Irregular words cannot be read correctly by decoding letters into sounds using the most common letter-sound mapping relations. They are difficult to read and learn. Cognitive models of word reading and development as well as empirical data suggest that inhibitory control might be important for irregular word reading and its development. The…

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between selective visual attention (SVA), reading decoding, listening comprehension and reading comprehension in children with and without a reading disorder. Methods: We used longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. We split children into four…

Planning plays an important role in the production of written texts. Little is known about why children plan and the plans they create when they are not explicitly instructed. This study explores the plans that elementary school children in Years 1, 3, and 5 create before writing a text. We compared performance of children educated in Catalan and…

The conversation around reluctant readers continues to focus on boys, with research, practice and policy exploring what could be done to (re)engage boys in reading (see National Literacy Trust, 2012; Department for Education, 2019; OECD, 2021). Girls who don't enjoy reading or who don't read in their free time are seldom the focus of interest,…

Every year in England, thousands of children leave primary school without the confidence and fluency in reading they need. This has a significant effect on their learning, life chances and engagement with reading, and it also has a long-term economic and social impact. The Read On. Get On. (ROGO) campaign was launched in 2014 to address this…

This report uses data from the National Literacy Trust's 2019 Annual Literacy Survey and the Great School Library Campaign to determine how many schools in the UK have had a writer visit in the last year, their reasons for organising the visit, and the relationship the visit had with children and young people's engagement with reading and writing.…

This study explores the ability of children with and without dyslexia to provide meaningful verbal self-reports of the strategies they used in a spelling recognition task. Sixty-six children aged 6 years 3 months-9 years 9 months were tested on a range of standardised measures and on an experimental spelling recognition task based on the work of…

It is now possible to create individual-specific genetic scores, called genome-wide polygenic scores (GPS). We used a GPS for years of education ("EduYears") to predict reading performance assessed at UK National Curriculum Key Stages 1 (age 7), 2 (age 12) and 3 (age 14) and on reading tests administered at ages 7 and 12 in a UK sample…

Thirty-three young people with cochlear implants, aged between 9 and 16 years, were assessed for use of their implant system, cognitive abilities, vocabulary, reading, and writing skills. The group came from throughout England and included 26 born deaf, six deafened by meningitis, one with auditory neuropathy, and five with additional needs.…

This study examined the extent to which a range of child characteristics (sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill and intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation) predicted engagement (i.e., time spent) in different reading activities (fiction books, factual books, school textbooks, comics, magazines and digital texts). In total, 791 children…

Significant numbers of people have very low levels of literacy in many OECD countries and, because of this, face significant labour market penalties. Despite this, it remains unclear what teaching strategies are most useful for actually rectifying literacy deficiencies. The subject remains hugely controversial amongst educationalists and has…

Current models of writing do not sufficiently address the complex relationship between the 2 transcription skills: spelling and handwriting. For children with dyslexia and beginning writers, it is conceivable that spelling ability will influence rate of handwriting production. Our aim in this study was to examine execution speed and temporal…

The Young Readers Programme (YRP) motivates children to read for enjoyment by running a series of three literacy-focused events, teaching children strategies to choose books that are right for them, and showing them that reading can be enjoyable. One of the most effective ways of developing children's literacy skills is to engage them in reading…

Background: Research examining the relationship between reading skill and reading motivation has typically been carried out among children with a wide range of reading abilities. There is less research focusing on children who excel in reading or who are attaining very low reading scores. Purpose: To examine whether there were differences between…

"Talk of the Town" is a community led approach to supporting the speech, language and communication (SLC) skills of children and young people, aged 0-19, living in areas of social disadvantage. It is delivered by the Communication Trust. This evaluation reports on a randomised controlled trial undertaken with 2696 pupils in 64 primary…