Cross-linguistic studies found that reading comprehension correlates with oral reading prosody. The study examined whether text difficulty would be involved in oral reading prosody in orthographically deep languages like Mandarin. One hundred and three fourth-grade children were recruited in Taipei, Taiwan. Their oral reading prosody was elicited…

This study aims to explore the specific contributions of derivational, inflectional, and compounding morphological awareness to reading comprehension through decoding and syntactic awareness. A total of 181 Grade 3 and 4 Chinese primary school children learning English as a second language in Hong Kong participated in this study. The results of…

Using context to derive a word's meaning is typically conceptualized as part of the reading comprehension process. However, context sensitivity develops early--before children start to learn to read. This study took a developmental perspective, attempting to capture children's context sensitivity through spoken discourse and assess its value in…

Effects of semantic versus syntactic constraints on resolution of Hebrew heterophonic-homographic words were examined at three reading skill levels. Fourth-and sixth-grade students and a group of adults read aloud sentences containing two types of heterophonic-homographs: noun-noun (e.g., BYCH [Hebrew characters] is read as beitsa 'egg' and bitsa…

Reading comprehension is a complex task requiring many underlying skills. Syntactic awareness and morphological awareness are two such skills that have been shown to be related to reading comprehension. However, the majority of studies have been carried out in English, and very few have explored these skills in monolingual Spanish speaking…

Children described as "poor comprehenders" (PCs) have reading comprehension difficulties in spite of adequate word reading abilities. PCs are known to display weakness with semantics and higher-level aspects of oral language, but less is known about their grammatical skills, especially with regard to morphosyntax. The purpose of this…

This study compared how lexical quality (vocabulary and decoding) and executive control (working memory and inhibition) predict reading comprehension directly as well as indirectly, via syntactic integration, in monolingual and bilingual fourth grade children. The participants were 76 monolingual and 102 bilingual children (mean age 10 years,…

The present study investigated the contribution of executive functions to narrative writing in fourth grade children, and evaluated to what extent executive functions contribute differentially to different levels of narrative composition. The written skills of 102 Dutch children in fourth grade were assessed using a narrative picture-elicitation…

The aim of this study was to examine the contribution of transcription skills, oral language skills, and executive functions to growth in narrative writing between fourth and sixth grade. While text length and story content of narratives did not increase with age, syntactic complexity of narratives showed a clear developmental progression. Results…

The present study investigated language skills and reading comprehension with English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children in grades 2-5. Of the 377 children in the sample, 207 were English monolingual and 170 were Spanish-English bilingual. Data were collected within a cohort-sequential design for two academic years in the fall and…

Many students struggle with gaining knowledge and writing about content text material and therefore require effective intervention. In a randomized controlled trial study, 77 low-achieving fourth-grade students received reading comprehension instruction or reading comprehension plus writing instruction or were assigned to a no-treatment control.…

The present study investigated the role of vocabulary depth in reading comprehension among a diverse sample of monolingual and bilingual children in grades 2-4. Vocabulary depth was defined as including morphological awareness, awareness of semantic relations, and syntactic awareness. Two hundred ninety-four children from 3 schools in a…

In Study 1, children in grades 4-9 (N = 88, 29 females and 59 males) with persisting reading and/or writing disabilities, despite considerable prior specialized instruction in and out of school, were given an evidence-based comprehensive assessment battery at the university while parents completed questionnaires regarding past and current history…