This paper presents a framework intended to link the following assessment development concepts into a systematic framework: evidence-centered design (ECD), scenario-based assessment (SBA), and assessment of, for, and as learning. The context within which we develop this framework is the English language arts (ELA) for K-12 students, though the…

This column explains three ways that teachers can improve reading test performance. Basically, the idea is that instead of teaching students to respond to particular question types as is typical of test preparation despite the ineffectiveness of this practice, it is better to teach students to read the test passages more effectively. Three…

This article begins by explaining the student centered learning paradigm. Next, the article explains various features of a student centered approach to education and how extensive reading (ER), as it is most often practiced, fits with those features. The bulk of the article suggests how ER might be implemented to make it even more learner centered.

The study determined the methods adopted by teachers in prose literature-in-English classrooms, activities of teachers and students, teachers' perceived effectiveness of techniques used. It also examined the objectives of teaching prose literature that teachers should address and the extent teachers believe in student-identified difficulties of…

We examined the efficacy of an afterschool multicomponent reading intervention for third- through fifth-grade students with reading difficulties. A total of 419 students were identified for participation based on a 90 standard score or below on a screening measure of the Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension. Participating students…

The progression of silent reading rates and reading comprehension were examined among Japanese university students (N = 55) over one academic semester. Participants were divided into three quasi-experimental groups. The first group practiced a combination of timed reading and repeated oral reading with attention paid to chunking and prosody. The…

The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2-3 s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent…

The purpose of this qualitative grounded theory study was to discover the impact on adolescent reading motivation as students were given an opportunity to select recreational reading material and read consistently during class time. This study also explored the motivational impact of student engagement from dialogue with peers about their reading…

This article presents the findings of a two-year qualitative study of electronic reading device use with high school sophomores, most of whom self-identified as reluctant or struggling readers. Electronic readers were used primarily in one weekly fifty-minute class period, during silent sustained reading, wherein students chose freely their texts.…

McDaniel and Bugg (2008) proposed that relatively uncommon stimuli and encoding tasks encourage elaborative encoding of individual items (item-specific processing), whereas relatively typical or common encoding tasks encourage encoding of associations among list items (relational processing). It is this relational processing that is thought to…

Although identified as a critical component of proficient reading in the primary grades, reading fluency (word recognition accuracy, automaticity, and prosody) is often viewed as less important beyond the early stages of reading acquisition. In the present study, 108 ninth-grade students were assessed to explore the relationships among word…

Advances in maze selection curriculum-based measurement have led to several published tools with technical information for interpretation (e.g., norms, benchmarks, cut-scores, classification accuracy) that have increased their usefulness for universal screening. A range of scoring practices have emerged for evaluating student performance on maze…

This study investigates the preferences for attachment of a relative clause (RC) to a complex noun phrase (NP) of the type: NP1 of NP2, in Spanish-English bilinguals and advanced learners of Spanish. Spanish speakers show a moderate preference for attaching the RC to the first NP, while speakers of English prefer the second NP. Subjects were…

Oral reading fluency (ORF) has been widely used as a measure of students' overall reading competency. However, accuracy, or words correct per minute (wcpm), derived from ORF testing may not reveal all aspects of a student's reading abilities. The present study investigated the oral reading miscue patterns of students with and without learning…

In this experimental study we examined the effects of a technology-mediated, multicomponent reading comprehension intervention, Comprehension Circuit Training (CCT), for middle school students, the majority of whom were struggling readers. The study was conducted in three schools, involving three teachers and 228 students. Using a within-teacher…