When skilled readers search for a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss the target letter more often when it is embedded in high-frequency function words than in less frequent content words. The magnitude of this "missing-letter-effect" (MLE) was investigated among 180 first- to fifth-grade students as a function of…

Visual phonics, a system of 45 hand and symbol cues that represent the phonemes of spoken English, has been used as a tool in literacy instruction with deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) students for over 20 years. Despite years of anecdotal support, there is relatively little published evidence of its impact on reading achievement. This study was…

The present study investigated the efficacy of early English immersion in the Shi Da Fu Elementary School in Xi'an, China. Three hundred and fifty one students were tested in Grades 1-6. There were two main purposes that motivated this longitudinal and cross-sectional study. The first goal was to compare the L1 and L2 language and literacy…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using flashcards to develop automaticity (rapid word recognition) with key vocabulary words and phrases in order to improve fluency and reading comprehension skills for participants with and without diagnosed learning disabilities enrolled in a high school Spanish course. Eighty-seven…

The main goal of the present study was to examine the efficacy of a multi-component programme to improve reading fluency and text comprehension in Spanish children with reading disabilities (RD). Special needs teachers were trained in the application of the programme, which included repeated reading plus phonological awareness training and…

A primary purpose of early childhood education and interventions is to promote children's acquisition of knowledge and skills linked to later social competence and academic success. In this report, special attention is given to summarizing what has been learned about early childhood classrooms as contexts for development and learning, the kinds of…

This research highlighted the use of text-to-speech technology and current shifts in strategy-based reading instruction in order to address the comprehension needs of struggling pre-adolescent readers. The following questions were posed: (a) Does reading comprehension of preadolescent struggling readers improve as the direct result of using…

Previous "selective" meta-analyses of the literature relating to the IQ-achievement discrepancy model of specific learning disability identification have concluded that "underachieving" and "low-achieving" poor readers do not differ in any educationally meaningful way. Underachievers are those poor readers who qualify as learning disabled using an…

In Greek orthography, stress position is marked with a diacritic. We investigated the developmental course of processing the stress diacritic in Grades 2 to 4. Ninety children read 108 pseudowords presented without or with a diacritic either in the same or in a different position relative to the source word. Half of the pseudowords resembled the…

Reading fluency has traditionally been viewed as a goal of reading that is taught and mastered in the elementary grades. In this article we challenge that notion by exploring the role of reading fluency as a contributor to reading proficiency and difficulty among intermediate and middle grade students. We assessed reading fluency development among…

We develop and test a dual-route model of genetic effects on reading aloud and spelling, based on irregular and non-word reading and spelling performance assessed in 1382 monozygotic and dizygotic twins. As in earlier research, most of the variance in reading was due to genetic effects. However, there were three more specific conclusions: the…

Previous research has shown that training teaching assistants to deliver early phonic reading interventions can have measurable effects at immediate post-test. This study explored whether the effects of interventions delivered by classroom assistants (CAs) were still evident at the end of the first phase of schooling, 16 months after the early…

We examined the relations of teacher knowledge (n = 42 first-grade teachers), explicit decoding instruction provided, and students' (n = 437) word-reading gains. Results revealed an interaction between teacher knowledge and observed decoding instruction: For students of more knowledgeable teachers, more time in explicit instruction predicted…

The effectiveness study examined a supplemental reading intervention that may be appropriate as one component of a response-to-intervention (RTI) system. First-grade students in 31 schools who were at risk for reading difficulties were randomly assigned to receive Responsive Reading Instruction (RRI; Denton, 2001; Denton & Hocker, 2006; n =…

This unique book emphasizes the importance of supporting students' academic development with targeted vocabulary instruction that includes a wide range of language forms and words. The authors provide sound theory and practical techniques to help teachers bridge the achievement gap by strengthening vocabulary, deepening literacy skills, and…