Children’s Reading Development and Instruction

Reading is a complex cognitive skill that involves the extraction of meaning from printed or written text. “Barking at print” without understanding is not reading. Developmentally, the typical pattern is that in the early years children learn receptive and expressive language skills, which are key for reading development. Then they learn letter sounds (and sometimes letter names also) and develop the auditory skills necessary for this. Then by putting sounds together they are able to decode words—in principle, the 50 percent of English words that are regular. As they encounter and remember more words, they develop a “sight vocabulary” of words that are recognized at a glance, without any need for decoding. Then they develop even more visual skills and learn whole words (especially irregular ones) as an entity. As they progress there is increasing emphasis on comprehension. Eventually they get to the stage of not “learning to read” but “reading to learn,” where the focus is on completely on the meaning extracted, rather than the process of extracting it. Practice with reading is essential to develop fluency. Good readers read many times the amount of poor readers. As children fail in reading, their motivation and confidence becomes damaged, and they tend to try even less. Better readers will get to the stage of being aware of how they read and be able to control how they read for different purposes. Eventually, there is less emphasis on the process of reading and more on the value of what is being read. Parents have a major role in helping their children develop, not only preschool but also during the school years. Peer learning may be added to the school curriculum to individualize and differentiate reading. Generally, girls do better than boys at both language and reading, and this is true in many countries. Socioeconomic status is strongly associated with reading. Different countries have different languages with different characteristics that may affect reading development. Increasingly, children read books and other materials electronically, on computers, tablets, and phones. Research has investigated whether they actually prefer this. A range of interventions for weaker readers are reviewed. Most have good short-term effects, but few show continued effects in the long term, whether the intervention is continued or not. Traditional ways of assessing reading development are described and then computer-based methods that show promise are showcased. Generally, only studies from 2010 onward have been included.

The attitudes of students towards the use of ICT during their studies

The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes of students towards the use of ICT during their studies. The survey included 285 students from Girne American University, Turkey. The sample consists of the students from first to fourth grade. The scale consists of 45 claims and is intended for determining students’ attitudes towards the use of ICT during their studies. Questionnaires were utilized to gather information on the attitudes of students towards the use of ICT during their studies. Information was broke down using SPSS statistical package (IBM SPS Statistics Version 20) and with Monte Carlo program for the parallel examination. The study established that students towards the utilization of ICT made the significant commitment to the students' academic performance. It is advanced that the discoveries of this study will be valuable to students to acquire knowledge into the ICT variables that influence students' scholastic execution and consequently enhance their academic performance.Results indicate that after one year of the intervention, there were statistically significant differences between the two groups only in sight vocabulary (at kindergarten and grade 1) and in alphabet (kindergarten). In all other areas of language development, there were no statistically significant differences between the achievement scores of the two groups. Results show that students appear to react to the prerequisites of their courses, programs, and universities. In all cases, there is a reasonable relationship between the students' view of handiness on certain ICT assets the critical quantities of understudies are quick to see ICT misused in the educating and learning process. There is positively scope for further research to examine how ICT interfaces crosswise over various areas and how the cross-connection application impacts its utilization.