Investigating Patterns of Errors for Specific Comprehension and Fluency Difficulties

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 138-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor A. Koriakin ◽  
Alan S. Kaufman

Although word reading has traditionally been viewed as a foundational skill for development of reading fluency and comprehension, some children demonstrate “specific” reading comprehension problems, in the context of intact word reading. The purpose of this study was to identify specific patterns of errors associated with reading profiles—basic reading difficulties (BRD), reading fluency difficulties (RFD), reading comprehension difficulties (RCD), and typical readers (total n = 821). Results indicated significant differences between the groups on most error factors. Post hoc analyses indicated there were no significant differences between the RFD and RCD groups, but these groups demonstrated different patterns of significant weakness relative to typical readers. The RFD group was weaker in spelling and oral expression whereas the RCD group demonstrated difficulties in writing mechanics and listening comprehension. These findings indicate that comprehension deficits cannot be attributed only to fluency difficulties and that specific reading difficulties may translate to other aspects of achievement.

Author(s):  
Wei-Lun Chung ◽  
Gavin M. Bidelman

Purpose: The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody—the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud—predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities. Method: We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades 3 and 4), and oral reading prosody in Taiwanese third-grade children ( N  = 109). In the oral reading prosody task, children were asked to read aloud a passage designed for third graders and then to answer forced-choice questions. Their oral reading prosody was measured through acoustic analyses including the number of pause intrusions, intersentential pause duration, phrase-final comma pause duration, child–adult pitch match, and sentence-final pitch change. Results: Analyses of variance revealed that children's number of pause intrusions differed as a function of word reading. After controlling for age, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, and word reading, we found that different dimensions of oral reading prosody contributed to reading rate. In contrast, the number of pause intrusions, phrase-final comma pause duration, and child–adult pitch match predicted reading accuracy and comprehension. Conclusions: Oral reading prosody plays an important role in children's reading fluency and reading comprehension in tone languages like Mandarin. Specifically, children need to read texts prosodically as evidenced by fewer pause intrusions, shorter phrase-final comma pause duration, and closer child–adult pitch match, which are early predictive makers of reading fluency and comprehension.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Alida Hudson ◽  
Poh Wee Koh ◽  
Karol A. Moore ◽  
Emily Binks-Cantrell

Oral reading fluency (ORF) deficits are a hallmark of reading difficulties. The impact of fluency struggles extends beyond word-level difficulties to include deficits in reading comprehension. Sixteen empirical studies conducted in 2000–2019 that examined ORF interventions among elementary students identified as having reading difficulties were reviewed to identify the characteristics (e.g., instructional variables, group size, type of interventionist) of effective ORF interventions and their impact on English oral reading fluency and reading comprehension outcomes. The systematic review revealed that interventions reported centered around repeated reading procedures (86.5%). Across the 16 studies, outcomes for oral reading fluency varied widely and most focused on speed and rate aspects rather than prosody. Effect sizes for rate and accuracy measures ranged from negligible to large (i.e., 0.01 to 1.18) and three studies found large effects for prosody outcomes. Effect sizes for reading comprehension ranged between non-significant and large significant effects. Findings support the use of repeated reading of text to build up ORF of students with reading difficulties. Interventions that were found to be most effective were those that were conducted one-on-one with a trained model of fluent word reading and accuracy. Findings also point to three gaps in our understanding: (1) the efficacy of interventions other than repeated reading, (2) effects of ORF interventions on prosody outcomes, and (3) sustainability of outcomes.


2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 576-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Stevens ◽  
Melodee A. Walker ◽  
Sharon Vaughn

Fluent word reading is hypothesized to facilitate reading comprehension by improving automatic word reading, thus releasing a reader’s cognitive resources to focus on meaning. Many students with learning disabilities (LD) struggle to develop reading fluency, which affects reading comprehension. This synthesis extends Chard, Vaughn, and Tyler’s (2002) review, synthesizing fluency intervention research from 2001 to 2014. The search yielded 19 studies examining reading fluency and comprehension outcomes of reading fluency interventions for students with LD in kindergarten through 5th grade. Results showed repeated reading (RR), multicomponent interventions, and assisted reading with audiobooks produced gains in reading fluency and comprehension. Providing a model of fluent reading and performance feedback, using easier level text, setting a performance criterion, and practicing RR with peers also contributed to improved outcomes. Findings suggest that RR remains the most effective intervention for improving reading fluency for students with LD. Limitations include sample size, only three group design studies, and infrequent use of standardized measures.


2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-725 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL J. KIEFFER ◽  
GINA BIANCAROSA ◽  
JEANNETTE MANCILLA-MARTINEZ

ABSTRACTThis study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading comprehension as well as its indirect contributions via three hypothesized mediators for students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade (N = 101). Results indicated a significant unique contribution of morphological awareness, controlling for phonemic decoding, listening comprehension, reading vocabulary, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. Results further indicated significant indirect contributions of morphological awareness via reading vocabulary and passage fluency, but not via word reading fluency. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may play multiple important roles in second-language reading comprehension.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 366-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Christina Kjeldsen ◽  
Lic Educ ◽  
Silja K. Saarento-Zaprudin ◽  
Pekka O. Niemi

Training in phonological awareness has brought about well-documented positive effects on learning to read in lower-primary grades. Less is known about long-term gains extending to upper-primary and junior high school. The few longitudinal studies covering at least 5 years suggest that gains in decoding are sustained, whereas effects on reading comprehension have either not been studied or produced equivocal results. The present study followed up the reading development of 209 Finland Swedish students from kindergarten until Grade 9, half of whom participated in an 8-month phonological intervention in kindergarten. The intervention group outperformed the control group in both word reading and reading comprehension in Grades 1 through 9. However, albeit statistically significant, the differences at the group level were small. The main result was a clear-cut difference in both skills among readers at risk belonging to the lowest 25% in foundational skills at the beginning of kindergarten. In Grade 6, altogether 60% of the nontrained readers at risk still belonged to the lowest quartile in reading comprehension as opposed to 24% of their peers in the intervention group. The pattern was repeated in Grade 9, with trained readers at risk performing at the level of nontrained mainstream readers.


1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence J. O'Shea ◽  
Paul T. Sindelar ◽  
Dorothy J. O'Shea

The failure of some researchers to find improved reading comprehension with increased fluency may result from the assumption that readers automatically shift attention to comprehension when fluency is established. Research on cuing readers to a purpose in reading suggests that a simple cue about comprehension may be sufficient to prompt this attentional shift. In this study, the effects of repeated readings and attentional cues on measures of reading fluency and comprehension were examined. Thirty third graders read separate passages one, three, and seven times following cues to attend to either reading rate or meaning. After the final reading of each passage, the students retold as much of the story as they could. Fluency and proportion of story propositions retold were analyzed in repeated measures analyses of variance. Significant main effects for both repeated readings and attentional cues were obtained on both dependent measures. Thus, both fluency and comprehension increased as the number of repeated readings increased. In addition, readers cued to fluency read faster but comprehended less than those cued to comprehension. These results suggest that increasing fluency is a less efficient means of improving comprehension than presenting cues about comprehension.


2013 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Aguilera-Jiménez ◽  
Carmen Delgado ◽  
Alfonso Luque ◽  
Francisco J. Moreno-Pérez ◽  
Isabel. R. Rodríguez-Ortiz ◽  
...  

AbstractThe aims of this study are to assess L1 and L2 variables that influence the reading acquisition of students of Moroccan origin in the South of Spain and compare their reading ability with native Spanish-speaking children. Participants were 38 students of Moroccan origin and 37 native Spanish-speaking students from the same classes. We used an oral vocabulary test and a reading comprehension test, which taps lexical, semantic, and syntactic reading processes, and reading fluency. The results indicated that immigrant students differed from native Spanish-speaking students in word reading, reading fluency, and the use of punctuation marks, but there were no significant differences in reading comprehension. In native Spanish-speaking students, reading comprehension correlated significantly with oral vocabulary and the other reading processes, but in the students of Moroccan origin, only receptive oral vocabulary in L2 correlated with the use of punctuation marks. Being in schools with educational resources specifically aimed at helping the Moroccan pupils was associated with a higher level of word reading in immigrant students.


2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pauline B. Low ◽  
Linda S. Siegel

The present study examined the relative role played by three cognitive processes — phonological processing, verbal working memory, syntactic awareness — in understanding the reading comprehension performance among 884 native English (L1) speakers and 284 English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) speakers in sixth-grade (mean age: 11.43 years). The performance of both groups of speakers were comparable on measures of word reading, word reading fluency, phonological awareness, phonological decoding fluency and verbal working memory. However, the ESL speakers lagged behind L1 speakers in terms of syntactic awareness. This study also emphasizes the importance of the three cognitive processes in establishing a common model of reading comprehension across English L1 and ESL reading.


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