"The role of instruction in learning to read: Preventing reading failure in at-risk children": Erratum.

Reports errors in the original article by B. R. Foorman et al (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1998, Vol 90[1], 37–55). On page 39, Table 1 incorrectly lists the curriculum of the second-grade classroom in School 3 as IC-R; the correct curriculum of the second-grade classroom in School 3 is EC. Table 1 incorrectly indicates 3 classrooms in School 4; there are 4 classrooms in School 4. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1998-00166-004.) First and 2nd graders (N?=?285) receiving Title 1 services received 1 of 3 kinds of classroom reading programs: direct instruction in letter–sound correspondences practiced in decodable text (direct code); less direct instruction in systematic sound–spelling patterns embedded in connected text (embedded code); and implicit instruction in the alphabetic code while reading connected text (implicit code). Children receiving direct code instruction improved in word reading at a faster rate and had higher word-recognition skills than those receiving implicit code instruction. Effects of instructional group on word recognition skills were moderated by initial levels of phonological processing and were most apparent in children with poorer initial phonological processing skills. Group differences in.... (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preventing reading failure in young children with phonological processing disabilities: Group and individual responses to instruction.

The relative effectiveness of 3 instructional approaches for the prevention of reading disabilities in young children with weak phonological skills was examined. Two programs varying in the intensity of instruction in phonemic decoding were contrasted with each other and with a 3rd approach that supported the children's regular classroom reading program. The children were provided with 88 hr of one-to-one instruction beginning the second semester of kindergarten and extending through 2nd grade. The most phonemically explicit condition produced the strongest growth in word level reading skills, but there were no differences between groups in reading comprehension. Word level skills of children in the strongest group were in the middle of the average range. Growth curve analyses showed that beginning phonological skills, home background, and ratings of classroom behavior all predicted unique variance in growth of word level skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive-linguistic functioning and learning to read in preschoolers.

11 4-yr-olds were taught to read with Book 1 of Fuller's Ball-Stick-Bird System, while 12 control Ss received reading-related activities with Book 1. Before and after the intervention phase of 13 wks, all Ss were given a task which involved remembering a sequence of picture items (short-term memory functioning) and a task which involved sensitivity to the syllabic and phonemic segments of spoken words (metalinguistic functioning). There was a reciprocal relationship between reading instruction and metalinguistic functioning but not between reading instruction and short-term memory functioning. Theoretical implications for the concept of reading readiness and several practical implications for the teaching and assessment of beginning reading are discussed. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Black English phonology and learning to read.

Tested the hypothesis that phonological differences between standard and Black English interfere with the ability of beginning readers to learn sound–spelling correspondences in reading. 15 1st graders in each of 3 groups—low-socioeconomic status (SES), Black and White and middle-SES White—were asked to match spoken and written words. Mismatches were created by deleting final spoken consonants or by deleting initial consonants. The hypothesis that Black-English-speaking children of low SES would tend to make a match when final spoken consonants were deleted, whereas the White children of low and middle SES would not, was not supported. Decoding errors revealed that the 3 groups differed in word-attack strategies. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The importance of arousal as a motivational factor in learning to read.

This paper emphasizes the recognition of the fact that while people tend to maintain a preferred level of arousal or tension, they often expose themselves to new and complex stimulation which seems to have no external reward other than that of yielding new knowledge. This intrinsic interest in novelty and complexity is termed curiosity and can be harnessed to motivate learning to read. Teachers must learn to recognize the preferred level of arousal of each child as well as the level at which he functions most effectively. They must control the irrelevant and distracting properties of the environment in order to gain and maintain the attention of the child. Finally they must become skilled at introducing the learning materials in a manner which will maintain a constant flow of interesting stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal study of phonological processing skills in children learning to read in a second language.

English-speaking children (N?=?122) in French immersion classes participated in a 1-year longitudinal study of the relation between phonological awareness and reading achievement in both languages. Participants were administered measures of word decoding and of phonological awareness in French and in English as well as measures of cognitive ability, speeded naming, and pseudoword repetition in English only. The relation of phonological awareness in French to reading achievement in each of the languages was equivalent to that in English. These relations remained significant after partialing out the influences of speeded naming and pseudoword repetition. Phonological awareness in both languages was specifically associated with 1-year increments in decoding skill in French. These findings support the transfer of phonological awareness skills across alphabetic languages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental models of learning to read Chinese words.

What is the nature of learning to read Chinese across grade levels? This study tested 199 kindergartners, 172 second graders, and 165 fifth graders on 12 different tasks purportedly tapping constructs representing phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic processing, and subcharacter processing. Confirmatory factor analyses comparing alternative models of these 4 constituents of Chinese word reading revealed different patterns of metalinguistic underpinnings of children's word recognition across grade levels: The best-fitting model for kindergartners represented a print–nonprint dichotomy of constructs. In contrast, 2nd graders showed a fine-grained sensitivity to all 4 hypothesized constructs. Finally, the best-fitting model for 5th graders consisted of a phonological sensitivity construct and a broad lexical morphological–orthographic processing construct. Findings suggest that Hong Kong Chinese children progress from a basic understanding of print versus nonprint to a diversified sensitivity to varied word-reading skills, to a focus on meaning-based word recognition, to the relative exclusion of phonological sensitivity in more advanced readers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Phonological skills are important in learning to read Chinese.

A4-year longitudinal study was conducted to examine the relationship between Chinese children's phonological skills and their success in reading. Initially, 100 Hong Kong Chinese children were tested on visual and phonological skills at the age of 3, before they could read. The findings showed that prereading phonological skills significantly predicted the children's reading performance in Chinese 2 and 3 years later, even after controlling for the effects of age, IQ, and mother's education. The main reason for this relationship is that phonological knowledge helps children to use the phonetic component in Chinese characters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The double-deficit hypothesis and difficulties in learning to read a regular orthography.

In 2 large longitudinal studies, we selected 3 subgroups of German-speaking children (phonological awareness deficit, naming-speed deficit, double deficit) at the beginning of school and assessed reading and spelling performance about 3 years later. Quite different from findings with English-speaking children, phonological awareness deficits did not affect phonological coding in word recognition but did affect orthographic spelling and foreign-word reading. Naming-speed deficits did affect reading fluency, orthographic spelling, and foreign-word reading. Apparently, in the context of a regular orthography and a synthetic phonics teaching approach, early phases of literacy acquisition (particularly the acquisition of phonological coding) are less affected by early phonological awareness deficits than by later phases that depend on the build up of orthographic memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of partial information in learning to read Chinese characters.

This study investigated whether children can use partial information to learn the pronunciations of Chinese characters. Participants were 49 2nd graders and 56 4th graders whose home language was Mandarin and 75 2nd graders and 93 4th graders whose home language was Cantonese. Children had 2 trials to learn the Mandarin pronunciations of 28 unfamiliar compound characters of 4 types. Children learned to pronounce more regular characters, which contain full information about pronunciation, and more tone-different and onset-different characters, which contain partial information about pronunciation, than characters with unknown phonetic components, which contain no information about pronunciation. Mandarin-speaking children learned more pronunciations than Cantonese-speaking children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Teaching children to read using a computer.

Describes the computer-assisted instruction program in initial reading at Stanford University. It consists of 8 parts or strands that help the student learn the letters of the alphabet, a sight-word vocabulary of 700 words, spelling patterns within words, phonetic structures, and comprehension of semantic categories and sentences. The program has evolved through 8 yrs of student use, and the present research emphasizes development of optimal strategies for allocation of teaching time among instructional procedures and among students. The use of these allocation algorithms within the reading program is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Embedding reading comprehension training in content-area instruction.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of comprehension training embedded in a program that taught science content to 2nd graders. The program included instruction about the structure of compare-contrast expository text, emphasizing clue words, generic questions, graphic organizers, and the close analysis of well-structured text exemplars. This program was compared with a program that focused on the science content but included no compare-contrast training as well as with a no-instruction control. Regular classroom teachers (14 from 4 schools), randomly assigned to treatment, provided the instruction; 215 students (7-8 years old) participated. The study replicated acquisition and transfer effects found in an earlier study, that is, transfer to compare-contrast text with content related and unrelated to the instructional content (with no loss in the amount of science content acquired). The program also led to better performance on written and oral response measures and on 1 of the 2 measures involving authentic (less well-structured) compare-contrast text. These findings support and extend previous findings that explicit instruction in comprehension is effective as early as the primary-grade level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in the manifestation of a phonological deficit in dyslexic children learning to read a regular orthography.

In a longitudinal study, the development of phonological processing abilities was studied in 19 dyslexic, 17 weak, and 19 normal readers learning to read in Dutch. Among other abilities, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming were assessed in kindergarten, in 1st grade, and in 6th grade. Dyslexic and weak readers had impairments in rapid naming from kindergarten through 6th grade. Their impairments in phonological awareness at the level of phonemes became manifest in 1st grade and tended to disappear at the end of primary school. However, in a second cross-sectional study, including 13 dyslexic and 25 normal readers, dyslexic children's awareness of phonemes was hampered when task demands increased. The various manifestations of a phonological deficit follow distinct developmental pathways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrated learning: explicit strategies and their role in problem-solving instruction for students with learning disabilities

This study investigated the effectiveness of an explicit strategy as a means of linking facts, concepts, and problem solving in an unfamiliar domain of learning. Participants were 37 secondary students with learning disabilities. All students were taught health facts and concepts, which they then applied to problem-solving exercises presented through computer-simulation games. Students in the experimental group were taught an explicit strategy for solving the problems; the comparison group was given supportive feedback and encouraged to induce their own strategies. The explicit strategy group performed significantly better on two transfer measures, including videotaped problem-solving exercises.     

Short-term memory processes in children with reading and arithmetic learning disabilities.

Examined the role of phonemic coding in short-term memory in 45 children with a reading disability, 38 children with a specific arithmetic disability, and 89 normal children, as measured by the Wide Range Achievement Test. Ss, aged 7–13 yrs, were administered a series of tasks that involved the visual or auditory presentation of rhyming and nonrhyming letters and either an oral or a written response. Younger Ss (7–8 yrs) with a reading disability did not show any difference between the recall of nonrhyming and rhyming letters, whereas normal Ss of the same age did. Older reading-disabled Ss (aged 9–23 yrs), like their normal counterparts, had significantly poorer recall of rhyming as opposed to nonrhyming letters. However, their overall levels of performance were significantly lower than normals. The same pattern was found with Ss with arithmetic disabilities for the visual presentation of stimuli. For the auditory presentation of stimuli, the performance of Ss with arithmetic disabilities resembled that of normals, except at the youngest ages. Whereas a deficiency in phonological coding may characterize younger children with learning disabilities, older children with learning disabilities appear to use a phonemic code but have a more general deficit in short-term memory. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What's meaning got to do with it: The role of vocabulary in word reading and reading comprehension.

There is at present no clear consensus as to the nature of the relations between oral vocabulary and specific literacy skills. The present study distinguished between vocabulary breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to better explain the role of oral vocabulary in various reading skills. A sample of 60 typically developing Grade 4 students was assessed on measures of receptive and expressive vocabulary breadth, depth of vocabulary knowledge, decoding, visual word recognition, and reading comprehension. Concurrent analyses revealed that each distinct reading skill was related to the vocabulary measures in a unique manner. Receptive vocabulary breadth was the only oral vocabulary variable that predicted decoding performance after controlling for age and nonverbal intelligence. In contrast, expressive vocabulary breadth predicted visual word recognition, whereas depth of vocabulary knowledge predicted reading comprehension. The results are discussed in terms of interrelations between phonological and semantic factors in the acquisition of distinct reading skills. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adapting instruction to the cognitive demands of learning to program.

This study investigated how instructional practices influence what students learn in Pascal programming classes. The study contrasted 8 introductory and 8 Advanced Placement (AP) level courses because goals of teachers, classroom activities, and assigned tasks differ. Introductory students primarily learn syntax and AP students learn to plan and debug complex problems. These differing cognitive demands would seem to require different instructional practices. In order to establish instructional practices, students reported teaching strategies, course structure, and classroom resources. To demonstrate programming proficiency, students modified and analyzed a computer program. Programming proficiency varied as a function of instructional practices and class level. Introductory students benefited from direct instruction, and AP students performed better with less direct guidance and more opportunities for autonomy. Characteristics of effective programming instruction vary depending on the cognitive demands of courses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceived learning in relation to student evaluation of university instruction.

A continuing problem with student evaluation of college instruction is the replicated correlation between course ratings and student grades. The finding has been variously interpreted as an indication of validity, as a grading leniency effect, or as an indirect result of student selection variables. In this article, I show that a considerably larger portion of rating variance can be explained by students' subjective assessment of learning than by actual course grades. Summative data from 50 sections showed that perceived learning correlated .88 with course evaluations and .86 with instructor evaluations. These results are viewed as support for the validity hypothesis. The statistics were not reduced by partialling out the effects of anticipated letter grade, which preserved the idea that leniency or student characteristics could account for at least a small portion of the rating-grade effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)