This study aimed to examine the relationship between fourth-graders' reading fluency, reading comprehension and attention. It was conducted using the relational screening model and included 132 fourth-graders with grade level adequate reading skills. The study results showed that good readers' attention had significant effects on reading speed,…

Background: A large amount of evidence highlights the obvious inequalities in literacy results of South African learners. Despite this, a sound understanding of how learners approach the task of reading in the African languages is lacking. Aim: This article examines the role of the syllable, phoneme and morpheme in reading in transparent,…

Reading difficulties in elementary school-aged children may occur when two components of reading--word identification, comprehension, or both of these skills--are weak or underdeveloped (Gough, 1972; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Joshi & Aaron, 2000; Savage, 2001). One type of reading difficulty that is frequently identified by teachers is known…

We report a longitudinal study investigating the predictors of reading comprehension and word reading accuracy between the ages of 7 to 8 (UK Year 3) and 10 to 11 years (Year 6). We found that different skills predicted the development of each. Reading comprehension skill measured in Year 3 was a strong predictor of comprehension in Year 6;…

Indirect effects of preschool classroom indexes of teacher talk were tested on fourth-grade outcomes for 57 students from low-income families in a longitudinal study of classroom and home influences on reading. Detailed observations and audiotaped teacher and child language data were coded to measure content and quantity of verbal interactions in…

Investigates the use of graphic and contextual information in word recognition and the extent to which good and poor readers are flexible in their ability to trade off one type of information for another when the situation warrants. (HOD)

The purpose of this study is to examine factors that influence students' reading of derived words. Recent research suggests that the lexical quality of a derived word depends on the familiarity of the word, its morphemic constituents (i.e., base word and affixes), and the frequency with which the base word appears in other words (i.e., members of…

The purpose of this experiment was to replicate and extend previous work which showed substantial differences between good readers (GR) and poor readers (PR) in the time taken to encode single words. The technique used was based on the memory-scanning and visual-scanning procedure first used by Sternberg. The subjects for the study consisted of 30…

The purpose of this study was to determine differences in word recognition strategies used by good and poor readers. Twenty good readers and twenty poor readers were randomly selected from a fourth grade class and randomly assigned to levels of a five by five repeated-measures Latin Square design. All of the subjects were given two tasks to…

This study attempted to assess the relationship between misreading of high-frequency words and utilization of semantic and syntactic cue systems. A 250-word passage from a second-grade basal reader was altered in two ways: in one condition, the sentences were randomly ordered, and, in the other, the words were randomly ordered. Twenty-four fourth…

Two studies investigated the use of graphic and contextual information in word recognition, and the extent to which good and poor fourth grade readers were flexible in their ability to trade off one type of information for another as situations warranted. The subjects orally read stories containing ten altered words, with a single letter…

Three experiments examined the effect of practice on the acquisition, retention, and generalization of children's skill in rapidly naming visually presented words. Found that, although poor readers did not become as fast as good readers in naming words, they made gains in the time required to access names from print. (PAM)

Examines the role of experience in the use of orthographic structure by good and poor sixth-grade readers. Results showed that poor sixth-grade readers used orthographic structure to speed their matching judgments just as effectively as good sixth-grade readers. (HOD)

Two studies with poor readers in grade 4 (total N=68) examined the relationship between word identification speed and story reading fluency. Benefits were found for single-word practice prior to reading stories containing those words, even for children who were particularly poor namers. Results are related to theoretical links between fluency and…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether good and poor readers of the same age levels differed in their performance on a task which required the integration of semantic-syntactic and grapho-phonic information. Fifteen fourth grade good readers, 15 fourth grade poor readers, and 15 second grade good readers read six sentences that had one…