Factors and Problems Affecting Reading Comprehension of Undergraduate Students

This study aims to investigate factors affecting reading comprehension problems of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-year students of English for International Communication (EIC) at Rajamagala University of Technology Lanna Tak. The study's objectives were 1) to examine the reading comprehension problems found most in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year EIC students; and 2) to investigate the main factors influencing the reading problems that in turn, greatly affected the reading competence of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-year students of EIC and how they cope with these problems. In this study, 77 EIC students demonstrated reading problems and factors which were adopted from Manutsawee (2015). The results showed that these students reflected different perceptions related to their reading problems and the factors that had an impact on their reading problems. The reading problems for the 2nd year EIC students were related to grammar, vocabulary, understanding, and personal experience with an average of 3.50, 3.43, 3.25, and 3.25, respectively. Meanwhile, the 3rd year students showed that they had difficulty with vocabulary (3.19) and grammar (3.10), with understanding and personal experience having the same average score (3.00). Finally, the 4th year students' reading problems were in the area of vocabulary (3.50), understanding and grammar (3.25), and personal experience (3.14). Moreover, the factor that affected EIC students' reading problems the most was identified as follows. The 2nd year students perceived students' attitude as the most influential factor at 3.91. However, the 3rd year students thought classroom teaching had the greatest impact on their reading problems at 3.79. Finally, the student's attitude was also the most influential factor, at 3.91, for the 4th year students.

Contextualized English Reading Proficiency Toolkit (CERPT): Enhance Learners’ English Reading Proficiency

The Department of Education has introduced numerous intervention and remediation programs to address the reading needs of learners. Despite these, data showed that majority of the learners still have reading problems when they reach higher grade levels. Henceforth, the study experimented on the innovation – Contextualized English Reading Proficiency Toolkit (CERPT) to help the learners of Kibacania Elementary School improved their reading ability level. All the pupils were exposed to CERPT. A pre-experimental research design was employed in this study. Findings revealed that the learners’ reading ability level enhanced from frustration to instructional. There was a significant difference in the learners’ reading ability levels before and after exposure to CERPT. Thus, the study commends the use of CERPT to help in the improvement of the learners’ reading ability level.

Chapter Phonological Coding in Visual Language Processing - Brysbaert in Snowling et al (2022)

In this chapter I summarize the evidence that phonology is involved in visual word recognition and text reading. This is even the case in groups with suboptimal access to spoken language (such as people born deaf and students learning a second language in school). The phonological code helps to make reading fluent, as suggested by the finding that reading problems (dyslexia) are often associated with deficits in phonology. This should come as no surprise, given that silent reading is a recent skill, which mankind added to its spoken communication developed over 2 million years.

Childhood reading problems and cognitive ageing across mid to later life

BackgroundLittle research has investigated long-term associations of childhood reading with cognitive ageing. The aim of this study was to test longitudinal associations between childhood reading problems and cognitive function from mid-adulthood (age 43) to early old age (age 69), and whether associations were mediated by education.MethodsData were from the MRC National Survey of Health and Development, a prospective population-based birth cohort. Reading problems were measured at age 11 using a reading test. Verbal memory and processing speed were measured at ages 43, 53, 60–64 and 69 and Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE) was administered at age 69. Linear mixed models and path analyses were used to test: (1) associations between reading problems and verbal memory and processing speed trajectories; (2) associations between reading problems and ACE-III scores; (3) whether associations were mediated by education.ResultsReading problems were associated with poorer verbal memory at intercept but not rate of decline (N=1726), and were not associated with processing speed intercept or decline (N=1730). There were higher rates of scores below ACE-III clinical thresholds (<82 and <88) in people with reading problems compared with those without. Reading problems were associated with poorer total ACE-III scores and all domain scores at age 69 (N=1699). Associations were partly mediated by education.ConclusionReading problems in childhood were associated with poorer cognitive function in early old age, and associations were partly mediated by education.

Facial speech processing in children with and without dyslexia

What role does the presence of facial speech play for children with dyslexia? Current literature proposes two distinctive claims. One claim states that children with dyslexia make less use of visual information from the mouth during speech processing due to a deficit in recruitment of audiovisual areas. An opposing claim suggests that children with dyslexia are in fact reliant on such information in order to compensate for auditory/phonological impairments. The current paper aims at directly testing these contrasting hypotheses (here referred to as “mouth insensitivity” versus “mouth reliance”) in school-age children with and without dyslexia, matched on age and listening comprehension. Using eye tracking, in Study 1, we examined how children look at the mouth across conditions varying in speech processing demands. The results did not indicate significant group differences in looking at the mouth. However, correlation analyses suggest potentially important distinctions within the dyslexia group: those children with dyslexia who are better readers attended more to the mouth while presented with a person’s face in a phonologically demanding condition. In Study 2, we examined whether the presence of facial speech cues is functionally beneficial when a child is encoding written words. The results indicated lack of overall group differences on the task, although those with less severe reading problems in the dyslexia group were more accurate when reading words that were presented with articulatory facial speech cues. Collectively, our results suggest that children with dyslexia differ in their “mouth reliance” versus “mouth insensitivity,” a profile that seems to be related to the severity of their reading problems.

Reading problems and their connection with visual search and attention: The search for a cause continues

Attention has been hypothesized to act as a sequential gating mechanism for the orderly processing of letters in words. These same visuo-attentional processes are assumed to partake in some but not all visual search tasks. In the current study, 60 adults with varying degrees of reading abilities, ranging from expert readers to severely impaired dyslexic readers, completed an attentionally demanding visual conjunction search task thought to heavily rely on the dorsal visual stream. A visual feature search task served as an internal control. According to the dorsal view of dyslexia, reading problems should go hand in hand with specific problems in visual conjunction search – particularly elevated conjunction search slopes (time per search item) – which would be interpreted as a problem with visual attention. Results showed that reading problems were associated with slower visual search, especially conjunction search. However, problems with reading were not associated with increased conjunction search slopes but instead with increased conjunction search intercepts, traditionally not interpreted as reflecting attentional processes. Our data are hard to reconcile with hypothesized problems in dyslexia with the serial moving of an attentional spotlight across a visual scene or a page of text.