secondary students in Menouf Secondary School for Boys at Menoufya Directorate of Education (Egypt) during the academic year 2005/2006. These subjects were randomly assigned to an experimental group and a control group. Both groups were pretested to measure their referential and inferential reading comprehension before conducting the experiment. During the experiment, the experimental group students were exposed to the DRTA, whereas the control group students were exposed to the conventional method of teaching reading comprehension. The experiment lasted for about five months. After treatment, the two groups were post-tested to investigate any significant differences in their referential and inferential reading comprehension. The obtained data were analyzed using the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) and the T-test. The findings revealed that there were no significant differences in referential or inferential reading comprehension between the two groups on the pre-test. However, the findings showed that there were statistically significant differences in both referential and inferential reading comprehension on the post-test in favor of the experimental group. These findings show that the development of referential and inferential comprehension skills can only result from using a strategy which forces students to apply these skills while reading. Therefore, the goal of developing reading comprehension should go hand-in-hand with the goal of developing thinking skills. (Contains 4 tables. The Referential/Inferential Reading Comprehension Test is appended.)

A Comparative Study between the Performance of Iranian High and Low Critical Thinkers on Different Types of Reading Comprehension Questions

The present study aimed to find out whether there is any significant difference between the performances of high and low critical thinkers on factual, referential, and inferential reading comprehension questions. For this purpose, 42 learners were selected as the homogenized group. Afterwards, the Farsi version of Watson- Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (1980) (Form A) was administered to the participants and they were then assigned to two groups of high and low critical thinkers. Both groups were provided with a reading comprehension test including factual, referential, and inferential questions. The obtained data was analyzed via 16th version of the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The Findings revealed that (a) there is a significant difference between high and low critical thinkers on their performance on factual reading comprehension questions, (b) there is a significant difference between high and low critical thinkers on their performance on referential reading comprehension questions, and (c) there is a significant difference between high and low critical thinkers on their performance on inferential reading comprehension questions. The study has some implications for language teachers, text book writers, and test designers.

An example of ‘hyperbolic decoding’. Reframing the narrative of a greek symposium scene in the Erica Jong’s novel Sappho’s Leap

The study is about the only greek symposium scene in the Erica Jong’s novel Sappho’s Leap. We intend to explore the relationship between linguistic rendering of greek fragments by the author and the original texts. We compare, through a linguistic-philological method, the ancient greek text and the novel through a semantic analysis intratextual and intertextual. The study identifies three main directions of decoding activated by Jong: linguistic reductions and / or additions in greek fragments; historical and biographical inventions about the characters, that ‘mistify’ the cultural period; adaptation of the story to the information of the fragments through an inferential reading. The article ‘discovers’ a new form of decoding from a literary text to a literary text, that I have called 'hyperbolic', a neologism that highlights the complexity of an infrequent and synchronous switching from ancient to modern, from one literary genre to another. We highlight contaminations and pastiche of a process not just “politically correct”, although demonstrating the relevance of the themes of ancient greek literature.

Are Inferential Reading Items More Susceptible to Cultural Bias Than Literal Reading Items?

The purpose of this article is to illustrate a seven-step process for determining whether inferential reading items were more susceptible to cultural bias than literal reading items. The seven-step process was demonstrated using multiple-choice data from the reading portion of a reading/language arts test for fifth and seventh grade Hispanic, Black, and White examinees. The process began at the broadest level of analyzing bundles of items for differential bundle functioning and finished at the narrowest level of analyzing individual items for differential distractor functioning. Some evidence was found to indicate that inferential items are more susceptible to cultural bias than literal items. Implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions for item writers and test developers are given.

Moving From Explicit to Implicit: A Case Study of Improving Inferential Comprehension

The article describes a successful intervention program in developing inferential comprehension in a sixth grader. Steve (pseudonym) was proficient in word reading, was able to detect explicit information while reading, but struggled with linking textual information to yield integral ideas. After 10 weeks of working with Steve on word analogies, reading/composing riddles, “solving” short mystery stories, and modeling think-alouds, there was a substantial progress of Steve's logical reasoning, meta-cognitive thinking, and inferential reading skills. Practical information for teachers regarding selection of assessment instruments, assessment interpretation, as well as instructional recommendations for students demonstrating difficulty with inferential comprehension is also provided.