In 2012, the Ministry of Education, Afghanistan, engaged the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) as a partner to support the development of a national learning assessment program in Afghanistan. To achieve this goal, the Learning Assessment unit of the Ministry of Education and ACER have collaborated to design and implement the…

The study investigated morphosyntactic abilities and semantic-pragmatic competence in 24 children with developmental dyslexia aged 7-12 years. Morphosyntactic abilities were investgated in a direct object clitic production task, semantic-pragmatic competence in a quantifier comprehension task. Children with dyslexia produced fewer clitics than…

Studies investigating individual differences in reading ability often involve data sets containing a large number of collinear predictors and a small number of observations. In this article, we discuss the method of Random Forests and demonstrate its suitability for addressing the statistical concerns raised by such data sets. The method is…

We present the case study of MB--a bilingual child with Down syndrome (DS) who speaks Russian (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]) and has learned to read in two different alphabets with different symbol systems. We demonstrate that, in terms of oral language, MB is as proficient in Russian as English, with a mild advantage for…

Effective fluency instruction should focus on reading with understanding, rather than simply reading quickly or expressively. This article outlines three research-based instructional approaches that assist students in developing accurate, automatic word recognition and prosody; at the same time, they ensure learners attend to the text's meaning as…

The phonological skills are not the only linguistic abilities which are observed to have some influence on reading achievement in dyslexics. In addition to phonological skills, morphological skills should be also taken in consideration. The aim of this study is to extend investigation the linguistic abilities of children with dyslexia to the…

Commonly used literacy motivation assessments do not specifically explore literacy motivation in school. These context-general assessments may be problematic for struggling adolescent readers, as qualitative research documents that these adolescents exhibit different levels of cross-context motivation. The present study explores whether an…

This National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report has been produced for the Education Endowment Foundation and its evaluation of the Chatterbooks reading scheme. Chatterbooks is an extracurricular reading initiative, developed by the Reading Agency, that aims to increase a child's motivation to read by providing tools and resources…

Literacy skills acquired during the first years of schooling have been recognised as the key to students' learning success. However, despite the continuing efforts by the New Zealand government and teachers there is still a large proportion of students who struggle to become literate. To address this issue the Ministry of Education funded selected…

The majority of previous research on academic skills, self-concept of ability and interest has deployed the variable-oriented approach and focused on self-concept, or ability, or interest only. This study examined the patterns and dynamics of pattern change in Finnish children's word reading skill, self-concept of ability and interest from…

Visual stress (the experience of visual distortions and discomfort during prolonged reading) is frequently identified and alleviated with coloured overlays or lenses. Previous studies have associated visual stress with dyslexia and as a consequence, coloured overlays are widely distributed to children and adults with reading difficulty. However,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the long-term use of optical devices by individuals who participated in a school-based comprehensive low vision program focusing on use of devices, both near and distance. Thirty-seven participants (five non-users), ages 18-28, completed phone interviews giving information on their personal…

The purpose of this study was to explore the reading behavior of young proficient Chinese readers at preschool age. Especially, the roles of phonetic skill and Chinese Character recognition in reading comprehension were explored. 10 kindergartens were recruited to participate in the study. Subjects were 72-98 kindergarten children. Instruments…

The challenges of understanding how reading abilities vary within the classroom can be daunting. This article offers techniques to organize a variety of assessment data to give teachers a clear picture of individual achievement, how students compare with one another, and how reliably various assessment instruments yield an accurate picture of…

Paired associated learning (PAL) is a critical skill for making arbitrary associations among print, pronunciation and meaning in reading development. Extended from past research of PAL, this study investigated whether PAL operated flexibly to linguistic demands of languages, by examining word reading abilities in Chinese-English bilingual…