Word Decoding Research Articles

Learning to read in mother tongue or foreign language: Comparing Papiamento-Dutch reading skills in the post-colonial Dutch Caribbean

We studied the Papiamento (L1) and Dutch (L2) reading of 293 fourth grade students in the postcolonial Dutch Caribbean, where L1 just latterly has been introduced into the school curriculum. We examined the effect of language of alphabetization (L1 first vs L2 first) and other L1 and L2 cognitive-linguistic predictors on reading skills. The results show that children's mother tongue, Papiamento, occupies a strong position in both the cognitive-linguistic precursors to learning to read and in the reading comprehension outcomes. In general, higher Papiamento predictor scores and Papiamento reading comprehension were found. However, children's word decoding was generally higher in Dutch. Phonological awareness and rapid naming predicted Papiamento word decoding, vocabulary, phonological awareness, and rapid naming and word span predicted Dutch decoding. Word decoding predicted reading comprehension in Papiamento and grammar predicted reading comprehension in Dutch. There was evidence of linguistic interdependencies for decoding and reading comprehension between languages.

Interhemispheric transfer time differs between fast and slow healthy adult readers

The visual system forms the basis of visual word decoding processes. Reading is a left-lateralized function. The interaction between the two hemispheres via the corpus callosum is required for successful reading. It is known that callosal function and morphology are affected in reading disorders. This study investigated the differences in callosal transfer speed of verbal and nonverbal stimuli in healthy university students. We hypothesized that if the callosal transfer has a role in slow reading, transfer speed would differ between slow and fast readers. Moreover, if the difference was affected by the type of stimulus, this will provide information about the level of neural processing at which the difference is based/aroused. Fifty-one participants were grouped as slow (n = 15, 8 female) and fast (n = 36, 22 female) readers. Three types of stimuli (word, legal pseudoword, and non-verbal grating) were presented from the right or left visual field. Latencies of the evoked potentials (N1) were used to measure interhemispheric transfer time. We found that slow readers have a slower right-to-left transfer speed at the parietal site, which is related to the visual word decoding process. The finding was similar to previous studies examining individuals with dyslexia. This difference was not seen with grating stimuli; we suggest that the difference originates at the orthographic visual lexical level rather than at earlier basic visual processing. We did not observe any effect of lexical and sublexical routes on the callosal transfer time because of evaluated time windows.

Challenges Pupils Face in Learning Phonological Skills: A Case of Bunda District, Tanzania

This study assessed pupils’ phonological awareness (PA) skills in reading English language among Primary Schools in Bunda, Tanzania. The study was guided by the Interactive Theory developed by Rumelhart (1980) that views reading as a process which employs both the top –down and the bottom –up processes. Collection of data was done by using interviews, focus group discussions and tests. Data collection was also done through classroom observations, interviews, focus group discussions and tests. The major findings revealed that majority pupils in public primary schools and some in English medium schools had low phonological awareness skills. The pupils faced difficulties in pronouncing words with consonant clusters and in decoding digraphs; they also faced difficulties in recognizing silent sounds and in o decoding words with irregular Grapheme Phoneme Correspondences (GPC). Pupils inserted phonemes within consonant blends and in word finals as a result of Kiswahili and mother tongue influences. The study concluded that pupils will excel in learning phonological skills if teachers strictly employ phonics strategies such as segmentation, blending, substitution, deletion and rhyming games. Moreover, teachers in English medium primary schools and their colleagues in public schools should work closely together in addressing the strategies and techniques of imparting phonological awareness skills to pupils.

Predictors of Word and Text Reading Fluency of Deaf Children in Bilingual Deaf Education Programmes

Reading continues to be a challenging task for most deaf children. Bimodal bilingual education creates a supportive environment that stimulates deaf children’s learning through the use of sign language. However, it is still unclear how exposure to sign language might contribute to improving reading ability. Here, we investigate the relative contribution of several cognitive and linguistic variables to the development of word and text reading fluency in deaf children in bimodal bilingual education programmes. The participants of this study were 62 school-aged (8 to 10 years old at the start of the 3-year study) deaf children who took part in bilingual education (using Dutch and Sign Language of The Netherlands) and 40 age-matched hearing children. We assessed vocabulary knowledge in speech and sign, phonological awareness in speech and sign, receptive fingerspelling ability, and short-term memory at time 1 (T1). At times 2 (T2) and 3 (T3), we assessed word and text reading fluency. We found that (1) speech-based vocabulary strongly predicted word and text reading at T2 and T3, (2) fingerspelling ability was a strong predictor of word and text reading fluency at T2 and T3, (3) speech-based phonological awareness predicted word reading accuracy at T2 and T3 but did not predict text reading fluency, and (4) fingerspelling and STM predicted word reading latency at T2 while sign-based phonological awareness predicted this outcome measure at T3. These results suggest that fingerspelling may have an important function in facilitating the construction of orthographical/phonological representations of printed words for deaf children and strengthening word decoding and recognition abilities.

Spanish L2 Chinese Learners' Awareness of Morpho-Syntactic Structures in the Reading Comprehension of Splittable Compounds.

Reading comprehension is never considered a simple task in linguists’ views as it requires a full set of linguistic knowledge, such as word decoding, understanding syntactic and morphological structures, and deriving proper meanings from these structures in a given context. Bearing the simple view of reading, the primary goal of this study is to explore whether the split presentation of Chinese splittable compounds influences the recognition of the compounds in second language (L2) Chinese reading comprehension, and how the reading skills, i.e., word decoding and linguistic comprehension, cooperate to complete this reading comprehension task. Splittable compounds (SCs) in Chinese are typically verbs composed of two constituents with limited separability. The separable property of SCs and their vague morpho-syntactic status are supposed to cause difficulties for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds. Especially for those whose native language manifests lexical integrity, the split presentation of the compounds may invite the L2 Chinese readers to process them with a mechanism different from that for their non-split forms. To the best of our knowledge, the efforts on investigating this issue are insufficient. In this study, 27 Spanish speaking L2 Chinese learners were invited to complete tasks including reading and interpreting 6 selected SCs in the split and non-split forms, rating their familiarities with each SC and reporting the syntactic category of the SCs based on their existing linguistic knowledge. The results, showed that the split presentation of SCs did cause challenges for L2 Chinese learners in recognizing the compounds in the reading process, regardless of their Chinese proficiencies. The L2 Chinese participants performed significantly worse in recognizing split SCs in salient Verb-Object structures than recognizing those in unsalient Verb-Object structures. These findings underscore the importance of linguistic comprehension in L2 Chinese in-text word reading comprehension and suggest words as the basic processing units.

Examining Associations Between Preschool Home Literacy Experiences, Language, Cognition And Early Word Reading: Evidence From A Longitudinal Study

ABSTRACT Research Findings: The study investigated whether preschool code-related home literacy experiences had direct associations with regular and irregular word reading in the first year of primary school as well as exploring whether there were indirect associations between these experiences and later word reading via children’s language skills or inhibitory control. The parents of 274 preschool children completed a home learning questionnaire at time 1 (Mage = 3:11). At time 2, the children completed phonological awareness, vocabulary, inhibitory control and nonverbal reasoning assessments (Mage = 4:3) and at time 3 a word reading assessment (Mage = 5:3). Letter-sound interactions (a code-related home literacy index that included discussions about letter-sound associations) bore significant associations with children’s word reading, whereas letter activities (a code-related index that was less focussed on letter-sound links) did not. Path analyses indicated that letter-sound interactions directly predicted regular word reading and predicted regular and irregular word reading indirectly via children’s phonological awareness. These findings highlight that different aspects of code-related home literacy experiences are differentially associated with later word reading skills. Practice and Policy: The findings suggest that parents’ integration of interactive, age-appropriate discussions that focus on letter-sound associations into children’s everyday experiences may support emerging word decoding skills.

No learning loss in Sweden during the pandemic: Evidence from primary school reading assessments

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to worldwide school closures, with a risk of learning loss. Sweden kept primary schools open, but it is unknown whether student and teacher absence and pandemic-related stress factors affected teaching and student progress negatively. In this study, reading assessment data from 97,073 Swedish primary school students (grades 1-3) were analysed to investigate potential learning loss. Results showed that word decoding and reading comprehension scores were not lower during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic, that students from low socio-economic backgrounds were not especially affected, and that the proportion of students with weak decoding skills did not increase during the pandemic. Study limitations are discussed. We conclude that open schools benefitted Swedish primary school students.

Privacy and Utility of X-Vector Based Speaker Anonymization

We study the scenario where individuals (<i>speakers</i>) contribute to the publication of an anonymized speech corpus. Data <i>users</i> leverage this public corpus for downstream tasks, e.g., training an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, while <i>attackers</i> may attempt to de-anonymize it using auxiliary knowledge. Motivated by this scenario, speaker anonymization aims to conceal speaker identity while preserving the quality and usefulness of speech data. In this article, we study x-vector based speaker anonymization, the leading approach in the VoicePrivacy Challenge, which converts the speaker&#x2019;s voice into that of a random pseudo-speaker. We show that the strength of anonymization varies significantly depending on how the pseudo-speaker is chosen. We explore four design choices for this step: the distance metric between speakers, the region of speaker space where the pseudo-speaker is picked, its gender, and whether to assign it to one or all utterances of the original speaker. We assess the quality of anonymization from the perspective of the three actors involved in our threat model, namely the speaker, the user and the attacker. To measure privacy and utility, we use respectively the linkability score achieved by the attackers and the decoding word error rate achieved by an ASR model trained on the anonymized data. Experiments on LibriSpeech show that the best combination of design choices yields state-of-the-art performance in terms of both privacy and utility. Experiments on Mozilla Common Voice further show that it guarantees the same anonymization level against re-identification attacks among 50 speakers as original speech among 20,000 speakers.

Exploring the Korean Hangul Word Decoding Properties of Children with Reading Disabilities: Implication for Reading Intervention and Reading Related Language Factors

Objectives: This study analyzed the Korean Hangul word decoding properties of children with reading disabilities by considering reading intervention and reading related language factors.Methods: A corresponding sample t-test, correlation analysis, and repeated measurement were examined for the relevance of Hangul and reading difficulties, predictors of Hangul reading difficulties, and the effects of Korean word meaningfulness (word/non-word) and spelling regularity (regular/irregular) variables.Results: 1) After reading intervention, children with reading disabilities improved in their Hangul decoding, listening comprehension, phonological awareness, and word writing scores. 2) Before and after reading interventions, variables related to decoding were receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, word writing, and rapid naming. 3) The variables of children’s ability that predicted decoding were word writing, listening comprehension, receptive vocabulary, and rapid naming; and the variable that predicted non-word decoding was word writing. Phonological awareness, which showed significant correlation with decoding scores, did not act as a significant predictor of decoding scores. 4) Reading interventions and decoding-level variables (word meaning and spelling regularity) both showed significant effects in the decoding of Korean Hangul, especially after reading interventions.Conclusion: The reading disability of Hangul is acting on both the characteristics of the ideogram and phonogram system, and the characteristics of Hangul’s unique spelling system.

Predicting Dyslexia and Reading Speed in Adolescents from Eye Movements in Reading and Non-Reading Tasks: A Machine Learning Approach.

There is evidence that abnormalities in eye movements exist during reading in dyslexic individuals. A few recent studies applied Machine Learning (ML) classifiers to such eye movement data to predict dyslexia. A general problem with these studies is that eye movement data sets are limited to reading saccades and fixations that are confounded by reading difficulty, e.g., it is unclear whether abnormalities are the consequence or the cause of reading difficulty. Recently, Ward and Kapoula used LED targets (with the REMOBI & AIDEAL method) to demonstrate abnormalities of large saccades and vergence eye movements in depth demonstrating intrinsic eye movement problems independent from reading in dyslexia. In another study, binocular eye movements were studied while reading two texts: one using the “Alouette” text, which has no meaning and requires word decoding, the other using a meaningful text. It was found the Alouette text exacerbates eye movement abnormalities in dyslexics. In this paper, we more precisely quantify the quality of such eye movement descriptors for dyslexia detection. We use the descriptors produced in the four different setups as input to multiple classifiers and compare their generalization performances. Our results demonstrate that eye movement data from the Alouette test predicts dyslexia with an accuracy of 81.25%; similarly, we were able to predict dyslexia with an accuracy of 81.25% when using data from saccades to LED targets on the Remobi device and 77.3% when using vergence movements to LED targets. Noticeably, eye movement data from the meaningful text produced the lowest accuracy (70.2%). In a subsequent analysis, ML algorithms were applied to predict reading speed based on eye movement descriptors extracted from the meaningful reading, then from Remobi saccade and vergence tests. Remobi vergence eye movement descriptors can predict reading speed even better than eye movement descriptors from the meaningful reading test.

Treating developmental dyslexia using transcranial stimulation combined with a reading stimulation program: A pilot study

Objective: Evaluate the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) combined with reading therapy on the performance of reading tasks in a serie of cases of children and adolescents with developmental dyslexia (DD). Method: (IRB/UNIFESP number:1281/2017). Four dyslexic students (two children and two adolescents) were evaluated with regards to rate and accuracy of reading fluency on three occasions: pre-intervention as well as one and six months after intervention. The intervention consisted of five consecutive sessions of active tDCS (1 mA for 20 minutes), followed by a two-day interval and another five sessions of tDCS combined with cognitive skills stimulation of phonological processing and decoding of words. Anodal tDCS was administered over the left parieto-occipital cortex, with the cathode placed over contralateral deltoid muscle. Each session was preceded by execution of semantic-lexical and phonological evocation tasks. Data were analyzed using Friedman test and JT method for analysis of clinical significance and the reliable change index. Results: Improvements were found in text reading rate and accuracy and word accuracy at the one-month and six-month evaluation. A significant increase was found in correct reading of words and pseudowords six months after intervention. Most of the improvements were reliable, with clinical significance in some cases. Conclusion: Transcranial direct current stimulation combined with a reading stimulation program proved effective at improving reading skills in these participants.

Word Decoding Abilities of 1st Graders with Developmental Dyslexia Considering Reading Severity and Word and Syllable Structure

Objectives: This study investigated word decoding abilities of 1st graders with Developmental dyslexia according to the level of decoding difficulty, meaning availability, word and syllable structure.Methods: Twenty Korean 1st graders with developmental dyslexia participated in 40 word-reading tasks individually. All of them had severe decoding difficulties, even with normal listening comprehension (KORLA; Pae et al., 2015) and intelligence (K-CTONI-2; Park, 2014). The group differences by decoding difficulties were compared considering the meaning of words, the number of syllable-final graphemes, and the position of each grapheme in a syllable.Results: Both the severe and less-severe group in Korean word-decoding difficulties revealed the gaps between word reading and nonword reading. Both groups had decoding difficulties when a word had syllable-final graphemes, while the severe group had even lower performances in word readings with 2 syllable-final graphemes. Both groups showed similar performances in reading syllable-initial graphemes while the severe group had lower performances both in reading syllable-medial vowel graphemes and syllable-final consonant graphemes compared to the less-severe group.Conclusion: Korean 1st graders with developmental dyslexia seemed to be in urgent need of decoding support considering word and syllable structure. Triggering the non-lexical route with non-words considering the grain size of syllable-medial vowel graphemes and syllable-final graphemes would facilitate word decoding abilities of severely dyslexic Korean children.

Reading Development in Children With Nonsyndromic Cleft Palate With or Without Cleft Lip: Meta-analysis and Systematic Review.

We conducted a meta-analysis and systematic review of literature comparing pre-reading and general reading in school-age children with nonsyndromic cleft palate with or without cleft lip (NSCP/L) to their peers without NSCP/L. Our literature search identified 1238 possible records. After screening we identified 11 samples for inclusion for systematic review and eight for meta-analysis. We compared 292 children with NSCP/L to 311 peers for 23 pre-reading effect sizes and 17 general reading effect sizes (EFg). We conducted a random-effects metaregression using robust variance estimation. On average school-age children with NSCP/L scored lower on pre-reading (EFg = -0.36) and general reading measures (EFg = -0.38) compared to their peers. We conducted post-hoc analyses on phonological awareness and word decoding effect sizes; children with NSCP/L performed lower on phonological awareness (EFg = -0.22) and word decoding (EFg = -0.39) compared to their peers. There was weak evidence that hearing status and/or speech-language functioning might moderate reading development. There was limited evidence that age or socioeconomic status moderated reading development. However, samples did not consistently report several characteristics that were coded for this project. Our findings suggest that school-age children with NSCP/L have persistent reading problems. Further research is needed to explore reading development in children with NSCP/L, as well as the relationships among hearing, speech, language, and reading development.

Exploring the importance of vocabulary for English as an additional language learners’ reading comprehension

This exploratory study represents an attempt to investigate the factors that may affect the reading comprehension abilities of English as an additional language (EAL) learners. For this study, we examined a participant group of 31 (25 EAL and 6 first language English) learners studying at an international school in Japan. We assessed the participants according to four factors shown to influence reading comprehension: vocabulary knowledge, word decoding skills, reading fluency, and general linguistic ability. Our results show that differences in vocabulary knowledge show more variance in reading comprehension scores than the other factors examined in this study, highlighting the importance of vocabulary knowledge for reading comprehension. However, other factors such as reading fluency and general linguistic knowledge are also shown to be moderate to strong predictors of reading comprehension. Based on these results, we suggest that EAL learners need targeted language support to enhance academic text comprehension.

Digital Game-Based Phonics Instruction Promotes Print Knowledge in Pre-Readers at Cognitive Risk for Dyslexia.

Dyslexia is targeted most effectively when (1) interventions are provided preventively, before the onset of reading instruction, and (2) remediation programs combine letter-sound training with phoneme blending. Given the growing potential of technology in educational contexts, there has been a considerable increase of letter-sound trainings embedded in digital serious games. One such intervention is GraphoGame. Yet, current evidence on the preventive impact of GraphoGame is limited by the lack of adaptation of the original learning content to the skills of pre-readers, short training duration, and a restricted focus on explicitly trained skills. Therefore, the current study aims at investigating the impact of a preventive, and pre-reading adapted GraphoGame training (i.e., GraphoGame-Flemish, GG-FL) on explicitly trained skills and non-specifically trained phonological and language abilities. Following a large-scale screening (N = 1225), the current study included 88 pre-reading kindergarteners at cognitive risk for dyslexia who were assigned to three groups training either with GG-FL (n = 31), an active control game (n = 29), or no game (n = 28). Before and after the 12-week intervention, a variety of reading-related skills were assessed. Moreover, receptive letter knowledge and phonological awareness were measured every three weeks during the intervention period. Results revealed significantly larger improvements in the GG-FL group on explicitly trained skills, i.e., letter knowledge and word decoding, without finding transfer-effects to untrained phonological and language abilities. Our findings imply a GG-FL-driven head start on early literacy skills in at-risk children. A follow-up study should uncover the long-term impact and the ability of GG-FL to prevent actual reading failure.

Dyslexics' Fragile Oculomotor Control Is Further Destabilized by Increased Text Difficulty.

Dyslexic adolescents demonstrate deficits in word decoding, recognition, and oculomotor coordination as compared to healthy controls. Our lab recently showed intrinsic deficits in large saccades and vergence movements with a Remobi device independent from reading. This shed new light on the field of dyslexia, as it has been debated in the literature whether the deficits in eye movements are a cause or consequence of reading difficulty. The present study investigates how these oculomotor problems are compensated for or aggravated by text difficulty. A total of 46 dyslexic and 41 non-dyslexic adolescents’ eye movements were analyzed while reading L’Alouette, a dyslexia screening test, and 35 Kilos D’Espoir, a children’s book with a reading age of 10 years. While reading the more difficult text, dyslexics made more mistakes, read slower, and made more regressive saccades; moreover, they made smaller amplitude saccades with abnormal velocity profiles (e.g., higher peak velocity but lower average velocity) and significantly higher saccade disconjugacy. While reading the simpler text, these differences persisted; however, the difference in saccade disconjugacy, although present, was no longer significant, nor was there a significant difference in the percentage of regressive saccades. We propose that intrinsic eye movement abnormalities in dyslexics such as saccade disconjugacy, abnormal velocity profiles, and cognitively associated regressive saccades can be particularly exacerbated if the reading text relies heavily on word decoding to extract meaning; increased number of regressive saccades are a manifestation of reading difficulty and not a problem of eye movement per se. These interpretations are in line with the motor theory of visual attention and our previous research describing the relationship between binocular motor control, attention, and cognition that exists outside of the field of dyslexia.

Reading Skills in Down Syndrome: Implications for Clinical Practice.

Though children with Down syndrome can learn to read, they may have difficulty developing some component skills, including phonological awareness and word decoding. Given reading's foundation in language, speech-language pathologists (SLPs) should play a central role in supporting access to and providing reading instruction for children with Down syndrome. This article reviews the available research on reading in Down syndrome and offers guidance for SLPs working with this population. We start by reviewing the Down syndrome phenotype, highlighting physical features and cognitive and linguistic patterns of strength and weakness that impact reading development. Next, we define different reading subskills and outline typical reading development, including stages of prereading, learning to read, and transitioning to using reading as a tool for learning. We then use these stages to review what is known about reading in Down syndrome, including relevant intervention work. We also incorporate considerations for clinical practice. In particular, we encourage SLPs to advocate for supporting reading development in children with Down syndrome, to work with families to develop rich home literacy environments, and to work with educators to promote phonological awareness and decoding skills. Lastly, we note limitations in our current knowledge and include a call for more research.

How Visual Word Decoding and Context-Driven Auditory Semantic Integration Contribute to Reading Comprehension: A Test of Additive vs. Multiplicative Models.

Theories of reading comprehension emphasize decoding and listening comprehension as two essential components. The current study aimed to investigate how Chinese character decoding and context-driven auditory semantic integration contribute to reading comprehension in Chinese middle school students. Seventy-five middle school students were tested. Context-driven auditory semantic integration was assessed with speech-in-noise tests in which the fundamental frequency (F0) contours of spoken sentences were either kept natural or acoustically flattened, with the latter requiring a higher degree of contextual information. Statistical modeling with hierarchical regression was conducted to examine the contributions of Chinese character decoding and context-driven auditory semantic integration to reading comprehension. Performance in Chinese character decoding and auditory semantic integration scores with the flattened (but not natural) F0 sentences significantly predicted reading comprehension. Furthermore, the contributions of these two factors to reading comprehension were better fitted with an additive model instead of a multiplicative model. These findings indicate that reading comprehension in middle schoolers is associated with not only character decoding but also the listening ability to make better use of the sentential context for semantic integration in a severely degraded speech-in-noise condition. The results add to our better understanding of the multi-faceted reading comprehension in children. Future research could further address the age-dependent development and maturation of reading skills by examining and controlling other important cognitive variables, and apply neuroimaging techniques such as functional magmatic resonance imaging and electrophysiology to reveal the neural substrates and neural oscillatory patterns for the contribution of auditory semantic integration and the observed additive model to reading comprehension.

Selective visual attention skills differentially predict decoding and reading comprehension performance across reading ability profiles.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between selective visual attention (SVA), reading decoding, listening comprehension and reading comprehension in children with and without a reading disorder. We used longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. We split children into four groups: Typical Readers, Dyslexics, Poor Comprehenders and Comorbid Reading Disorder. We included measures of single word reading, nonword reading, spelling, phonological processing, vocabulary, receptive language, nonverbal intelligence, selective attention and reading comprehension. We used analysis of variance, correlations and structural equation modelling to examine the relationship between SVA and reading. We fit two possible models: SVA Indirect and SVA Direct. The difference between these models was the inclusion of a direct path from SVA to reading comprehension. We examined an indirect model, where SVA predicted reading comprehension through word decoding and listening comprehension, and a direct model, which included a pathway from SVA to reading comprehension. Based on our analysis of variance and correlation results, we collapsed the Dyslexic, Poor Comprehenders and Comorbid Reading Disorder groups for the structural equation modelling. We found evidence that for Typical Readers, an indirect model was the best fit, whereas the direct model was the best model for children with a reading disorder. Selective visual attention is related to reading comprehension. This relationship differs for children with and without a reading disorder.

Evidence for complementary effects of code- and knowledge-focused reading instruction

There is growing recognition of the need to end the debate regarding reading instruction in favor of an approach that provides a solid foundation in phonics and other underlying language skills to become expert readers. We advance this agenda by providing evidence of specific effects of instruction focused primarily on the written code or on developing knowledge. In a grade 1 program evaluation study, an inclusive and comprehensive program with a greater code-based focus called Reading for All (RfA) was compared to a knowledge-focused program involving Dialogic Reading. Phonological awareness, letter word recognition, nonsense word decoding, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, written expression and vocabulary were measured at the beginning and end of the school year, and one year after in one school only. Results revealed improvements in all measures except listening comprehension and vocabulary for the RfA program at the end of the first school year. These gains were maintained for all measures one year later with the exception of an improvement in written expression. The Dialogic Reading group was associated with a specific improvement in vocabulary in schools from lower socioeconomic contexts. Higher scores were observed for RfA than Dialogic Reading groups at the end of the first year on nonsense word decoding, phonological awareness and written expression, with the differences in the latter two remaining significant one year later. The results provide evidence of the need for interventions to support both word recognition and linguistic comprehension to better reading comprehension.