Background: Developing higher-order comprehension skills of learners in primary schools is a challenge that faces many countries. South Africa is no exception. Primary school learners in South Africa have particularly low literacy and comprehension skills: many learners struggle to read for understanding. There is little published scholarship that…

The present study tested the self-teaching hypothesis in orthographic learning in Chinese and examined the roles of semantic radicals and writing practice. Twenty-four Mandarin-speaking third graders read and comprehended eight two-sentence stories in a read-twice condition and eight in a read-write condition. Each story contained two…

Repeated reading (RR) is a common fluency intervention, but recent studies comparing RR to continuous reading (CR; i.e., wide reading) found no significant differences in effects. This prompts the question of whether the mechanism that improves skills is repeatedly reading portions of connected text, or simply reading connected text. The current…

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), a large base of research has shown the great influence of L2 reading on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Nevertheless, researchers have also found that acquiring new vocabulary happens rather gradually and in small amounts. Without altering the incidental nature of vocabulary acquisition through…

We tested the theoretically driven hypotheses that children's orthographic and semantic learning are associated with their word reading and reading comprehension skills, even when orthographic and semantic knowledge are taken into account. A sample of 139 English-speaking Grade 3 children completed a learning task in which they read stories about…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relative effectiveness of experimenting with physical manipulatives alone, virtual manipulatives alone, and virtual preceding physical manipulatives (combination environment) on third-grade students' science achievement and conceptual understanding in the domain of state changes of water, focusing…

This study replicated, with modifications, previous research of dyad reading using texts at various levels of difficulty (Morgan, 1997). The current project measured the effects of using above-grade-level texts on reading achievement and sought to determine the influences of dyad reading on both lead and assisted readers. Results indicate that…

A modified extensive reading literacy intervention was examined in this study. The problem was English Learner third and fourth-grade students reading standardized tests scores were low and educators were uncertain as to which type of intervention was best to improve English Learner student oral reading fluency and reading comprehension. This…

Although studies on the effects of Reading While Listening (RWL) to audiobooks on students' reading fluency is limited, the available emerging literature consistently demonstrates its favourable contribution to improve reading fluency. Since improving fluency is an important instructional goal of primary schools, understanding the role of RWL to…

"Reading comprehension" is difficult for many students with disabilities, including those with specific learning disabilities. However these students can be explicitly taught strategies to improve their comprehension abilities. One such strategy is teaching students story grammar in order to provide them with a framework for…

The hypothesis of the study was explicit gradual release of responsibility comprehension instruction (GRR) (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983; Fisher & Frey, 2008) with the researcher-created Story Grammar Code (SGC) strategy would significantly increase third graders' comprehension of narrative fiction and nonfiction text. SGC comprehension…

Grounded within the situation model framework, this study investigated the effectiveness of a reading comprehension strategy training aimed at improving children's comprehension monitoring strategies. Sixty-four third and fourth graders received a 4-week training targeted at situation model updating, evaluative and self-regulatory strategies, and…

A question was whether service learning implemented in the classroom could improve third grader's reading comprehension skills. The goal of this study was to show that with the implementation of service learning into guided reading lessons, students would be more successful in their reading comprehension abilities. The study was conducted in an…

Educator preparation in comprehension strategy instruction (CSI) is essential to meeting the needs of English learners (ELs) in contemporary schools. This article provides teacher educators and professional developers with concrete examples of practices to prepare classroom teachers in comprehensive strategy instruction, based on an experimental…

This quasi-experimental study examined differences in student reading outcomes. Participants were third grade non-struggling readers. Intervention classrooms included core curriculum instruction plus evidence-based reading comprehension instruction and differentiated repeated readings. Comparison classrooms provided core curriculum instruction…