Poor Reading Comprehension Research Articles

Emergent Bilinguals With Specific Reading Comprehension Deficits: A Comparative and Longitudinal Analysis

This study centered on emergent bilingual (EB) students with specific reading comprehension deficits (S-RCD), that is, with poor reading comprehension despite solid word identification skills. The participants were 209 students in Grades 2 to 4, including both EBs and English monolinguals (EMs) with and without S-RCD. Mean comparisons indicated that EBs and EMs with S-RCD showed weaknesses relative to typically developing (TD) readers in oral language, word identification, inference making, and reading engagement, but not in executive functioning. Longitudinal analyses indicated that across two academic years S-RCD persisted for 41% of EBs and EMs alike. Altogether, the study extends research on EBs with S-RCD by identifying variables beyond oral language that may account for their reading comprehension difficulties and providing insight into the extent to which their reading comprehension and word identification performance levels evolve during elementary school. Furthermore, the findings point to the importance of early identification and intervention for weaknesses in reading comprehension and its component elements in both EBs and EMS.

Vision status and reading test results in Norwegian adolescents

Uncorrected vision anomalies may cause headaches and may affect reading and academic performance. The purpose of this study was to quantify the frequency of vision anomalies, frequency of eye examinations, and use of corrective eye wear in adolescents in Norway, and to explore whether such vision anomalies affect reading test results or frequency of headaches. A cross-sectional study was performed in 436 adolescents (42.0% males) aged 16–19 years living in South-East Norway. Cycloplegic autorefraction, habitual stereoacuity, and habitual monocular amplitudes of accommodation were measured, and all participants reported the frequency of eye examinations, the use of spectacles and/or contact lens wear, and the frequency of headaches. Reading comprehension and decoding skills were evaluated for a subgroup of the participants (189 participants, 34.4% males) by their performance in national reading tests. Vision anomalies were defined as having refractive errors, poor habitual stereoacuity, or poor habitual amplitude of accommodation in at least one eye. Overall, 44.0% were classified as having a refractive error, and a total of 61.9% were measured to have vision anomalies. More frequent headaches were associated with poor habitual amplitude of accommodation when adjusted for sex (p = 0.04). The frequency of poor reading comprehension was higher in the group of adolescents with vision anomalies (n = 109, 31.2%) compared with those with no vision anomalies (n = 80, 18.8%; p = 0.05). Of those with vision anomalies, 33.5% had never had an eye examination, and 63.9% reported not wearing a correction. In Norway, there is no mandatory vision screening after 4 years of age. The results here show that a nation-wide programme of regular eye examinations and proper treatment of vision anomalies for all children and adolescents in Norway should be considered. Identifying and treating children with common eye problems in primary and secondary school will improve educational attainment and increase each child’s chances of succeeding in further education.

POOR READING COMPREHENSION ISSUE IN EFL CLASSROOM AMONG INDONESIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS: Scrutinizing the causes, impacts and possible solutions

Reading comprehension is considered a challenging part of learning English for many Indonesian secondary school students. This study aims to explore the causes, impacts, and possible solutions for poor reading comprehension issues. The study scrutinizes the issue by reviewing previous studies, in which a number of articles and books were critically analyzed. The results indicate that poor reading comprehension occurs due to three remarkable factors, which are students’ lack of motivation, low prior knowledge, and poor English vocabulary. Moreover, this issue also leads to three main adverse impacts, such as reducing students’ learning achievement, hindering students’ problem-solving skills, and inhibiting students’ future studies and careers. Therefore, in responding to the problem above, this study proposes two learning approaches, which are the Cooperative Integrated and Reading Composition (CIRC) Technique and Metacognitive Strategy.

Difficulties of Summarizing and Paraphrasing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL): Saudi Graduate Students’ Perspectives

This study examined the major challenges that graduate students ordinarily encounter when it comes to summarizing and paraphrasing source texts. Drawing upon a qualitative methodology, nine Saudi students who were pursuing their graduate degrees in various disciplines have been interviewed. The study findings have shown that various sources of impediments could aggravate students' difficulties in the skills under investigation. These were: Students' inadequate level of English proficiency as the first area to cause difficulties in summarizing and paraphrasing source texts, problems pertaining to students' writing styles as the second, and third, poor reading comprehension skills. However, multiple listening to the interviews and careful analysis of the transcripts produced for these revealed that the challenges faced by students in summarizing and paraphrasing could be enhanced by a further important factor that feed into students struggles with these skills, that is, fear of committing plagiarism. Constantly being in doubt whether the paraphrases that they produce are legitimized or not makes the process of paraphrasing even harder for them. Possible strategies to cope with these difficulties are also provided in this study. The findings presented in this study add to our understanding of the challenges that writing in an academic genre poses for graduate students. Furthermore, these findings send important practical implications for decision-makers in higher studies institutions.

Oculomotor Activity During Reading in Elementary School-Aged Students with Different Cognitive Skills

Eye movements provide relevant information about the functional state of some cognitive functions. The connection between eye movements and cognitive processes is based on the anatomical and functional overlap of structures controlling them in different parts of the brain. Various human activities, including reading, are associated with eye movements. Reading skills include two components: reading technique (a motor component) and reading comprehension (a cognitive component). Monitoring and interpretation of oculomotor response is a useful tool for studying the reading process. The present study characterizes saccadic and fixation eye-movement components in 7-8 year-old elementary school students that showed poor reading comprehension. The students were divided into three groups based on answer quality: giving no answer, giving a wrong answer, and coping with the task only with a prompt. The groups were found to differ in the amplitude, velocity, and deceleration of pro- and regressive saccades and the average duration of fixations per word. Thus, eye-movement parameters can be used to characterize the groups of schoolchildren that experience difficulty in reading comprehension or in formulating an answer to a semantic question. The present study contributes insight into various cognitive reading strategies and can be useful for creating personal learning paths for elementary school students to master reading skills, which are important for social success

읽기이해부진 학생을 위한 읽기중재 연구 동향

연구목적: 읽기는 새로운 지식을 습득하기 위한 필수적인 수단이며, 특히 학령기 아동들에게는 학업성취를 위한 핵심 기술이기에 읽기이해부진 아동들을 위한 중재 연구는 지속적으로 이루어질 필요가 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 읽기이해부진 아동들을 대상으로 실시한 중재 연구들을 고찰해 봄으로써 국내 연구 동향을 살펴보고, 앞으로의 연구 방향을 모색해 보고자 하였다. 연구방법: 국내에서 읽기이해 중재를 실시한 연구들을 선정하여 연구대상 특성, 중재한 글의 유형, 글 유형에 따른 중재 전략을 중심으로 분석하였다. 연구 결과: 대부분의 연구에서 초등학생을 대상으로 읽기이해 중재 연구를 실시하였다. 읽기이해부진을 진단하기 위해 대다수의 연구에서 지능, 읽기이해, 학업성취도 검사를 실시하였는데 아동들의 음독 능력을 평가하지 않은 연구가 상당 수 확인되었다. 읽기이해를 중재하기 위해 사용된 글의 유형은 설명글, 이야기글, 복합유형글로 고르게 분포하였는데 설명글에서는 그래픽조직자, 요약하기, 상보적 글읽기 전략, 이야기글에서는 그래픽조직자와 이야기문법교수 전략이 높은 빈도로 사용되었다. 결론: 연구 결과로 볼 때 추후의 연구에서는 보다 다양한 연령대의 아동들을 대상으로 읽기이해 중재가 이루어져야 할 것이며, 글의 유형에 따라 중재 전략이 달라질 수 있기에 연구 목적에 맞는 글의 종류를 선택할 필요가 있을 것이다. 또한 음독 능력의 수준에 따라 읽기 중재 목표가 달라질 수 있기 때문에 읽기이해부진 아동을 진단할 때 음독 수준을 반드시 확인할 필요가 있을 것이다.

Estimates of individual differences in vocabulary size in English: how many words are needed to ‘close the vocabulary gap’?

BackgroundTeaching vocabulary may be an effective way to address poor reading comprehension. However, it is unclear how many words or word families a school aged child with poor vocabulary would need to learn to meaningfully impact comprehension. This study provides estimates of vocabulary size for children with differing vocabulary achievement in middle elementary grades.MethodsEnglish speaking children (n = 41) completed an adapted version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST‐a) , which estimates number of word families known. VST‐a scores were significantly related to raw scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test‐4 (PPVT‐4) , F(1,40)=71.6, p < 0.0001, R2 of 0.642. The regression equation defining the relationship between VST‐a and PPVT‐4 raw scores and normative data from the PPVT‐4 were used to estimate vocabulary size for children (fourth–eighth grades) with typical, high and low scores on the PPVT‐4. These were considered in terms of word families required to support comprehension of a range of texts (Nation, 2006).ResultsTypical vocabulary size for fourth–eighth grades was estimated to be approximately 7,300–9,100 word families, increasing at approximately 460 word families annually. Within grades, there is a gap of approximately 1,300 word families between individuals with PPVT‐4 scores at the mean and 1 SD below the mean.ConclusionsDirect teaching of vocabulary may make a meaningful contribution to typical rates of vocabulary growth. Long‐term vocabulary instruction would be required for those with low vocabulary knowledge, if ‘typical’ vocabulary breadth is the target. Vocabulary gains required to reach a threshold of 8,000 word families may be smaller. Results could help to identify students most likely to have improved reading comprehension as a result of vocabulary instruction. Theoretically, these estimates help specify the nature of vocabulary as a comprehension ‘pressure point’.

Predictive Model for Dyslexia from Fixations and Saccadic Eye Movement Events

BackgroundDyslexia is a disorder characterized by difficulty in reading such as poor speech and sound recognition. They have less capability to relate letters and form words and exhibit poor reading comprehension. Eye-tracking methodologies play a major role in analyzing human cognitive processing. Dyslexia is not a visual impairment disorder but it's a difficulty in phonological processing and word decoding. These difficulties are reflected in their eye movement patterns during reading. ObjectiveThe disruptive eye movement helps us to use eye-tracking methodologies for identifying dyslexics. MethodsIn this paper, a small set of eye movement features have been proposed that contribute more to distinguish between dyslexics and non-dyslexics by machine learning models. Features related to eye movement events such as fixations and saccades are detected using statistical measures, dispersion threshold identification (I-DT) and velocity threshold identification (I-VT) algorithms. These features were further analyzed using various machine learning algorithms such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based SVM Hybrid Kernel (Hybrid SVM – PSO), Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest classifier (RF), Logistic Regression (LR) and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) for classification of dyslexics and non-dyslexics. ResultsThe accuracy achieved using the Hybrid SVM –PSO model is 95.6 %. The best set of features that gave high accuracy are average no of fixations, average fixation gaze duration, average saccadic movement duration, total number of saccadic movements, and average number of fixations. ConclusionIt is observed that eye movement features detected using velocity-based algorithms performed better than those detected by dispersion-based algorithms and statistical measures.

읽기이해부진 아동의 중심내용 추론 특성

읽기이해부진 아동의 중심내용 추론 특성

읽기이해부진아동의 복합어에서 형태소 처리 특성

The purpose of this study is to examine the intrinsic morphological processes of children with poor reading comprehension. The subjects of this study were 16 children with poor reading comprehension in the 4th to 6th grades and 16 typically developing children. All children performed the lexical decision task of judging the words based on the compound target words presented after the priming words. At this time, there were three priming conditions: morpheme duplication with a target word, notation duplication with a target word, and unrelated with a target word. The accuracy and judgment response time were measured in real-time. As a result, in lexical judgment accuracy, children with poor reading comprehension showed no difference compared to typically developing children. On the other hand, in the lexical judgment response time, children with poor reading comprehension showed significantly lower performance under all priming conditions than their typically developing peers. The results show that children with poor reading comprehension have inefficient morphological recognition ability compared to their typically developing peers, but their developmental patterns are similar.

The Overlap of Poor Reading Comprehension in English and French

This study examined overlap and correlates of poor reading comprehension in English and French for children in early French immersion. Poor comprehenders were identified in grade 3 in English and French using a regression method to predict reading comprehension scores from age, non-verbal reasoning, word reading accuracy, and word reading fluency. Three groups of poor comprehenders were identified: 10 poor comprehenders in English and French, 11 poor comprehenders in English, and 10 poor comprehenders in French, and compared to 10 controls with good reading comprehension in both English and French. There was a moderate degree of overlap in comprehension difficulties in English and French among poor comprehenders with equivalent amounts of exposure to French, with a prevalence rate of 41.7% in our sample. Children who were poor comprehenders in both English and French consistently scored the lowest on English vocabulary in grade 1 and grade 3 and in French vocabulary in grade 3 suggesting that poor comprehenders’ vocabulary weaknesses in English as a primary language may contribute to comprehension difficulties in English and French.

The reading comprehension of Grade 5 Setswana-speaking learners in rural schools in South Africa: Does home language matter?

The main aim of the study was to determine the reading comprehension performance of Grade 5 Setswana-speaking children in a rural province in South Africa, where the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) is English. Thirty-four Grade 5 learners from one province and from the same socio-economic background were selected through purposive sampling. The research design adopted was non-experimental, descriptive and quantitative in nature. Participants were required to perform reading comprehension tasks in English and Setswana. Four stories were utilised from the reading comprehension subtest of the GORT-4™ Test Form A. Two of the stories from the test were administered on completion of the English reading comprehension task. The other two stories were translated and adapted into Setswana. The mean raw scores of results obtained were calculated and comparisons at different levels were performed using t-tests. Results revealed poor overall reading comprehension scores in both languages; with scores below 55%. Furthermore, current results indicated better performance in Setswana reading comprehension, with higher scores obtained in the difficult Setswana story than in English. These findings were statistically significant (p<.05). Implications of the influence of home / first language on reading comprehension, if the LoLT is not the learner’s first language, are raised.

Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder: comorbid disorders with distinct effects on reading comprehension.

BackgroundReading comprehension draws on both decoding and linguistic comprehension, and poor reading comprehension can be the consequence of a deficit in either of these skills.MethodsUsing outcome data from the longitudinal Wellcome Language and Reading Project, we identified three groups of children at age 8 years: children with dyslexia (N = 21) who had deficits in decoding but not oral language, children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD; N = 38) whose decoding skills were in the normal range, and children who met criteria for both dyslexia and DLD (N = 29).ResultsAll three groups had reading comprehension difficulties at the ages of 8 and 9 years relative to TD controls though those of the children with dyslexia were mild (relative to TD controls, d = 0.51 at age 8, d = 0.60 at age 8); while the most severe problems were found in the comorbid dyslexia + DLD group (d = 1.79 at age 8, d = 2.06 at age 9) those with DLD also had significant difficulties (d = 1.56 at age 8, d = 1.56 at age 9).ConclusionsThese findings confirm that children with dyslexia or DLD are at‐risk for reading comprehension difficulties but for different reasons, because of weak decoding in the case of dyslexia or weak oral language skills in the case of DLD. Different forms of intervention are required for these groups of children, targeted to their particular area(s) of weakness.

Exploring Inflectional Morphological Awareness Skills in Greek-speaking Children with Poor Reading Comprehension

ABSTRACT The study explored the inflectional morphological awareness of Greek-speaking poor comprehenders identified in grade 3. The sample consisted of 13 poor comprehenders and 27 good comprehenders. The poor comprehenders were selected from 126 children attended 19 primary schools in metropolitan area of Athens using a cut-off-based approach. All the participants completed two oral experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness (i.e. verb inflections and noun–adjective inflections). Noun–adjective inflection task assessed children’s ability to produce the plural of articles, adjectives and nouns in the context of a sentence. Verb inflection task required children to change the tense of the verb in a sentence. Furthermore, phonological awareness, oral receptive vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension were measured with standardised tasks. It was revealed that the two reading groups differed in verb inflections and oral receptive vocabulary. However, poor comprehenders had well-developed noun–adjective inflections and intact phonological skills. Overall our findings lead us to suggest that in an alphabetic language with shallow orthographic system and rich morphology poor comprehenders appear to have impaired inflectional morphological awareness and impaired vocabulary. Moreover, these results suggest the significance of teaching morphological skills in improving reading comprehension. However, further research is needed to substantiate these findings.

The Role of Calibration of Comprehension in Adolescence: From Theory to Online Training

The current study examined the effects of a computerized training program on reading comprehension, confidence ratings, and calibration of comprehension in adolescents with poor and good reading comprehension. Ninety 10th graders participated in the study and completed three training sessions. In each session, participants read two expository texts and answered multiple-choice questions. For each answer they gave, participants also rated their confidence. Participants were assigned to one of three online training conditions that differed in the type of immediate feedback provided after each question: (a) Feedback on performance; (b) Feedback on performance and on calibration; (c) Feedback on performance with scaffolding (a cue for correcting wrong answers). Results demonstrated that scaffolding feedback was the most effective training condition, leading to improved comprehension performance and calibration, especially for poor comprehenders. These findings highlight the necessity of developing theoretical and practice models of online feedback interventions for reading comprehension and self-evaluation abilities.

Self-reported summarizing and paraphrasing difficulties in L2 writing contexts: Some pedagogical interventions

The utility of paraphrasing and summarizing is key to effective academic writing. Both require that students have a good grasp of the source material not only in terms of understanding, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating the information found in the sources, but also in terms of selecting information, organizing, drafting, and revising their papers. Although several studies have identified L2 students’ difficulties when utilizing paraphrasing and summarizing, this paper examines the cognitive and metacognitive aspects of these complex activities from the students’ eyes. With essays from 120 freshman undergraduate students from a private university in Manila, this study qualitatively determined their reported difficulties when paraphrasing and summarizing, and the areas of improvements in these skills. Participant students identified four major areas of concern: 1) lack of proficiency in English, 2) poor reading comprehension skills, 3) lack of vocabulary and 4) lack of or poor documentation skills. Findings of this study provide grounds for presentation of pedagogical interventions/classroom instructions to address these students’ reported difficulties.

Comprehension of Verb Synonyms in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension

Comprehension of Verb Synonyms in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension

The Relations Between Children's Comprehension Monitoring and Their Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Knowledge: An Eye-Movement Study.

Poor reading comprehension may be due to having ineffective comprehension monitoring, the metacognitive process of evaluating and regulating comprehension. When comprehension breaks down due to an inconsistency either at the word-level (e.g., due to an unfamiliar word) or at the sentence-level (e.g., due to contradictory information), readers may identify the misunderstanding and take steps to regulate their comprehension. In the current study, we utilized two eye-movement tasks (one newly developed) to examine comprehension monitoring in third through fifth grade students (n = 123), when confronted with word- and sentence-level inconsistencies, by measuring the amount of time they read (gaze duration) and reread the target inconsistent words. We investigated how this skill may be associated with individual differences in age, reading comprehension ability, and vocabulary knowledge. The results showed that generally, all students detected the word-level inconsistencies, indicated by longer gaze durations, and attempted to regulate their comprehension after detecting both word- and sentence-level inconsistencies, as indicated by more time spent rereading. Students with stronger reading comprehension (when controlling for their vocabulary), and stronger vocabulary knowledge (when controlling for their reading comprehension) were more likely to attempt regulating their comprehension. In general, the difference between the control words and the inconsistent words was smaller for third graders and larger for fourth and fifth graders, which we argue indicates greater levels of comprehension monitoring - specifically employing repair strategies. With eye-tracking technology becoming more accessible, these tasks may be useful in assessing children's reading processes to better understand at which level of comprehension monitoring they may be struggling, which in return will allow us to develop more individualized instruction for all readers.

Millennials’ Reading Predicaments: How Are They Treated?

The deteriorating performance of Filipino students in the national and international English proficiency tests for the last decades has become a major challenge to Philippine education. One major cause attributed to this problem was the students’ poor reading comprehension that even at tertiary level they cannot read effectively and understand fully the reading materials assigned to them. Millennials being depicted as interested in games and social networking apps more than reading, as entirely digitally focused call much attention to educators and policy makers to explore on such issues and upgrade reading as the groundwork for all study skills and avenue for good study habits.A total of 699 freshman students who belonged to general education courses were randomly taken as sample. A qualitative-quantitative research design was utilized in the study that involved reading comprehension test, survey questionnaire on the reading problems and difficulties met by students and teachers and crosschecking interviews with school administrators and program heads regarding the other factors in reading comprehension.The great majority of the respondents’ reading comprehension was found at the instructional level in literal taxonomy while the others’ were categorically described at frustration level in interpretive and applied taxonomies. They were considered limited users according to the IELTS Band Score. Drawn upon interviews with college reading teachers and a combination of individual and focused-group discussion, this study shed light on the significant influence of reading instruction, classroom-based interventions and students’ participation in reading instruction.

Alpha modulation during working memory encoding predicts neurocognitive impairment in ADHD.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with working memory (WM) deficits. However, WM is a multiprocess construct that can be impaired through several pathways, leaving the source of WM impairments in ADHD unresolved. In this study, we aim to replicate, in an independent sample, previously reported deficits in component processes of WM deficits in ADHD and expand to consider their implications for neurocognitive outcomes. In 119 children (7-14years old, 85 with ADHD), we used electroencephalography measures to quantify component processes during performance of a spatial working memory task. We quantified stimulus encoding using alpha range (8-12Hz) power; vigilance by the P2 event-related potential to cues; and WMmaintenance by occipital-alpha and frontal-theta (4-7Hz) power. These measures were evaluated against metrics of executive function, ADHD symptoms, and academic achievement. Encoding alpha-power decreases and cue P2 amplitude were attenuated in ADHD, whereas occipital-alpha power during maintenance was significantly greater in ADHD, consistent with a compensatory response to weak encoding. Weak alpha modulation during encoding was associated with poorer reading comprehension and executive function, as well as enhanced ADHD symptoms. Previously reported effects in frontal-theta power failed to replicate. Stimulus encoding, a component process of WM coupled to alpha modulation, is impaired in ADHD, and, unlike WM maintenance or vigilance processes, has implications outside of the laboratory via a relationship with executive function, and, to a weaker extent, reading comprehension.