Background: Although Zimbabwe has performed quite well on Grade 6 SACMEQ literacy assessments compared to other African countries, reading levels are generally low and there is little research on reading literacy in Zimbabwean primary schools. Aim: Grade 3 and 4 learners' reading comprehension (RC), accuracy and speed in oral reading fluency (ORF)…

Text reading fluency (TRF) is a common reading intervention target in second and third grade. TRF requires the integration of several skills that result in several pathways to dysfluent reading. However, when applying the drill-down approach to intervention targeting, practitioners are guided to consider students' rate and accuracy when reading…

Background: The relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading has been examined extensively, but there is still a question as to the reason for the relationship. To reduce involvement of alphanumeric and vocabulary knowledge in RAN, and to possibly reduce phonological demands, researchers have suggested using the RAN sizes that…

The present study examined the strategies used by Greek novice readers in the initial phases of reading acquisition. Fifty (50) children were assessed at four successive testing periods throughout 1st grade of Primary School. Thus, 21 boys (42%) and 29 girls (58%) participated in this study. Their mean age at the beginning of the study was 74.43…

The current study investigated the impact of manipulating reading strategy, reading the questions first (QF) or the passage first (PF), during a reading comprehension test, and we explored how reading strategy was related to student characteristics. Participants' eye movements were monitored as they read 12 passages and answered multiple-choice…

Despite repeated findings that within-year growth in oral reading rate is nonlinear for many students, existing decision-making frameworks to evaluate response to intervention assume that growth is linear across an entire school year. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the consequences of failing to account for nonlinear growth among…

Educators and researchers measure student improvement in words read correct per minute (WRCM) to evaluate student response to reading interventions. The utility of evaluating improvement in WRCM via curriculum-based measures to make instructional decisions is based upon the assumption that growth in WRCM is predictive of performance on meaningful…

Two large samples were assessed twice in Grade 1: the control group (Cont; N = 2302), which received no specific interventions, and the experimental group (Exp; N = 484), which received interventions associated with code-related skills (decoding and fluency). We estimated that a mean score of around 50 correctly read words per minute corresponded…

Reading acquisition is based on a set of preliteracy skills that lay the foundation for future reading abilities. Phonological awareness--the ability to identify and manipulate the sound units of oral language--has been reported to play a central role in reading acquisition. However, current evidence is mixed with respect to its universal…

We examined the contribution of rapid automatized naming (RAN) components (articulation time, pause time, and pause time consistency) to reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling in a sample of 257 German children (139 boys, 118 girls; M[subscript age] = 5.60 years, SD = 0.31) followed from kindergarten to Grade 1. In kindergarten,…

The goal of improving reading rate and fluency is to positively impact reading comprehension; however, it is unclear how fast students with learning disabilities (LD) need to read to reap this benefit. The purpose of this research was to identify the point of diminishing return for students who were dysfluent readers. Participants included 337…

Background: Students with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have various learning difficulties and are at risk for school failure. Large inter-individual differences are described for reading, but it is unclear how these vary as a function of grade. The aim of this study was to examine various reading fluency, accuracy and comprehension parameters…

Background: The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship between character reading and spelling and to explore the role of reading-related skills in Chinese literacy. Methods: A test battery that included measures of morphological awareness (homophone awareness and compound word awareness), orthographic awareness, rapid…

The present study examined oral language growth differences in a sample of 256 Greek-speaking children with and without literacy difficulties (LD), during the first two elementary grades. Measures of vocabulary, phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness (MA), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) were administered in both grades for the…

Reading difficulties in school are very challenging for teachers due to many different reader subtypes in one and the same class. Moreover, there are few easy-to-use tools enabling teachers to assess reading ability. According to the Simple View of Reading (Hoover and Gough in "Reading and Writing", 2(2), 127-160, 1990), efficient…