We know more now than we ever did before about how to make every child a successful reader, write Allington and Gabriel in this research review. Yet, few students regularly receive the best reading instruction we know how to give. The authors present research supporting their recommendation that every child, every day, should (1) read something he…

The idea of Matthew effects in reading--the widening achievement gap between good and poor reader--has attracted considerable attention in education research in the past 25 years. Despite the popularity of the topic, however, empirical studies that have analyzed the core assumption of Matthew effects in reading have produced inconsistent results.…

I continue here the long-standing discussion on the familiar topic of whether subconscious language acquisition is more powerful than conscious language learning, with a focus on vocabulary, adding recent studies as well as older ones I missed in previous publications on this topic (e.g. Krashen, 2004).

The present set of 7 experiments systematically examined the effectiveness of adding causal explanations to simple refutations in reducing or eliminating the impact of outdated information on subsequent comprehension. The addition of a single causal-explanation sentence to a refutation was sufficient to eliminate any measurable disruption in…

In this paper, we argue that second language (L2) reading research, which has been informed by studies involving first language (L1) alphabetic English reading, may be less relevant to L2 readers with non-alphabetic reading backgrounds, such as Chinese readers with an L1 logographic (Chinese character) learning history. We provide both…

Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490ms, respectively. While these rates are typical…

Mastery of English in China has gathered increased prominence due to the need to foster cultural, political, and economic connections worldwide. Reading is an obvious skill of vital importance for advancing efforts as a player in the world economy. The present article examines research published in academic journals in Chinese and English to…

The concept of readability has had a variable history, moving from a position where it was considered as a very important topic for those responsible for producing texts and matching those texts to the abilities and needs of learners, to its current declining visibility in the education literature. Some important work has been coming from the USA…

As teachers and leaders move forward in implementing the Common Core State Standards within classrooms across 46 states, it is essential to consider the question of what knowledge is included in the English Language Arts Standards, and what knowledge is not present. The authors of the Common Core delineate an increasingly complex body of knowledge…

The purposes of this review were to determine: (1) if different writing activities were more effective than others in improving students' reading comprehension, and (2) if obtained differences among writing activities was related to how reading comprehension was measured? Meta-analysis was used to examine these questions across studies involving…

This paper used meta-analysis to synthesize the relation between visual skills and Chinese reading acquisition based on the empirical results from 34 studies published from 1991 to 2011. We obtained 234 correlation coefficients from 64 independent samples, with a total of 5,395 participants. The meta-analysis revealed that visual skills as a…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the effects of the Response to Intervention Three Tier Model on third graders' reading achievement. Two hundred forty-three students participated in this study. Students were from an elementary school in the southeastern region of the United States. The data on the students was collected…

Education and related services are relying increasingly on empirically supported treatments (ESTs), which have been shown to improve student outcomes through rigorous research. Many organizations have developed review systems with guidelines for judging the quality of studies and identifying ESTs. However, little explicit attention has been paid…

In this article, I outline thoughts regarding the complexities and possibilities of the next generation of reading intervention for students who do not benefit from typical instructional practices. I ground my recommendations in school-based research and observations conducted primarily in kindergarten through third grade and more recently in…

In a qualitative meta-analysis , the researchers systematically reviewed qualitative and quantitative meta-analyses on reading research with PK-12 students published after the 2000 National Reading Panel (NRP) report. Eleven qualitative and 39 quantitative meta-analyses were reviewed examining reading research with typically developing hearing…