The Common Core State Standards emphasize the need for U.S. students to read complex texts. As a result, the level of word complexity for primary-level texts is important, particularly the dimensions of and changes in complexity between first grade and the important third-grade high-stakes testing year. In this study, we addressed word complexity…

A nonrandomized quasi-experimental, mixed-method double pretest-posttest design was used to compare the effects of a multilinguistic word study model of instruction -- RAVE-O program (Wolf, Miller, & Donnelly, 2000) -- in comparison with a phonics word study model of instruction -- Fountas and Pinnell Phonics Lessons -- Letters, words, and how…

The authors detail word-learning strategies from a small-scale early reading intervention for first graders (N = 3) focused on Greek and Latin roots in science-based informational texts. Educators can provide explicit instruction to support student awareness of word structures in content-specific vocabulary, and this instruction can be adapted to…

This study examined compound awareness in relation to Chinese children's vocabulary acquisition and character reading. Two aspects of compound awareness were investigated: the ability to identify the head of a compound noun and the ability to construct a new compound word from familiar morphemes. The compound awareness tasks, along with rapid…

Purpose: In this study, the authors sought to determine whether a combination of English-language measures and a parent questionnaire on first-language development could adequately discriminate between English-language learners (ELLs) with and without language impairment (LI) when children had diverse first-language backgrounds. Method:…