Pairing phrase‐cued text with readers theatre: Effects on reading prosody and automaticity

Kellie Chavira’s first teaching job is in a bilingual second-grade classroom in Chicago. As a way of focusing on complex and critical definitions of literacy while still addressing the outcomes associated with guided reading expectations, Kellie undertakes a readers theatre project, which gives her students practice in decoding and fluent reading while engaging them with real issues and challenging solutions.

This study examined the effects of an English teacher’s scaffolding on students’ passage reading fluency in Dona Berber Primary School, Ethiopia. Thirty Grade 4 students participated in a quasi-experimental pre-and post-test research design to examine changes in their reading strategies and fluency as a result of teacher scaffolding. Oral reading fluency tests, two structured classroom observation checklists, and interview were used as data collecting instruments. The quantitative data were analyzed using t-test and percentages whereas the qualitative ones were meta-explained. Both the quantitative and qualitative data indicated improvements in students’ reading and strategy use. The findings suggest that scaffolding reading strategy instruction is effective in enhancing students’ oral reading fluency of grade 4 students. Therefore, it is recommended that scaffolding reading strategy training be given to English language teachers and students to make the reading lesson engaging and student-friendly. Besides, it is recommended that a detailed future investigation and intervention be made in the area.

The low reading fluency skills among third-grade students in Indonesian language learning at SDN 20 Kalumbuk serve as the background of this study, given that strong reading ability is essential to support comprehension and overall academic success. This research aims to examine the effect of the Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) model assisted by animated video media on students’ reading fluency skills. A quasi-experimental design was employed using a non-equivalent posttest-only control group design. The population included all third-grade students, with Class IIIB as the experimental group using the ORF model assisted by animated videos, and Class IIIA as the control group receiving conventional instruction using similar media. The instrument used was a reading fluency skills test assessed through a rubric covering aspects of pausing, intonation, vocal expression, and reading comprehension. Data analysis was conducted using a t-test, which showed a significance value (2-tailed) of 0.021 < 0.05, indicating a significant difference between the two groups. The study concludes that the application of the ORF model assisted by animated video significantly improves students’ reading fluency. The findings imply that the ORF model can serve as a strategic alternative in Indonesian language instruction to enhance literacy skills at the elementary school level.

The present communication concerns the use of prosodic parameters in automatic speech recognition (ASR), i.e. the feasibility of automatically extracting prosodic information from a set of acoustic measurements done on the signal, and the incidence of integrating such information on the performance of ASR. Prosodic parameters include pauses and contrasts in pitch, duration and intensity between successive segments (mainly the vocalic parts). This notion is also extended to number of syllables and to ratios of voiced to unvoiced portions of the words. Part one introduces the various aspects of prosody (linguistic and non linguistic) and the main problems to be solved in automatically extracting linguistic messages conveyed by prosodic features. Part two deals with word level and lexical search: it presents work done (1) on the feasibility of word stress detection (primary stress, estimation of its magnitude, and evaluation of the complete word stress pattern) and (2) on the estimation of the amount of lexical constraints imposed by stress information in lexical search, completed by other suprasegmental information (number of syllables, word boundaries, ratios between voiced and unvoiced portion in the word, etc.). Part three deals with phrase and sentence levels and syntactic constraints provided by the automatic detection of word, phrase and sentence boundaries. Part four relates a number of miscellaneous uses at the phonemic level: phonetic segmentation, identification of the voicing feature of consonants, and estimation of the “segmental quality” of the underlying segments.

Readers' theatre is a teaching strategy that consists of the interpretative reading of theatrical texts in which readers use their voices to give life to the characters.This strategy promotes the development of various skills related to fluency, among which there is prosody.This research aimed to check the efficacy of a reader's theatre program on the prosody of oral reading.Eleven dyslexic students from the third and fourth grade of the primary school participated in this study, and who were distributed in two groups.To check the program effectiveness, a program evaluation method was used following the CIIP model and a pre-experimental pre-test post-test design.As a dependent variable, prosody and the prosodic characteristics were used and measured through the Prosody Assessment Scale.Findings showed a significant prosody improvement as well as the prosodic features.In addition, the results obtained by the program were similar in both groups of students.These findings suggest the readers' theatre is an effective strategy for improving the prosody of reading in schoolchildren of those ages and confirm that this strategy can be used as a part of an integral program for fluency development.

Developmental aspects of automatic word processing: Language lateralization of early ERP components in children, young adults and middle-aged subjects

Tai Chi Exercise for Cancer-Related Fatigue in Patients With Lung Cancer Undergoing Chemotherapy: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Effective approaches to fluency instruction should facilitate automatic and accurate word recognition as well as the ability to read with expression. The study reported in this article focused on instructional approaches that can be used with small groups of learners within a broader literacy curriculum, one that is suitable for flexible grouping. It also explored the relationship between fluent reading and comprehension. Twenty‐four struggling second‐grade readers were selected to take part in the interventions. The research evaluated two approaches for assisting learners who were making the transition to fluent reading: a modified repeated reading approach, and a scaffolded wide‐reading approach in which learners read equivalent amounts of text without the use of repetition. A listening‐only group, designed to serve as a Hawthorne control, and a control group were also included. Results indicate that the students in the wide‐reading and repeated reading groups demonstrated growth in terms of word recognition in isolation, prosody, and correct words per minute, and that the wide‐reading group also demonstrated growth in terms of comprehension. Suggestions for integrating these approaches with the literacy curriculum are discussed.

The effect of a stress management program on first-year nursing students’ clinical stress: A randomized controlled experimental study

This double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was designed to assess the efficacy and safety of memantine augmentation to standard regimen of antipsychotic treatment on psychotic symptoms and cognitive function in individuals with chronic schizophrenia for 8 weeks. Forty stabilized individuals with chronic schizophrenia were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to memantine (20 mg/d) and control (placebo) groups, along with their antipsychotic regimen for 8 weeks. The efficacy of treatment was assessed by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and Brief Assessment of Cognition Scale, and the safety was measured by the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale and Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale at baseline and at weeks 4 and 8. No significant differences were observed in demographic or clinical variables between both groups at baseline. During the study, all subscales and total scores of PANSS decreased significantly within both groups, except the subscale score in memantine, which was found to be positive. Reduction in general subscale and total scores of PANSS was significantly higher in the control group compared with the memantine group. All subscale scores of the Brief Assessment of Cognition Scale increased significantly only in the memantine group. The increase in the Verbal Memory, Working Memory, Verbal Fluency Letter, and Verbal Fluency Total subscale scores was significantly higher in the memantine group than in the control group. There was no significant difference in the Abnormal Involuntary Movement Scale and Barnes Akathisia Rating Scale scores between the 2 groups during the study. This study showed that adjunctive memantine to antipsychotic regimen improved the verbal memory, learning, verbal letter fluency, and working memory without improvement on psychotic symptoms in individuals with chronic schizophrenia.

Thirty-six English language learners aged 6;8 to 12;6 years received practice with The Reading Tutor, which uses speech recognition to listen to oral reading and provides context-sensitive feedback. A crossover research design controlled effects of classroom instruction. The first subgroup worked with the software for 3.5 months, and following a week's crossover period, the second subgroup worked for a subsequent 3.5 months. Both groups were assessed to obtain comparable gains both in regular classroom with English as an Additional Language (EAL) support and in the classroom condition with EAL support plus the Reading Tutor. Oral reading fluency was assessed by the DIBELS measure. Fluency was also calculated by the program, and grade level of materials mastered was assessed by the software's logs. Both groups made significant gains in oral reading fluency and grade level of materials mastered, according to measures internal to the software. For one period, gains in fluency following experience with the program appeared to have been slightly larger than gains with regular classroom instruction and EAL support only.

Objectives The aim was to investigate the impact of repeated read-aloud teaching strategy on executive function and basic early literacy skills of preschool children. Methods The study sample consisted of 60 children. All participants were preschoolers. There are four classes a week, each lasting 30 minutes, for a total of 36 classes. The same picture book was read aloud three times, and the reading time was scheduled on three different school days: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Results Differences existed between the mean scores of the experimental and control groups in the pretest and post-test. Children in experimental group outperformed those in the control group in all dimensions of executive function tasks (inhibitory control, working memory, dimensional change card sorting task) and all dimensions of dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills (the letter naming fluency, phonemic segmentation fluency, nonsense word fluency, word reading fluency, and oral reading fluency. Conclusions In order to analyze the impact of integrated executive function language teaching on children’s executive function and oral comprehension ability, after adopting a quasi-experimental teaching design, it was found that integrated executive function teaching is helpful to improve children’s basic early literacy skills and executive function performance.

This technique is crucial, but problems arise from insufficient rotation speed, which affects accuracy. In reality, many beginner table tennis players and UKM members still experience difficulties in producing consistent serves, especially with variations in spin and precise ball placement. Observations during the UKM training program indicate that many students struggle to control the ball''s direction, vary its spin, and maintain consistency in their service strokes. This research design uses a quasi-experimental type of research, design the Non-Equivalent Control Design Group is the most frequently used design in social research. This design is where the experimental group is influenced by a particular variable by involving a non-randomly selected control group, measured before and after the intervention. The sample used in this study consisted of 22, the experimental and control groups were divided equally, with 11 participants per variable class. The results of the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed that the covariate variable (pretest) had a significant effect on the posttest score, F (1,39) 8.224 p 0.007. After controlling for the influence of the pretest score, the posttest score experienced a significant difference, F (3,39) 13.605 p 0.001 partial N2 0.511. However, from an inferential perspective, the statistical analysis showed no significant difference between the experimental and control groups (p0.05). This indicates that the effectiveness of the New Spin Wheel method has not been proven strongly at the 5% significance level. This insignificance may be influenced by several methodological factors, including the relatively small sample size, differences in initial ability levels between the groups, and limited control of variables in a quasi-experimental design.

The paper compares, on a database recorded in a car, a number of signal analysis and speech enhancement techniques as well as some approaches to adapt speech recognition systems. It is shown that a new nonlinear spectral subtraction associated with Mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) is an adequate compromise for low-cost integration. The Lombard effect is analyzed and simulated. Such a simulation is used to derive realistic training utterances from noise-free utterances. Adapting a continuous-density hidden Markov model (CDHMM) to these artificially generated training samples yields a very high performance with respect to that achieved within the ESPRIT adverse environment recognition of speech (ARS) project, i.e., an average of 1% error for all driving conditions. Finally, the paper shows, both theoretically and experimentally, that whatever the noise estimation technique is, it is better to add this noise estimate to the reference clean models than to subtract it from the noisy data.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

The linguistic impact of a CLIL Science programme: An analysis measuring relative gains