Grade Reading Ability Research Articles

Predictors of reading and spelling abilities in first- and second-language learners.

This study examined the basic literacy skills and related processes of 1st- through 4th-grade children speaking English as a 1st language (L1) and English as a 2nd language (ESL). The performances of the L1 and ESL children on phonological awareness, word and pseudoword reading, and word and pseudoword spelling tasks were highly similar. The ESL children were at an advantage with regard to lexical access but performed more poorly on verbal working memory and syntactic awareness tasks. The results suggest that the main processes underlying L1 children's basic reading ability in Grades 1 and 2, namely phonological awareness and lexical access, are of equal importance for ESL children. Phonological awareness remained the strongest predictor of word reading ability for L1 and ESL children in Grades 3 and 4. However, the processes involved in L1 and ESL word reading and spelling appeared to vary at other points. Verbal working memory and syntactic awareness were found to be of importance for the word reading and spelling abilities of L1 children but not for ESL children. Lexical access was found to be of more importance for ESL children.

Rhythm and reading development in school‐age children: a longitudinal study

Rhythm production in 53 children in grade 1 was investigated as a predictor of reading ability in the same children in grades 1–5. This paper reports the results of correlations and hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for shared variance between phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm was correlated significantly with both phonological awareness and naming speed. Rhythm predicted significant variance in reading ability at each grade level. Once phonological awareness was controlled, however, rhythm was a significant predictor only in grade 5. When naming speed was controlled, rhythm predicted unique variance in reading ability in grades 2, 3 and 5. Implications for the relationship between rhythm and the development of reading skills are discussed.

The Argument for a Constitutional Right to Communication and Language

The need for and right to communication and language is fundamental to the human condition. Without communication, an individual cannot become an effective and productive adult or an informed citizen in our democracy. The importance of communication and language for deaf and hard-of-hearing children is so basic as to be beyond debate. Given the historic difficulties deaf and hard-of- hearing children face, their compromised communication and language skills and the educational, social, cognitive, and psychological consequences, this note contends that a constitutional right to communication is both necessary and legally sound. The right to assemble and to vote, the right to equal protection under the law must be extended to the right of deaf and hard-of-hearing children to full communication development and access. If the Constitution venerates the right to speech, the right to communication and language is of equal or greater value. [End Page 255] "Language is so tightly woven into human experience that it is scarcely possible to imagine life without it." Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct "What we have here is a failure to communicate." Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke In a world of hyperbole, it is frequently said that one thing or another is so "fundamental" as to be "beyond debate," and thus, in the repetition of it, what is meritorious becomes less so. But the development of communication—the "defining characteristic of human cognition and . . . human society"—is so fundamental as to be beyond debate (Corina, p. 35). Indisputably so. Accordingly, the right to communication and language, particularly as it affects deaf and hard-of- hearing children, must be afforded the highest possible legal protection. In short, deaf and hard-of-hearing children must have a Constitutional right to communication and language. Our Constitution has embraced the most important of human needs, while our courts have, through penurious examination and pruning, afforded only a handful of rights the greatest legal protection. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom to assemble. The right to vote, the right to privacy. Protection from all but the most compelling and urgent governmental action based on race, religion, or nationality. We protect speech because we must convey our thoughts. We protect our right to vote because we insist on being free. We protect the right to prayer because we abhor interference with what is spiritual in our nature. Is the need for, and right to, communication any less important? To weigh its value against the others is a futile exercise; to exclude it, indefensible. For deaf and hard-of-hearing children, the absence of communication and language has a crushing effect on the development of basic educational and life skills. That deaf and hard-of-hearing children continue to leave school with no more than third grade reading ability—a statistic so often repeated that these children and their parents must grow weary of it—and the high rates of under- and unemployment among deaf and hard-of-hearing adults, reveals the pragmatic [End Page 256] consequences of what Oliver Sacks calls the "languageless" environment (1989, p. 9). There are several arguments for a right to communication, each sufficient on its own, their totality a clamor for acknowledging that our Constitution has both the genius and flexibility to recognize the importance of communication for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. To communicate completely and freely is to be included in the decision-making process of our democracy, to be a member of the commonweal. There is not a hearing child in this nation who must think, even for a second, that each day and year she goes to school, she must secure anew her right and need to communicate.1 Deaf and hard-of-hearing children are entitled to the same happy ignorance. Denial of communication is ultimately, for our democracy, a forfeiture of the vision, talent, and involvement of deaf and hard-of- hearing children, for the "peculiar evil" of "silencing" expression...

Early Language Development and Kindergarten Phonological Awareness as Predictors of Reading Problems

At the end of Grade 4, 481 children on the Danish island of Bornholm were screened using group tests for sentence reading. For 205 of these children, language and speech data from the speech therapist's screening at age 3 were available, as well as language comprehension and linguistic awareness data from the kindergarten year (age 6) and word decoding measures in Grades 2 and 3. A path analysis revealed significant paths from early language abilities at age 3 through expressive and receptive language in kindergarten via language awareness in kindergarten and word decoding in Grade 2 to sentence reading in Grades 3 and 4. The subgroup of children with parents who had reported a history of reading problems at school entry scored significantly below average on sentence reading in Grade 4. The subgroup of children that were reported to show a very low interest in books and story reading before age 5 also scored low on sentence reading in Grade 4. Statistically significant but weak relationships were also found between parents' educational background, parents' library visits, and number of books at home and the child's reading ability in Grade 4.

Intelligence and reading ability in grades 2–12

It has been hypothesized that the relationship between reading ability and intelligence—as measured by the Raven Progressive Matrices test—is small and insignificant. It has also been hypothesized that this relationship is higher in the upper grades of school as compared to the lower grades. These two hypotheses were investigated by administering the Raven Progressive Matrices test and the National Reading Standards test to 486 students in Grades 2–12 of a small-town, rural school district. The correlations between these two tests for each of Grades 2–12 varied from about .40 to .60 with an average of about .50. There was no trend indicating that the correlation increased with each grade in school. Criteria have been developed for judging the effect size of correlations, and this .50 correlation would be considered as large. These data can be interpreted as indicating that general intelligence, as measured by the Raven test, has a strong and consistent relationship to reading ability.

Models for Predicting Elementary Students' Pronunciation of Vowel Digraphs

This study investigated the relationship between type, token frequencies, and graphemic context effects in predicting elementary students' pronunciations of vowel digraphs commonly used in reading tests. Three models were constructed to predict pronunciation responses: a final consonant model, a type-token model, and an invariant principal response model. For each of six selected vowel digraphs, six synthetic words were constructed according to orthographical constraints of English. Students of high and low reading ability in grades two, four, and six pronounced each of the 24 synthetic words. Results indicated the final consonant and principal response models to be superior.

Readability of self-care instructional pamphlets for diabetic patients.

The readability of written instructional materials for diabetic patients is an important consideration in their use. We assessed the readability of six commonly used patient teaching guides on diabetic self-care. In addition, two pamphlets developed by our program for diabetic patients with fifth to tenth grade reading ability were also studied as controls. The difficulty of reading each pamphlet was estimated by a novel computer program which simultaneously measures readability by seven accepted formulas. The scores derived by each formula are expressed individually, in terms of grade level difficulty, and then computed to obtain a composite mean score for each text. The composite mean scores obtained are highly reliable (a = 0.95). The six commercial pamphlets were estimated to have reading difficulty levels ranging from 5.3 to 14.1 grades. A primary factor that contributed to reading difficulty was the frequent use of polysyllabic words, including technical words. Certain individual test scores, not judged to be out of range, deviated from the mean composite scores by as much as 41.2%. The two pamphlets designed by the Kentucky Diabetes Program had composite reading difficulties of 7.5 and 8.2 grade levels, respectively. These data suggest that the use of systematic readability analysis should be carried out and reported for patient instructional material. This assessment should be carried out by multiple formulas to produce a more representative index of reading difficulty than the application of a single test.

Broken text as a predictor of reading ability in the early grades

Abstract A promising technique for assessing the development of decoding skills during the early grades was explored. Students in grades 1 through 6 read paragraphs typed normally and additional paragraphs broken into words, syllables, or letters. Reading times for these paragraphs were then used as predictor variables in a multiple regression analysis to predict reading subscores on the Stanford Achievement Test. As expected, reading times for paragraphs broken into different types of units (words, syllables, letters) differentially predicted reading ability in each grade. Generally, reading broken text was found to be a good predictor of reading ability in the early grades (e.g., from 64 to 75 percent of the within grade variability in reading comprehension scores was predicted by reading times in grades 1 through 3), but not in later grades (grades 4 through 6).

A Locus of Control Scale for Noncollege as Well as College Adults

Summary In an effort to overcome some of the shortcomings of existent locus of control scales, the authors developed a new adult scale suitable for use on Ss with as little as fifth grade reading ability. Psychometric characteristics were assessed in 12 studies on 766 Ss.

An Application of Multiple Regression Analysis in Determining the Relative Contribution of Certain Components of Reading Ability in Grade and High School Achievement

THE PURPOSE of the present article is to show how multiple regression analysis can be applied to reveal the relationships between reading and basic skills as measured in the seventh grade (the independent variables) and success in certain phases of the academic pro gram at the high school level (the dependent var iables). For complete results of this investiga tion the reader is referred to a doctoral disser tation completed in 1954.1 The main purpose of the study was to determine the significant partial regression coefficients and determine their share of the accountable variance. The study was designed to find the relation ships among measured areas of seventh-grade reading abilities and study skills and the con tent areas of the high school. The students o f the Austin Public Schools constitute the popula tion of this study. It is to this population that the conclusions are drawn. The samples con sisted of the pupils from two seventh-g r a d e classes. Data were obtained from the perma nent records of the pupils. The first seventh grade class tested in 1947 was tested again in 1952 when in the eleventh grade. The second seventh-grade was tested in 1949 and again in 1952 when in the ninth grade. The samples of 471 pupils included in the study, consisted of 215 pupils in the first group (7-11), and 256 pu ils in the second group (7-9). Tests used in the study were the California Intelligence Tests, (non-language section), 1946 Revision Grades 9 to Adult; the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, Form Z and Form R; and the Iowa Tests of Educational Development, Form Y-2. The reading abilities and work study skills measured by the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in the Seventh Grade and their notation (Independ ent Variables) were as follows: