Proficient reading is a necessary skill for a quality life. While educators would like to believe that most students master the art of reading and can understand what they read, national reports indicate that learning to read and becoming a skilled reader is not mastered by all (No Child Left Behind Act, 2001; NICHD, 2000a). One component of…

An investigation was conducted to determine the best criterion for advancement to a new reading passage during the commonly used classroom strategy of repeated reading. Knowing when to move students to a new passage during the repeated reading process was considered of value to teachers in efficiently using student learning time. The study also…

The investigators measured 7 literacy skills in a group of 21 school-age children with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss (MSNH group), and compared the scores to those of 2 age-matched groups: children with dyslexia (DYS group) and, as a control, typically developing hearing children (CA group). The MSNH group performed consistently…

Elementary, middle, and high school teachers are encountering greater numbers of students who read fast, and many times accurately, but who do not comprehend what is read. The current widely used practice of using one-minute timed passages to practice and assess oral reading fluency may have limitations which will be viewed by considering rate,…

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA) focus on building student capacity to read complex texts. The Standards provide an explicit text complexity staircase that maps text levels to grade levels. Furthermore, the Standards articulate a rationale to accelerate text levels across grades to ensure students are able to…

The influence of orthographic transparency on the prevalence of dyslexia subtypes was examined in a review of multiple-case studies conducted in languages differing in orthographic depth (English, French, and Spanish). Cross-language differences are found in the proportion of dissociated profiles as a function of the dependent variables (speed or…

By using latent profile analysis eight stable and interpretable subgroups of readers were identified. The basis for subgrouping was different performance measures with four aspects of reading in focus: reading of continuous texts, reading of document texts, word reading and reading speed. Participants were 9-year-old Swedish students included in…

Brain plasticity was investigated in 14 Italian children affected by developmental dyslexia after 6 months of phonological training. The means used to measure language reorganization was the recognition potential, an early wave, also called N150, elicited by automatic word recognition. This component peaks over the left temporo-occipital cortex…

It is not clear from research whether, or to what extent, reading comprehension is impaired in adults who have learning disabilities (LD). The influence of perceptual organization (PO) and phonological awareness (PA) on reading comprehension was investigated. PO and PA are cognitive functions that have been examined in previous research for their…

Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1995) suggests that people expend cognitive effort when processing information in proportion to the cognitive effects to be gained from doing so. This theory has been used to explain how people apply their knowledge appropriately when evaluating category-based inductive arguments (Medin, Coley, Storms, &…

Paul Nation's talents and interests extend well beyond vocabulary to include research on speaking, writing, classroom learning and teaching, reading, and fluency. In keeping with Nation's interests in fluency, extensive reading, and reading instruction, I outline current perspectives on reading fluency and its role as a key component of reading…

This study reports on an examination of the effectiveness of a reading intervention for adults with disabilities in a vocational rehabilitation setting. Participants were 57 adults with disabilities and low reading skills enrolled at the Reading Clinic at the Michigan Career and Technical Institute. As part of a 3-year research and demonstration…

When reading a story or watching a film, comprehenders construct a series of representations in order to understand the events depicted. Discourse comprehension theories and a recent theory of perceptual event segmentation both suggest that comprehenders monitor situational features such as characters' goals, to update these representations at…

Serial rapid automized naming (RAN) has been often found to correlate more strongly with reading than discrete RAN. This study aimed to demonstrate that the strength of the RAN-reading fluency relationship is dependent on the format of both RAN and the reading task if the reading task consists of sight words. Seventy-one first-grade, 74…

This study explores the nature of orthographic processing skills among French-speaking children in Grades 6 and 8 who are learning English at school as a second language (L2). Two aspects of orthographic processing skills are thought to form a convergent construct in monolingual beginning readers: word-specific knowledge (e.g. "rain-rane") and…