The Effects of Inference Instruction on the Reading Comprehension of English Learners With Reading Comprehension Difficulties

Inference skill is one of the most important predictors of reading comprehension. Still, there is little rigorous research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension. There is no research investigating the effects of inference instruction on reading comprehension for English learners with reading comprehension difficulties. The current study investigated the effects of small-group inference instruction on the inference generation and reading comprehension of sixth- and seventh-grade students who were below-average readers ( M = 86.7, SD = 8.1). Seventy-seven percent of student participants were designated limited English proficient. Participants were randomly assigned to 24, 40-min sessions of the inference instruction intervention ( n = 39) or to business-as-usual English language arts instruction ( n = 39). Membership in the treatment condition statistically significantly predicted higher outcome score on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test Reading Comprehension subtest ( d = 0.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.16, 1.03]), but not on the other measures of inference skill.

Fostering Comprehension Monitoring in below Average Readers through Self-Instruction Training

The benefits of self-instruction training on the comprehension monitoring performances of below average and above average readers were examined. Fourth- and fifth-grade students were tested on their ability to detect between-sentence contradictions in short expository texts after receiving either three sessions of self-instruction or equivalent didactic instruction. Additionally, generalization was assessed on text passages different from those employed during training and on postreading monitoring measures. A significant self-instruction effect was found for both reading ability levels on all of these measures. Moreover, the below average readers performed at a level commensurate with their higher ability peers on the transfer measures. It was concluded that self-instruction training was successful in enhancing student's regulatory processing during reading.

Children's Monitoring of Another's Comprehension: Effects of Reading Ability and Context

Previous research has shown that children do not monitor their own comprehension very well when reading. Theories have been advanced which emphasize the roles of capabilities and strategies in inhibiting monitoring; at least one crucial factor is that children often do not perceive that errors are possible in text. This paper describes the development of a task, the inserted cloze task, in which children are required to judge the correctness of another child's comprehension. This task elicits comprehension monitoring quite easily. An empirical study of above and below average readers in Years 3 and 4 is reported. Their performance indicates that use of prior context within the sentence poses little difficulty for either group of readers. However use of within-sentence following context is most likely in simple texts, and is the only measure which differentiates the better readers from the less able. These results demonstrate that comprehension can be elicited from even less skilled readers, but that the amount of context which must be considered is an important factor. A possible hierarchy of comprehension skills is discussed, and suggestions for the teaching of these skills are presented. It is concluded that the inserted cloze task would be useful in teaching comprehension monitoring.

Use of Conjunctions in Expository Texts by Skilled and Less Skilled Readers

The present study was designed to shed light on whether some of the problems that average and below average readers have in comprehending expository texts stem primarily from lack of familiarity with conjunctions or a tendency to ignore these markers. On the basis of Gates-MacGinitie reading comprehension scores, 93 students in grades 5 and 7 were classified into high, medium, and low reading levels. All students read short expository texts under four conjunction manipulation conditions and answered comprehension questions. The conjunction manipulations within the texts were designed for examination of the roles of analyzed linguistic knowledge and cognitive control in comprehension. Analyses indicated that all groups benefited from the highlighting of explicit conjunctions. The comprehension of interpropositional relationships by average and below average readers was enhanced when explicit conjunctions were available, relative to an implicit condition. Furthermore, the deep processing manipulation (conjunction multiple-choice cloze) actually hindered, rather than facilitated, comprehension for all students. Data on appropriate selection of conjunctions in this condition revealed less knowledge of these important cohesive indicators among average and below average readers than above average readers. Together with the comprehension findings, we conclude that average and below average readers exhibit problems with both knowledge of conjunctions and control over their use in comprehending expository text.