Learning to read English is more difficult than in most other alphabetic languages. It sometimes seems there are not reliable rules for linking letters with sounds. Teaching students all of the letter patterns they may find in texts is no simple task. Students struggle processing the sounds in words, so even words with simple spellings are…

Quantifying the decoding difficulty (i.e., 'decodability') of text is important for accurately matching young readers to appropriate text and scaffolding reading development. Since no easily accessible, quantitative, word-level metric of decodability exists, we developed a decoding measure (DM) that can be calculated via a web-based scoring…

Background: Reading comprehension is a complex process influenced by many factors. However, the abilities that are known to influence reading comprehension may not contribute equally for children with different levels of oral language. Aims: Here we examined the relationship of two factors known to influence reading comprehension (morphology and…

Mountain Park Elementary School, a pseudonym, near New York City saw a significant increase in newcomer English language learners (ELLs). A third of MPES students achieved proficiency on state assessments compared to 5% of ELLs. The theory of action predicted that if teachers were provided with opportunities to acknowledge and challenge their…

The purpose of this study was to examine the shared, direct, and indirect contributions of three metalinguistic skills (phonological awareness, morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge) to the reading comprehension abilities of struggling adult readers. Across studies, these three metalinguistic skills have individually emerged as important…

There is some evidence that reading and spelling are complementary processes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which contextualized spelling (i.e., spelling activities within the context of reading instruction) is used to support reading in first-grade core reading programs. Analysis of 75 lessons across five programs…

Letter-sound knowledge is a strong predictor of a student's ability to decode words. Approximately 50% of English words can be decoded by following a sound-symbol correspondence rule alone and an additional 36% are spelled with only one error. Many students with reading disabilities or who struggle to learn to read have difficulty with phonology,…

This article explores 11-year-old children's connections to prior knowledge and experiences while reading a wordless version of "Little Red Riding Hood." The study extends pre-existing research on reader response theories by focusing on images instead of written text. The approach taken places emphasis on the reader's active engagement,…

This report is part of a series of four guidance reports that the EEF has produced on the theme of language and literacy. It focuses on pupils between the ages of 5 and 7 in Key Stage 1. However, it may also be applicable to older pupils who have fallen behind their peers, or younger pupils who are making rapid progress. Separate reports cover…

Reading Recovery (RR) was developed in New Zealand in the early 1980s to provide 30 minutes of daily individualised literacy instruction over 20 weeks for students struggling with learning to read after one year of formal schooling. Considerable research has been undertaken on the RR programme. While results indicate short-term success for some…

Studies have shown that U.S. learners' proficiency in reading and listening comprehension lags behind their ability to decode words. Recent studies have found that even after 3 years of high school L2 courses, U.S. students fail to develop minimal proficiency in reading comprehension. This paper suggests that while cognitive factors (word decoding…

Overall, game-based technology for early reading instruction has not robustly met the learning potentials of young readers. To better understand the effects and limitations of computer-assisted instruction in classrooms, researchers have called for more critical attention to learning theory, methodological selection, and context for learning.…

Training in phonological awareness has brought about well-documented positive effects on learning to read in lower-primary grades. Less is known about long-term gains extending to upper-primary and junior high school. The few longitudinal studies covering at least 5 years suggest that gains in decoding are sustained, whereas effects on reading…

Children's literate development is mediated by classroom talk. That same talk also mediates children's emotional, relational, self-regulatory, and moral development. Consequently, the discourse of some literacy teaching practices may be important for shaping the course of human development, and those dimensions of human development can play…

We predicted that Arabic-speaking children with specific learning disabilities in reading (dyslexia) and spelling (in writing) benefit from a visuomotor-based intervention programme for the development of letter knowledge and the improvement of word and pseudo-word decoding as well as spelling (dictation). It was predicted that the mediation of…