Acoustic Features of Oral Reading Prosody and the Relation With Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Taiwanese Children

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.

EXPLORING THE EFFECTS OF IMPLEMENTING GUIDED READING APPROACH TO ENHANCE THE READING PROFICIENCY OF ENGLISH SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Guided reading (GR) approach has been shown to have positive effect on reading fluency and comprehension. However, most studies on GR have focused on primary schools, specifically the Foundation Phase. Therefore, this study employed the GR approach to examine its possible effects on the reading proficiencies of Grade 9 English Second Language (ESL) learners in Gauteng province. Social and cognitive constructivism underpinned the study, which employed action research to determine the possible effects of implementing GR on the reading proficiencies of a sample of eight Grade 9 ESL learners who were purposively selected to participate in this study. Data were collected through interviews, observations, and reflection cards, oral and written reading tests. Results indicated that GR approach had caused a significant improvement in these learners’ reading fluency and comprehension because of collaborative learning and scaffolding. In addition, GR also developed a sense of ownership in their learning, a sense of community and innovative and inquisitive minds. The study recommends that learners who struggle with reading be identified early, and GR intervention strategies be implemented and monitored. Every school needs to have a reading policy and the Education Department should ensure that it is implemented and monitored. Keywords: guided reading, reading proficiencies, reading fluency, reading comprehension, second language

The Profile of Students' English Linguistic Intelligence: A Case Study at SMP Islam De Green Camp Tanjungpinang

This study aimed to know how is the profile of students’ English linguistic intelligence of rhetoric at SMP Islam De Green Camp Tanjungpinang. The subject in this research is the eighth grade that consisted of 21 female students. This study is based on Gardner’s theory (1998). A research design in this research is descriptive qualitative research with analysis technique. The setting of place in this research is at SMP Islam De Green Camp Tanjungpinang. The instruments in collecting the data are interviews and speaking tests. Based on the instruments, the researcher assesses students’ answers by a rubric that consisted of grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. The result shows that the total score is 61.9 and from the criteria of the rhetoric on speaking, the students’ English linguistic intelligence of rhetoric at SMP Islam De Green Camp Tanjungpinang is good.

Word- and Text-Level Reading Difficulties in Students With Dyslexia

The purpose of this study was to examine whether group-based differences exist in word- and text-level reading in a clinical sample of students with dyslexia, and to shed light on the cognitive processes supporting these essential skills. Second- through seventh-grade students were administered a battery of standardized measures of cognitive processing skills (phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming [RAN], and verbal short-term memory), word reading skills (decoding and word identification), oral text reading (fluency and comprehension), and silent text reading (fluency and comprehension). Word- and text-level reading skills were used to place students into the following groups: text fluency deficit, globally impaired, and partially remediated. Results replicated the existence of a text fluency deficit group. Reader group differences in terms of cognitive processing skills were less pronounced than expected, with only phonological awareness differentiating among them. Phonological awareness and RAN emerged as the important contributors to reading skill, though their relative contributions varied across wordand text-level measures. Together, these results point to importance of considering text-level reading processes across modality in both research and clinical contexts.

Model Teachers or Model Students? A Comparison of Video Modelling Interventions for Improving Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Children with Autism

Video modelling (VM) interventions have been used to improve the fluency of individuals with learning disabilities and reading difficulties; this study aimed to replicate these findings with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) students. Four children with ASD (aged between 8 and 15) experienced two VM interventions, across 10 sessions, during an alternating treatments design: VM using a teacher model, and feedforward video self-modelling (FFVSM) where the student acted as the model. For two participants, FFVSM was found to be an effective intervention but overall, results for both interventions were inconsistent with previous research. Talking Mats Interviews were used to include these individuals within the social validation process of behavioural research.

The Factors Affecting Students’ English Speaking Ability at Politeknik LP3i Medan

This study deals with the factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. It uses qualitative research design with a single case study to gain an understanding on this study. It is conducted descriptively. This study aims to know the factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. The subjects were 20 students (males and females) of Politeknik LP3I Medan. The instruments in this study were observation and interview. The theories of Brown (1994: 4) are divided some factors which affect speaking, they are Chronological Age, Grammar, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Comprehension. There are three factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. They are fluency, vocabulary and English environment and an additional factor that found by researcher as a new insight in this research is English environment. Analysis of data clearly indicates that the students are using English at campus every day.This study deals with the factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. It uses qualitative research design with a single case study to gain an understanding on this study. It is conducted descriptively. This study aims to know the factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. The subjects were 20 students (males and females) of Politeknik LP3I Medan. The instruments in this study were observation and interview. The theories of Brown (1994: 4) are divided some factors which affect speaking, they are Chronological Age, Grammar, Vocabulary, Fluency, and Comprehension. There are three factors affecting students’ English speaking ability at Politeknik LP3I Medan. They are fluency, vocabulary and English environment and an additional factor that found by researcher as a new insight in this research is English environment. Analysis of data clearly indicates that the students are using English at campus every day.

Text Complexity Modulates Cross-Linguistic Sentence Integration in L2 Reading

Cross-linguistic influences (CLI) in first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) reading have been widely demonstrated in experimental paradigms with adults at the word and sentence levels. However, less is known about CLI in adolescents during naturalistic text reading. Through eye-tracking and behavioral measures, this study investigated expository reading in functionally English monolingual and Spanish (L1) - English (L2) bilingual adolescents. In particular, we examined the role of L1 (Spanish) sentence integration skills among the bilingual adolescents when L2 school texts contained challenging syntactic structures, such as complex clauses, elaborated noun phrases, and anaphoric references. Results of generalized multilevel linear regression modeling demonstrated CLI in both offline comprehension and online eye-tracking measures that were modulated by school text characteristics. We found a positive relationship (i.e., facilitation) between L1 sentence integration skills and L2 English text comprehension, especially for passages with greater clause complexity. Similar main, but not modulatory, effects of sentence integration skill were found in online eye-tracking measures. Overall, both language groups appeared to draw upon similar reading component skills to support reading fluency and comprehension when component skills were measured only in English. However, differential patterns of association across languages became evident when those skills were measured in both L1 and L2. Taken together, our findings suggest that bilingual adolescents’ engagement of cross-linguistic resources in expository reading varies dynamically according to both language-specific semantic knowledge and language-general sentence integration skills, and is modulated by text features, such as syntactic complexity.