Grammatical knowledge of third grade good and poor readers

2000 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVA E. WALTZMAN ◽  
HELEN S. CAIRNS
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Sentence Type ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Grammatical Knowledge ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Reading Groups ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
And Control

The relationship between grammatical knowledge and reading ability in third grade good and poor readers was investigated. Two aspects of grammar – binding and control – were assessed to determine whether poor readers had syntactic deficits. These principles both relate to the interpretation of pronominal elements. Interpretations were assessed through a sentence–picture matching task in which picture depictions of all the possible interpretations of pronominal elements in verbally presented sentences were included. The only sentence type that differentiated the two reading groups was performance on sentences related to one of the binding principles, Principle B. Since obedience to Principle B probably involves pragmatic as well as syntactic principles, this finding suggests another way that good readers may differ from poor readers.

Picture-Naming Interference with Good and Poor Readers

1979 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Guttentag
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Pictures And Words ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

22 third grade children of high and low reading ability ( ns = 11) were tested for their ability to name pictures while trying to ignore words or nonword strings of letters printed inside the pictures. Nonoverlapping sets of pictures and words were used as stimuli to avoid the possibility of sensitizing subjects to the particular words used in the experiment (Neisser, 1976). Both groups experienced mote interference from intra-category than extra-category words, indicating that they processed the words automatically. Only the good readers experienced more interference from pseudowords than consonant strings, suggesting that poor readers are less sensitive than good readers to orthographic regularity.

The Effect of Prior Knowledge on the Question Answering of Good and Poor Readers

1983 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty C. Holmes
Keyword(s):  
Prior Knowledge ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Question Answering ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Fifth Grade Students ◽  
New Information ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

The purpose of this investigation was to compare the question answering of good and poor readers when their prior knowledge for the answers to questions was determined before reading to be accurate, inaccurate, incomplete, or missing. Fifty-six fifth-grade students with equivalent I.Q.'s, but varying in reading ability and extent of general prior knowledge for the passage topics, participated in the study. Subjects read an expository passage written on their approximate instructional reading level. The results indicated that poor readers did not use prior knowledge to the same extent as did good readers. This was especially true when students were learning new information. The results also suggest that poor readers have difficulty answering text implicit questions even if they possess adequate prior knowledge for passage topics.

Effects of Reading Ability on Children's Comprehension Evaluation and Regulation

1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Zabrucky ◽  
Hilary Horn Ratner
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Verbal Report ◽  
Sixth Grade ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Comprehension Monitoring ◽  
Verbal Reports ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
On Line ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Multidimensional Process

Good and poor readers in the sixth grade ( M age = 11.92 years) were videotaped reading inconsistent stories presented one sentence at a time. Children's comprehension evaluation was assessed with on-line (reading times) and verbal report measures; comprehension regulation was assessed by examining look-backs during reading. All children read inconsistencies more slowly than consistent control information but good readers were more likely than poor readers to look back at inconsistencies during reading, to give accurate verbal reports of passage consistency following reading, and to recall text inconsistencies. Results highlight the importance of using multiple comprehension monitoring measures in assessing children's abilities and of treating comprehension monitoring as a multidimensional process.

Effects of the Cloze Procedure on Good and Poor Readers' Comprehension

1981 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea M. Mcgee
Keyword(s):  
Poor Readers ◽  
Third Grade ◽  
Fifth Grade ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Delayed Recall ◽  
Immediate Recall ◽  
Cloze Procedure ◽  
Instructional Technique ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Feature Theory

The effects of a cloze procedure developed from transfer feature theory of processing in reading on immediate and delayed recall of good and poor readers were studied. Easy cloze passages were generated so all cloze deletions were successfully supplied by approximately 75% of 78 students used in a norming process. Twenty third-grade good and twenty fifth-grade poor readers read and recalled an easy cloze and a normal, non-cloze version of two expository passages. Recalls were scored according to an analysis of discourse procedure. Results indicated that fifth-grade poor readers remember more than third-grade good readers immediately after reading and after a one-week delay. Moreover, fifth-grade poor readers remember more from reading an easy cloze passage than from reading a normal passage in immediate recall. Implications for the use of this cloze procedure as an instructional technique are discussed.

A comparison of comprehension and production abilities of good and poor readers

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva G. Bar-Shalom ◽  
Stephen Crain ◽  
Donald Shankweiler
Keyword(s):  
Reading Disability ◽  
Error Rate ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Production Task ◽  
High Error Rate ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

ABSTRACTResearch from several sources indicates that reading disability is often associated with difficulty in comprehending some complex spoken sentences, including those with relative clauses. The present study exploits a new methodology, elicited production, to identify the source of comprehension difficulties of poor readers. Both the elicited production task and a conventional act-out task were employed in a study of 30 children (aged 7-8), who were selected for reading ability. On the act-out task, the poor readers displayed a high error rate on two relative clause structures (SO and OO relatives), as had been found by Mann, Shankweiler, and Smith (1984), but these structures were elicited from the poor readers as successfully as from the good readers (on more than 80% of trials).

Sensitivity to Orthographic Structure as a Function of Grade and Reading Ability

1978 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-439 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Allington
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Zero Order ◽  
School Experience ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Achievement Level ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Direct Function ◽  
Grade Levels ◽  
The One ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

Good and poor readers at two grade levels were presented with zero-order and fourth-order approximations of English words. They were directed to select the one item in each pair that was most wordlike. Results show significant differences were found between older poor readers and younger good readers whose reading ability was equivalent. These results were interpreted as providing support for the hypothesis that orthographic sensitivity is a direct function of reading achievement level, not age or school experience in general.

The association between comprehension of spoken sentences and early reading ability: the role of phonetic representation

1984 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 627-643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia A. Mann ◽  
Donald Shankweiler ◽  
Suzanne T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Early Reading ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Processing Strategies ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Phonetic Representation

ABSTRACTWhen repeating spoken sentences, children who are good readers tend to be more accurate than poor readers because they are able to make more effective use of phonetic representation in the service of working memory (Mann, Liberman & Shankweiler 1980). This study of good and poor readers in the third grade has assessed both the repetition and comprehension of relative-clause sentences to explore more fully the association between early reading ability, spoken sentence processing and use of phonetic representation. It was found that the poor readers did less well than the good readers on sentence comprehension as well as on sentence repetition, and that their comprehension errors reflected a greater reliance on two sentence-processing strategies favoured by young children: the minimum-distance principle and conjoined-clause analysis. In general, the pattern of results is consonant with a view that difficulties with phonetic representation could underlie the inferior sentence comprehension of poor beginning readers. The finding that these children place greater reliance on immature processing strategies raises the further possibility that the tempo of their syntactic development may be slower than that of good readers.

Spatial Coding in the Processing of Anaphor by Good and Poor Readers: Evidence from Eye Movement Analyses

1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne S. Murray ◽  
Alan Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
Reading Ability ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Older Children ◽  
Spatial Coding ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Inspection Strategy ◽  
Good And Poor Readers ◽  
Skilled Group

An experiment that examined the way in which young readers deployed eye movements while reading sentences and while answering questions containing either a pronominal or noun anaphor is reported. To evaluate the possible causal role played by differences in inspection strategies between readers of above- and below-average reading skill, a third“age control” group of younger children was also tested. This group was matched on absolute reading ability with the less skilled group of older children, and on relative reading ability (i.e. reading quotient) with the more skilled group. Differences in inspection strategy were apparent between the groups of good and poor readers. Good readers launched more selective reinspections, whereas the poorer readers were more inclined to engage in“backtracking” and appeared to make less use of the displayed text. In every case there was a marked similarity in the behaviour of the good readers and the“age controls”. These results suggest that the ability to code the spatial location of words in a sentence, and, where necessary, to use this information to launch accurately targetted selective reinspections of previously read text, plays a crucial role in the development of skilled reading performance.

scholarly journals Reading Ability and Attention to Words and Letters in Words

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harvey H. C. Marmurek
Keyword(s):  
Visual Memory ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Single Letter ◽  
The Other ◽  
Primary Task ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Letter Target ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Good And Poor Readers

Students in grades 2, 4, and 6 were tested in two blocks of visual comparison trials. In one block, the primary task was to decide whether two words matched, and in the other block the task was to decide whether a single letter target matched the first letter of a word. On some trials in both blocks, the word comparison item was omitted and subjects were to decide whether a “7” occurred in the replacement display. On those probe trials, the “7” occurred either to the left or right of the display. In all grades, latencies for the primary task were faster for whole-word than for first-letter decisions. On the probe trials, latencies were faster when the probe item appeared in the first position of the display, but only in the block of first-letter trials. Moreover, the first-position advantage on probe trials was greater for good than for poor readers. The results were interpreted to be consistent with the hypothesis that both good and poor readers process words holistically. Poor readers are not more likely than good readers to attend to single-letter units in visual memory (cf. LaBerge & Samuels, 1974). Rather, poor readers are deficient in analyzing a word's components (cf. Wolford & Fowler, 1984).

The Impact of Reading Competence on the Ability to Take a Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Grabe ◽  
Walt Prentice
Keyword(s):  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Significant Interaction ◽  
Poor Readers ◽  
Vocabulary Test ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Good Readers ◽  
Reading Competence ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Impact

Students grouped as good or poor readers on the basis of a vocabulary test were asked to read a story from a certain perspective or with instructions to read carefully. While the groups given a perspective recalled more information than the control groups, the most interesting results came from the significant interaction of reading ability, reading instruction and type of information. Relative to good readers in the control condition, good readers given a perspective responded with greater recall of information related to the perspective. The poor readers appeared unable or unwilling to use the perspective in differentially processing the perspective relevant sentences.

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