Cross-language transfer of word reading accuracy and word reading fluency in Spanish-English and Chinese-English bilinguals: Script-universal and script-specific processes.

2015 ◽  
Vol 107 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Pasquarella ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
Alexandra Gottardo ◽  
Esther Geva
2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caralyn Ludwig ◽  
Kan Guo ◽  
George K. Georgiou

Despite concerted efforts to improve the reading skills of English language learners (ELLs), it remains unclear if the interventions they have been receiving produce any positive results. Thus, the purpose of this meta-analysis was to examine how effective reading interventions are in improving ELLs’ reading skills and what factors may influence their effectiveness. Twenty-six studies with reported outcomes for pretest and posttest were selected, and four moderators (group size, intensity of intervention, students’ risk status, and type of intervention) were coded. The results of random-effects analyses showed that the reading interventions had a large effect on ELLs’ reading accuracy ( d = 1.221) and reading fluency ( d = 0.802) and a moderate effect on reading comprehension ( d = 0.499). In addition, for real-word reading accuracy, intervention groups composed of more than five students were less effective than groups composed of two to five students, and longer intervention sessions were less effective than shorter ones. Overall, our findings suggest that reading interventions have positive effects on ELLs’ reading skills, and they should not be delayed until these students have reached a certain level of oral English proficiency.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Hipfner-Boucher ◽  
Katie Lam ◽  
Becky Xi Chen

To evaluate the effects of bilingual education on minority-language children’s English language and literacy outcomes, we compared grade 1 Chinese-speaking Canadian children enrolled in three different instructional programs (French Immersion, Chinese-English Paired Bilingual, English-only). ANCOVA results revealed that the French immersion children outperformed the other two groups on measures of English phonological awareness and word reading and that the bilingual groups were comparable to monolingual English norms on a test of receptive vocabulary. Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine cross-language transfer of skills. French morphological awareness explained unique variance in English word reading and vocabulary for the French immersion group. For the other two groups, Chinese phonological awareness was significantly related to English word reading. Our results suggest that instruction in French or Chinese does not delay the development of early English language and literacy skills for Chinese-speaking children, as the children may be able to leverage skills from their other language to facilitate their English learning. Keywords: Bilingual education; French immersion; cross-language transfer


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Csaba Kertész ◽  
Ferenc Honbolygó

The ability to synchronise one’s movements to the sound of a regular beat has been found to be associated with children’s language and reading abilities. Sensorimotor synchronisation or tapping performance can among other factors [e.g., working memory and rapid automatized naming (RAN)] predict phonological awareness and word reading accuracy and fluency of first graders. While tapping tasks that use a simple metronome sound are more often used, applying musical stimuli has the potential advantage of being more engaging and motivating for children. In the present study, we investigated whether tapping to a metronome beat or complex musical stimuli would predict phonological awareness and reading outcomes of Hungarian 6-7-year olds (N=37). We also measured participants’ general cognitive abilities (RAN, non-verbal intelligence and verbal working memory). Our results show that phonological awareness, spelling and reading accuracy were associated with the musical tasks while reading fluency was predicted by the metronome trials. Our findings suggest that complex musical tasks should be considered when investigating this age group, as they were, in general, more effective in predicting literacy outcomes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 507-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEDRO VIANA DE FREITAS ◽  
MÁRCIA MARIA PERUZZI ELIA DA MOTA ◽  
S. HÉLÈNE DEACON

ABSTRACTWe investigated the unique effects of morphological awareness on several aspects of reading in Portuguese. We tested 132 Portuguese-speaking children in the fourth grade. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included inflectional and derivational transformations. Results indicated that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, and reading comprehension after controlling for the effects of nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained unique variance in reading comprehension after adding word reading as a control. In conclusion, morphological awareness has important roles in both word reading and reading comprehension in Portuguese. Educational and clinical implications are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Caruana ◽  
Rebecca Gelding ◽  
Maia Zucco ◽  
Genevieve McArthur

The aim of this study was to test the effects of tDCS on adult reading and spelling abilities. Experiment 1 examined whether tDCS improved adults' performance on reading and spelling tests. We found no evidence that left temporal tDCS stimulation improved word spelling, word reading accuracy, or word reading fluency compared to sham stimulation. Experiment 2 tested the effect of left-temporal tDCS stimulation on spelling training in adults. There was no evidence for a facilitatory effect of tDCS on spelling training despite its large and significant effects on adults' ability to spell difficult words. These results, paired with previous studies, argue against the use of tDCS as an intervention for poor reading and spelling until we identify a tDCS paradigm that reliably improves reading and spelling skills.


2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Wheldall ◽  
Robyn Beaman ◽  
Elizabeth Langstaff

AbstractA large gap is evident between the reading and related skills performance of Aboriginal students compared with that of their nonindigenous peers and this gap increases over the primary years of schooling. In this study, 34 students attended a tutorial centre in Sydney for older low-progress readers in Years 5 and 6, for two school terms. All students were referred by their schools on the basis of their reading difficulty and low socioeconomic status. The parents of 14 of these students self-identified as being Aboriginal. All students received an intensive, systematic skills-based remedial reading and spelling program (mornings only) and were assessed on a battery of literacy measures both prior to and following the two term intervention. The pre and posttest raw scores on all measures were analysed to determine the efficacy of the program. The group as a whole made large and highly significant gains on all measures of reading accuracy, comprehension, single word reading, nonword reading, spelling and oral reading fluency. There were no significant differences in gain between the two subgroups indicating that the program of instruction was equally beneficial for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Heggie ◽  
Lesly Wade-Woolley

Students with persistent reading difficulties are often especially challenged by multisyllabic words; they tend to have neither a systematic approach for reading these words nor the confidence to persevere (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003; Carlisle & Katz, 2006; Moats, 1998). This challenge is magnified by the fact that the vast majority of English words are multisyllabic and constitute an increasingly large proportion of the words in elementary school texts beginning as early as grade 3 (Hiebert, Martin, & Menon, 2005; Kerns et al., 2016). Multisyllabic words are more difficult to read simply because they are long, posing challenges for working memory capacity. In addition, syllable boundaries, word stress, vowel pronunciation ambiguities, less predictable grapheme-phoneme correspondences, and morphological complexity all contribute to long words' difficulty. Research suggests that explicit instruction in both syllabification and morphological knowledge improve poor readers' multisyllabic word reading accuracy; several examples of instructional programs involving one or both of these elements are provided.


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