In this study we examined the effectiveness of a reading intervention targeting a group of 24 struggling readers in ten primary schools in Ireland. The intervention consisted of two components; component one consisted of 15-20 minutes delivery of the Toe-by-Toe programme (a well established systematic synthetic phonics programme) and the second…

This study investigated the effects of monolingual book dictionaries, popup dictionaries, and type-in dictionaries on improving reading comprehension and vocabulary learning in an EFL program. An experimental design involving four groups and a post-test was chosen for the experiment: (1) pop-up dictionary (experimental group 1); (2) type-in…

This paper investigates using data-driven learning (DDL) as a means of stimulating greater lexicogrammatical knowledge and reading speed among lower proficiency learners in an extensive reading program. For 16 weekly 90-minute sessions, an experimental group (12 students) used DDL materials created from a corpus developed from the Oxford Bookworms…

This study investigated the effects of (a) the amount of pleasure reading completed, (b) the type of texts read (i.e., simplified or unsimplified books), and (c) the level of simplified texts read by 14 Japanese university students who made the largest reading rate gains over one academic year. The findings indicated that the participants who made…

Given the deficiencies of readability formulae as reliable tools for measuring text readability in educational settings, this study aims to offer a new measure to improve the current methods of testing the readability levels of texts through the incorporation of the newly-developed concept of emotioncy. To this end, a group of 221 students were…

This report presents the results of the diagnostic study conducted between October 2013 and December 2014, as part of an ambitious capacity-building project targeting the increase of children's literacy levels across three West African countries. The project "Improving Learning Outcomes in Early Grade Reading: Integration of Curriculum,…

The outbreak of domestic turmoil in Syria in 2011 forced Syrian people to seek refuge in the neighbouring countries, one of which was Turkey. This situation brought many problems, the primary of which was language. In this sense, teaching Turkish to Syrian students became a necessity. Therefore, conducting research on language skills was seriously…

The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of an educational programme involving peer tutoring at school and family tutoring at home on child reading comprehension achievement in Catalunya, Spain. We drew upon a sample of 303 primary school students from 8 to 11 years old and 223 family tutors from home (61.5% mothers, 15% fathers,…

We evaluated the effect of morphological awareness training delivered in preschool (8 months before school entry) on reading ability at the end of grade 1 and 5 years later (in Grade 6). In preschool, one group of children received morphological awareness training, while a second group received phonological awareness training. A control group…

This article focuses on two main issues. On the one hand, it deals with early prevention of literacy difficulties. On the other hand, it deals with the same issue once pupils already present serious difficulties in reading and writing. Consequently, this paper has two main aims. Firstly, it aims to show teachers that, in order to carry out…

The aim of the study is to deepen the understanding of teacher's perspective on how to promote all children's learning in reading and writing in grade 1 of primary school. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in a Swedish context with 18 primary school teachers, representing a large collective experience from working as teachers in grade 1.…

Background: Children with language impairment (LI) often have lags in development of print knowledge, an important early-literacy skill. This study explores impacts of a print-focused intervention for Spanish-speaking children with LI in Southeastern Mexico. Aims: Aims were twofold. First, we sought to describe the print knowledge (print-concept…

Several pressing issues in reading instruction have prompted educators world-wide to conduct researches on how to best improve reading comprehension skills. Although there is a wealth of reading comprehension researches done with EFL learners and native English speakers, there seems to be limited published studies conducted in the Philippine ESL…

The importance of reading skills to academic achievement, job acquisition and future success is well documented. Most of the research on reading interventions focuses on children in primary schools but many children start secondary school with very poor reading skills and schools require evidence-based interventions to support these children. The…

This paper examines the degree to which British adults participating in workplace literacy courses improved their reading comprehension skills, using longitudinal data which cover the period from enrolment until between two and three years later. Learners were tested using an instrument designed explicitly for adults, with two parallel forms. For…