Measuring Reading Comprehension

Secondary school students are reportedly deficient in English language reading comprehension, and this partly accounts for the poor results recorded in English language at public examinations. Studies indicate that some students really have low interest in reading, just as a number of researchers have queried availability of reading materials for students’ poor achievement in reading comprehension. The argument is that availability and use of appropriate instructional resources will tend to facilitate effective learning in schools. Thus, the study examined students’ interest in reading and availability of reading materials as they relate to and predict students’ achievement in English reading comprehension in Lagelu Local Government Area (LGA) of Oyo State, Nigeria. Survey research design of the correlational type was adopted for the study, which was guided by four research questions. The study population comprised SSS II students in this LGA. Five secondary schools were randomly selected; and a simple random technique was used to select 40 students from each school, thus, a total of 200 participants in the study. Three properly validated instruments – English Reading Comprehension Achievement Test, Students’ Interest in Reading Scale, and Availability and Utilization of English Reading Materials’ Inventory – were used to gather data, which was analyzed using frequency count, percentage, Pearson product moment correlation and multiple regressions. Results show that the current level of students’ achievement in English reading comprehension is generally low. There is no significant relationship between students’ interest in reading and academic achievement (r=0.04, p>0.05). There is a statistically significant and positive relationship between reading materials and students’ achievement (r=0.14, p<0.05). A linear relationship exists among the variables in the study, R=0.14, R 2 =0.02 and Adj. R 2 =0.01. However, availability of reading materials [β=0.14, t(200)=1.93, p<0.05] is a potent and significant predictor of achievement in English reading comprehension. The study concludes that students’ interest in reading and availability of reading materials are significantly related to students’ achievement in English reading comprehension, though only reading materials could substantially predict students’ achievement in reading comprehension. Governments should increase reading materials in schools. There should be adequate and regular supervision of the use of instructional materials in all schools to enhance effective teaching and learning towards boosting students’ achievement. Teachers should always try their best to make use of available instructional materials, or improvise, to make lessons more interesting. Principals should provide teachers with enabling environment for the use of available instructional materials to make learning more meaningful. Article visualizations:

The objective of this paper is to know how to teach collaborative strategic reading and teaching reading by using CSR. This paper uses descriptive qualitative method by searching any references to accomplish this analysis. The data were collected through observation, teaching learning process and evaluation. This program contains the planning, how to implement the students’ reading comprehension through Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR). The post-test was a mean to evaluate the action conducted in this field study. The teacher uses collaborative strategic reading to get the goal of teaching. In general, the results of this field study show that teaching English reading comprehension through collaborative strategic reading has advantages, disadvantages, and impacts: (1) The advantages are improving students’ ability in reading comprehension and increasing students’ English learning motivation, (2) The disadvantages are some group`s members lack contribute to the activity and seriousness is lacking, (3) The impacts are students are working and learning together and also collaborative strategic reading allows students to be more engaged and involved in the learning process, instead of being just passive learners. K eywords: Teaching, Reading, Collaborative Strategic Reading

This study described and analyzed the reading strategies and interlanguage of EFL learners. Four Japanese subjects were tasked to read aloud, think aloud, and make comments to two short expository articles. Recorded oral reading activities, informal interviews, observations, and teachers’ progress reports were used as instruments. Results revealed that monitoring strategies predominated among the reading strategies employed. Furthermore, first language phonological transfer evident in the phonological processes such as substitution, deletion, and addition of sounds were observed in the utterances. Consequently, Nihongo as the first language of the subjects affected their ability to accomplish their oral reading tasks with ease. These strategies and evidences of interlanguage reflected EFL learners’ ways in understanding and articulating reading materials in English as a foreign language by using electronic dictionaries and asking the teachers for verification.

The validity of two measures of English reading comprehension was examined across three different groups of English language learners (ELLs; 64 Portuguese, 66 Spanish and 65 Cantonese). All three groups were achieving within the average range in second grade. An exploratory principal components analysis of reading skills was carried out to determine which skills were related to two commonly used tests of reading comprehension, the Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery’s test of Passage Comprehension (WLPB-PC; Woodcock, 1991) and the Gray Oral Reading Test-4 (GORT-4; Wiederholt & Bryant, 2001). The factor solutions were different for the three language groups but showed many similarities in that the GORT-4 and WLPB-R tests of reading comprehension fell on the same factor within each group. Hierarchical regression analyses examining relationships among vocabulary, decoding and reading comprehension showed that language group membership did not significantly predict performance on either measure of reading comprehension. Differences that arose are likely due to issues with task validity and not ELL status. Limitations and future research are discussed.

SummaryThe present study analyzed the joint predictive role of verbal working memory (WM), verbal short‐term memory (STM), fluid intelligence, and intelligence mindset in reading comprehension, controlling for prior reading comprehension performance, in typically developing Spanish‐speaking school‐aged children. A sample of 83 children aged 9–10 years old were evaluated at fourth grade of primary school, with measures of verbal WM, verbal STM, fluid intelligence, intelligence mindset and reading comprehension; then with the measure of reading comprehension after 1 year, during fifth grade. Results showed that controlling for prior performance, verbal WM and fluid intelligence significantly predicted reading comprehension after 1 year, whereas verbal STM and intelligence mindset did not make a significant contribution. These results indicate that when jointly considered, a higher level of verbal WM and fluid intelligence in fourth grade is related to a better performance in reading comprehension in fifth grade. Possible explanations and implications of these results are discussed.

While reading activity is a complex phenomenon, recent research on reading strategies has not provided comprehensive explanation of the role and perceptions of teachers regarding appropriate reading strategies helping students with learning difficulties. This paper is aimed to provide a sketch of the teacher's views and strategies to facilitate students with appropriate reading strategies. EFL teachers have different kinds of reading strategies applied in the classrooms. This study has found that three groups of teachers teaching in excellent accredited public schools, good accredited public school and very good Islamic private school use various strategies during the teaching of reading. Teachers' perceptions on the teaching of reading strategies are closely related to their readiness with knowledge about reading strategies, students' reading problems and their belief. This study suggests that EFL teachers and future researchers need to continuously investigate effective teaching of reading skill in relation to students' reading strategies.

Students in an undergraduate human development course (N = 215) participated in a brief assessment of their reading (comprehension level, reading speed, comprehension rate) and multiple-choice test-taking skills on the second day of class. Students first read a one-page, 400-word passage unrelated to the course and then answered 10 multiple-choice questions over the passage without referring back to the passage. To control for test-taking skills, students also answered 10 multiple-choice questions from an equivalent passage they did not read. Videotapes of student participation permitted individual assessment of time required to complete each phase. Subsequently, during the semester students took five 50-item multiple-choice exams over the major units in the course. Results showed that the brief reading comprehension measures predicted multiple-choice exam performance and that comprehension level accounted for most of the variance in exam performance. Discussion focuses on enhancing brief reading assessment procedures by including direct measures of comprehension. Keywords: Reading Comprehension, Reading Comprehension Rate, Test-taking, College Grades ********** Several measures predict success in college courses, including measures of critical thinking, generic vocabulary, background knowledge, and reading comprehension (Behrman & Street, 2005; Jackson, 2005; Williams & Eggert, 2002; Williams, Oliver, Allin, Winn, & Booher, 2003a; Williams, Oliver, Allin, Winn, & Booher, 2003b; Williams, Oliver, & Stockdale, 2004; Williams & Worth, 2002). Not all course activities require high-level critical thinking, an advanced vocabulary, or background knowledge, but virtually all course activities require student reading of course material (Behrman & Street, 2005). Thus, the current study focused on reading comprehension measures as predictors of success in a large undergraduate course. Although reading comprehension is predictive of student success (Jackson, 2005), reading speed or fluency may also be related to comprehension levels, effort required to read, and reinforcement for reading (Skinner, Pappas, & Davis, 2005). Researchers have measured reading fluency by timing students' oral reading and scoring word accuracy. These data are then used to calculate words correct per minute (WCM), which has been shown to correlate with reading comprehension and other reading skills as measured via standardized, norm-referenced tests with strong psychometric properties (Deno & Merkin, 1977; Deno, Merkin, & Chiang, 1982; Fuchs, & Fuchs, 1992; Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Fuchs, Fuchs, & Maxwell, 1988; Hintze & Shapiro, 1997; Jenkins & Jewell, 1993). These studies provide support for several theories that suggest causal mechanisms for explaining the relationship between reading speed and comprehension. Students who read rapidly and are not required to apply their attention or other cognitive resources (e.g., working memory) towards decoding words have more cognitive resources available to apply towards comprehension. Additionally, as time passes information may become inaccessible (e.g., fading from working memory). Thus, as they read, rapid readers may have access to more information from material read earlier than slow readers, which may enhance their ability to synthesize information as they progress through passages (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974; Perfetti, 1992; Rasinski, 2004; Stanovich, 1986). Reading, like many other skills, improves as people choose to spend more time engaged in the activity (Daly, Chafouleas, & Skinner, 2005; Stanovich, 1986). Even when slower readers are able to comprehend the material at the same level as rapid readers, rapid readers are more likely to choose to read the assigned work because it requires less time and effort and results in a higher rate of reinforcement (Billington, Skinner, Hutchins, & Malone, 2004; Skinner, 1998; Skinner, 2002; Skinner, Neddenriep, Bradley-Klug, & Ziemann, 2002; Skinner, Wallace, & Neddenriep, 2002). …

Reading is one of the main skills to be learned and used in schools and through the entire life of an individual. Its crucial importance made reading one of the central topics in different academic disciplines such as education, psychology, linguistic and neuroscience. Advances in multidisciplinary approaches to and studies of reading gave us the reason to talk about the science of reading. Improvement in research into reading during the last century reveals the fact that different approaches emphasized the importance of partially different aspects of reading skills. Different approaches presented sound arguments for different priorities in teaching and learning of reading. For some decades ago strong dichotomic arguments were so sharp that in the United States the reading literature talked about ‘the reading wars’. During the recent decades, the debate of reading and approaches to reading, reading skills and reading processes have changed. Studies of reading presented different arguments for partially different priorities. The Reading Teacher (RT) has for many decades been the one of the most important arenas for the presentation of new findings, ideas, arguments, and trends. Our present corpus-based study captured the frequent collocations and their usage in the RT publications – 952 articles comprising 3 548 008 words - during the last decade, 2012-2021. TreeTagger was used for part-of-speech tagging and CQPWeb/CWB framework was employed as the corpus interface in the analysis process. The findings clearly revealed that "reading comprehension" was the most frequently used collocation, and it has never weakened its position in the RT publications in the last decade. While instructional activities and processes like ‘shared reading’, ‘during reading’, ‘while reading’, and ‘after reading’ were given considerable attention, ‘before reading’ was almost forgotten. Findings also show that linguistic diversity among students, particularly in the US, also made an impact on the emerging of new topics and thus frequency of concepts like bilingual, multilingual, translanguaging, and coaching. Findings related to the ascending and descending trends reading collocations in RT publications regarding other aspects of reading, teaching of reading, and reading processes are discussed and some ideas for future research are presented.

This study is an exploratory investigation of the effects of teaching literacy skills to 1st graders of Hispanic background in English or Spanish. Two classes of 1st graders who attended the same school in successive years were taught literacy in English or in Spanish. In the fall of the 1st and 2nd grades, these children were given standardized tests of language and reading. In the spring of 1st grade, the children were given measures of comprehension (listening and reading) and writing in both Spanish and English. The children taught in Spanish did not differ from those taught in English on English reading and writing but were significantly stronger on Spanish reading and writing. In predicting performance in the fall of 2nd grade on a reading comprehension measure in Spanish and in English, the children's vocabulary in that language made a significant contribution. In addition, being taught literacy in Spanish contributed to performance in Spanish reading comprehension, but being taught in English did not have the same positive effect on performance in English reading comprehension. Further studies are needed to determine whether initial literacy instruction in Spanish has long-term benefits for children of Hispanic background and whether similar results are found in other maintenance bilingual programs.

We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate reading-writing relations. Beyond the overall relation, we systematically investigated moderation of the relation as a function of linguistic grain size (word reading and spelling versus reading comprehension and written composition), measurement of reading comprehension (e.g., multiple choice, open-ended, cloze), and written composition (e.g., writing quality, writing productivity, writing fluency, writing syntax), and developmental phase of reading and writing (grade levels as a proxy). A total of 395 studies (k = 2,265, N = 120,669) met inclusion criteria. Overall, reading and writing were strongly related (r = .72). However, the relation differed depending on the subskills of reading and writing such that word reading and spelling were strongly related (r =.82) whereas reading comprehension and written composition were moderately related (r =.44). In addition, the word reading-spelling relation was stronger for primary-grade students (r =.82) than for university students/adults (r =.69). The relation of reading comprehension with written composition differed depending on measurement of reading comprehension and written composition—reading comprehension measured by multiple choice and open-ended tasks had a stronger relation with writing quality than reading comprehension measured by oral retell tasks; and reading comprehension had moderate relations with writing quality, writing vocabulary, writing syntax, and writing conventions but had weak relations with writing productivity and writing fluency. Relations tended to be stronger when reliability was higher, and the relation between word reading and spelling was stronger for alphabetic languages (r = .83) than for Chinese (r = .71). These results add important nuances about the nature of relations between reading and writing.

Something to hide? Consent-granting for release of standardized test scores

The purpose of this study was to explore the reading comprehension and listening comprehension performance of English-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) compared with word reading-matched typically developing (TD) children. Participants included 19 individuals with DS (M age = 17;2 [years;months], range: 11;1-22;9) and 19 word reading-matched TD children (M age = 7;2, range: 6;6-8;1). Participants completed three norm-referenced measures of reading comprehension and three norm-referenced measures of listening comprehension. Dependent variables were raw scores on each measure, with the exception of scaled scores on one reading comprehension measure. Independent-samples t tests with Bonferroni-adjusted alpha levels of .008 revealed a significant between-groups difference for two of three reading comprehension measures. The mean raw scores were lower for the DS group than the TD group, with large effect sizes. Independent-samples t tests with Bonferroni-adjusted alpha levels of .008 revealed a significant between-groups difference for three of three listening comprehension measures. The mean raw scores on the three measures were lower for the DS group than the TD group, with large effect sizes. The DS group, despite being matched on word reading to the TD group, demonstrated reduced reading comprehension skills as compared with the TD group. Thus, as individuals with DS acquire word reading skills, it appears that they are unable to translate word reading success to achieve reading comprehension at the expected level (i.e., as indexed by typical readers). The between-groups differences in listening comprehension suggest that deficits in listening comprehension likely are a barrier to reading comprehension proficiency for children with DS. Listening comprehension may be a malleable factor that can be targeted to improve reading comprehension outcomes for individuals with DS.

Teaching is a process of communication. It has to be created through the way of teaching and exchanging the message or information by every teacher and student. The message can be knowledge, skills, ideas, experiences, and many others. Through the process of communication, the people can receive the message or information. To avoid misunderstanding in the process of communication, media are needed in the process of teaching. Magazine can be other alternative as reading material in the classroom. Magazine as reading material has appeal for the students. To make the students get information from magazine, the teacher can ask the students to observe table of content and giving the students training to use it. Like, what is done on text book. Distinguishing informative reading material with fictive reading, important to know students in reading magazine. Like analyzing advertisements to detect propaganda.

The reading community is the local group of Indonesian in urban area bear on reading. The member provides an opportunity for members to support literacy during the community day and extend reading out of the community day. The reading community activities are individual and grouping reading practice. Besides, the members’ background is in different age and study background. The present study designed to explain the reading members’ on reading motivation, problem and strategy. Furthermore, the researcher explained more about the literacy practice, such as self-reading to depict the reading activity of the member, in terms of time and frequency. The researcher used a mixed method. It is integrating between quantity and qualitative data. Observation applied to get a further background of the members’ reading motivation, problem as well as strategy. Besides, the one on one interview used for describing the self-reading. The respondents of the research are 20 members in a group of the reading community. The members were selected randomly. The result showed members’ reading motivation, reading problem and reading strategy. Those covers curiosity, aesthetic involvement, challenge, recognition, and grade. A reading problem consists of low memory to remember, progressive decline in visual sensitivity, a result of the normal process affect reading, poor reading skill and feel out of place in the conversation that moves quickly. Reading strategy such as using prior knowledge/previewing, predicting, identifying the main idea and summarization, questioning, making inferences, visualizing as well as their self-reading in terms of time and frequency.

Reading is one of the most important skills to acquire knowledge in each discipline. In the information explosion times, good English reading ability is indispensable. The purpose of this study is to investigate what learning strategies are adopted by technical college students in English reading comprehension. The author find out the way of obtaining good reading proficiency, and this will provide the teachers and the students with a more effective teaching and studying method. The subjects were four-year technical college students in the Department of Applied Foreign Languages. Statistic analysis methods, such as descriptive statistics, T-test, analysis of variance, and Pearson product-moment correlation analysis were adopted. The author investigates the following problems concerning reading comprehension. (1) Do gender and reading proficiency play an important role in reading strategy use? (2) What strategies do students prefer during the process of learning? (3) What are the effective learning strategies in reading comprehension?