Most people have struggled with reading in one situation or another, depending on their appreciation for the content, their prior experiences, and the texts. This department column shares ways for educators to help literacy learners unlock their potential with instruction anchored in their skills, knowledge, ways of learning, interests, and…

Despite instructors' belief that class readings are integral to the learning process, only 20-30% of undergraduate students complete required readings. Failure to complete course reading has been associated with declines in exam and research performance. This article first offers a brief review of the literature on why students do not complete…

This study examined the relationship between two reading curriculum based measures (oral reading fluency and MAZE) and the reading and mathematics subsections of a high stakes test administered at the 5th and 6th grades. Bivariate correlations were conducted between each curriculum based measure and each subsection of the test. Results indicated…

This 12-week mixed-methods study examined an 8th-grade English language arts curriculum designed to increase participants' (N = 62) reading comprehension and reading motivation. Data consisted of demographic information, pre/post standardized reading comprehension scores, reading motivation survey scores, and participants' periodic semistructured…

Concerns about poor L1 reading skills in undergraduate students have been expressed in several contexts. These skills form a basis for building robust L2 reading comprehension skills, vital for translators. This study, which is part of a larger organization-based action research study to improve L1 reading levels, aimed to explore how L1 reading…

Autonomous motivation has long been linked to reading achievement in older students and recently has received attention for the role it plays in the achievement of younger children. Given America's nearly nationwide adoption of the Common Core State Standards (which emphasize skill acquisition), concern over whether and how reading motivation is…

Prior research on reading difficulties has mainly focused on word decoding problems. However, there exists another group of children -- poor comprehenders (PCs) -- who have normal word decoding abilities but difficulties in reading comprehension. Less is known about PCs especially in non-alphabetic languages such as Chinese. This study identified…

Reading and comprehending a text or selection in a language that is different from one's native tongue can be a daunting task to many English as a Second Language (ESL) learners due to several reasons. Hence, teachers' instructional strategies play a pivotal role in developing students' reading skills. This study used a quasi-experimental design…

This quasi-experimental study explored a response-to-intervention (RTI) design in which Tiers 2 and 3 were inverted for the most at-risk first grade students in reading intervention in seven classrooms (n = 24) across two culturally diverse schools. These students were matched using propensity scores and compared to a second group of first grade…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Data-Based Individualization (DBI) on the reading comprehension of high school students with intensive needs in reading; specifically, two students with specific learning disabilities in reading (RD) and one student with high functioning autism (HFA). Perceptions of social validity of DBI by a…

Since 2007, nineteen Houston Independent School District (HISD) campuses have partnered with Literacy Now to offer the Reading Intervention program. The Reading Intervention program provides individualized, small group reading tutorials for at-risk students in kindergarten to second grade to create proficient readers by the end of third grade.…

Parents play a crucial role in shaping children's emergent literacy through shared book reading. Shared book reading can foster literacy acquisition, promote vocabulary development, and improve print awareness, phonological awareness, and story comprehension (e.g., Bus et al., 1995; De Temple & Snow, 2003; Mol et al., 2008; Snow et al., 1998).…

This present study examines the psycho-emotional and psychophysiological effects that variations in the tempo of background music have on learners who are completing reading comprehension tests while being monitored used multi-modal computer technology. Results of seventy-four (N = 74) participants indicated that listening to fast tempo music…

Knowledge of academic words, academic formulas and general formulas is essential for second language learners, but resources for incidental learning of these lexical items are very limited, especially in English as a Foreign Language contexts. This study employed a corpus-driven approach to examine the potential of online news for incidental…

The majority of U.S fourth graders are not proficient in reading. With lawmakers in some U.S. states enacting "Read by Grade 3" laws, it is important for teachers to be well prepared to teach reading to their students. The purpose of this study was to explore novice kindergarten through second grade (K-2) teachers' perspectives of their…