Recreational reading is in a decline for upper elementary aged readers, and along with this decline comes consequent declines in students' ability to make meaning from what they read and their acquisition of different language forms, including the acquisition of new vocabulary words. However, one reading format is increasing in popularity: graphic…

Learning to read is a fundamental skill that is understudied among children who hear more than one language at home. A particular limitation in the extant literature is that the samples are often Spanish-dominant and come from low-income households. This literature has evidence that Spanish skills -- both language-specific (i.e., vocabulary) and…

According to recent research, secondary disciplinary teachers'(DTs) role in increasing disciplinary literacy skills is vital. The problem in this urban school district in the Southern United States was that middle school DTs acknowledge they struggle to integrate literacy strategies in their specific disciplines to improve reading outcomes on…

The purpose of this study was to identify and categorize the morphologically complex words in the Kindergarten and First Grade Common Core State Standards English and Language Arts (CCSS ELA) Exemplar Texts. Four text types were analyzed: student-read fiction, student-read informational text, teacher read-aloud fiction, and teacher read-aloud…

Reading comprehension emerges as an important skill set in the early elementary grades. It is supported by component skills including decoding, linguistic knowledge including vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, as well as more complex, higher-level components such as inference making and comprehension monitoring. Theoretical understanding of…

Due to their unique brain profile, children with dyslexia struggle with acquiring basic literacy skills. Even after basic reading skills have been learned students with dyslexia may still struggle greatly with generalizing their skills to new contexts. Researchers have found that 75 percent of children identified with reading problems in third…

English as a Second Language (ESL) learners at the upper elementary level have struggled to demonstrate the vocabulary required to read in English at grade-level. Although multimedia technologies have demonstrated positive effects as language acquisition educational tools at the university level, it remains unclear how useful they are for language…

The current study evaluated the effects of short-term, structured teacher training in Active Reading on student outcomes in listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. Active Reading is an approach to whole group read aloud that incorporates interactive shared reading and rich vocabulary instruction. Participants included…

Vocabulary knowledge is central to the process of reading comprehension (Cromely & Azevedo, 2007; Stahl & Nagy, 2005; Stanovich, 1986). The majority of our vocabulary knowledge is postulated to come from the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) while reading (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Prior studies have estimated an average…

Literacy rates among male adolescents continue to fall below those of female adolescents, and this trend shows no indication of improving (Cheung & Slavin, 2014; Gurian & Stevens, 2007; Weins, 2005; Clark, 2006; Cantrell & Carter, 2009). This study aims to examine this trend by measuring the effects of extended literacy learning…

The present research examines the role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension of high school emergent bilinguals. As an increasing number of research studies contribute to our understanding of morphological awareness, i.e. the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphologically complex derived words, we are better able to appreciate…

Phonological awareness and morphological awareness have been shown to affect Chinese children's reading development. Previous studies conducted in Hong Kong, which required children to read two-character words only or a mixture of single-character and two-character words in a Chinese reading test, exclusively found that morphological awareness was…

Many scholars have researched reading-to-writing relations, some of which found reading to be an effective enhancer of writing (Al-Jarf, 2004; Asencior, 2006; Lee, 1986a; Lee & Riley, 1990; Perez-Sotelo & Gonzalez-Bueno, 2003; Shang, 2007). Similar beginner college student samples were used previously by Asencior (2006), Perez-Sotelo and…

This study examined the predictive relationship between adult literacy students' reading assessments in four component sub-skills (phonological decoding, vocabulary, fluency, and spelling) and their gains in reading comprehension from pretest to posttest. Additionally, the adult literacy instructors' content knowledge in reading…

Reading is a complex process involving numerous skills and abilities contributing to acquiring meaning from text. Individuals without the requisite reading skills will have difficulty not only in school but throughout their lifetimes. The purpose of the study was to compare the reading ability of incoming college freshmen with that of adults with…