Reading comprehension is crucial for academic achievement. While word-level reading and oral language comprehension skills are well-established predictors of reading comprehension, emerging research has been investigating the role of executive function (EF) processes in reading comprehension. The role of shifting – one of the core EF processes – still is underexplored. The purpose of this study was to examine the relation between reading comprehension, shifting, and well-established components of reading comprehension in grade 3 students, across three different shifting tasks. Thirty-six children, ages 8 to 9 years, completed a collection of word-level reading, reading comprehension, receptive vocabulary and EF tasks (working memory and shifting). Results indicated that reading comprehension was significantly and moderately associated with all shifting tasks, word-level reading skills, and receptive vocabulary, but not with WM. In addition, each shifting task explained unique variance in reading comprehension after accounting for word-level reading skills. When receptive vocabulary was added to the regression analyses, shifting tasks did not explain significant variance in reading comprehension performance. Results of this study are discussed in relation to existing models of reading comprehension. / Graduate

No description available.

Reading is a complex, communicative, integrative and interactive act and one of the most important s kills any learner has to acquire in the formal learning situation. It forms a primary basis for learning. Timeous identification of possible reading difficulties, with the emphasis on enhancing effective initial instruction rather than on providing learning support later, implies that the reading assessment of learners in the Foundation Phase should be regarded as an intrinsic part of the early instruction of reading. Since no formal, locally developed English reading instrument exists for all South African learners in the Foundation Phase, the aim of the research was to develop diagnostic English reading materials for the heterogeneous population of South African learners in Grades 1 to 3 in English schools, to be used by the regular class teacher. In order to design appropriate reading assessment materials, a literature survey was conducted on the latest developments in the theory of reading assessment and test construction. Theory was integrated with praxis and practice, using case studies to illustrate views adopted, resulting in syntheses for the requirements and criteria for the design of the diagnostic reading materials. Two comparable sets of materials in the multiple-choice question format and a user's manual were developed, starting with the recognition of initial letters in words and progressing to complex paragraph reading, with the emphasis always on comprehension. A pilot study was conducted, items were refined and scrutinised by a panel of experts and the materials were experimentally administered to 726 learners at four schools. The responses were coded, the data were captured and statistically computated, and an item analysis and selection, as well as a frequency distribution analysis of errors per error type were conducted. Conclusions were drawn from the findings. <-p> The reading assessment materials were concluded to be practical, valid and reliable. In final form, the materials held the promise of valuable contributions to the understanding of reading development and reading difficulties. Final recommendations were made concerning the final design and the adminis¬tration and use of the materials. / Thesis (PhD (Educational Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Orthopaedic Surgery / unrestricted

From Chapter one - 1.1 Genesis: My interest in increasing the efficiency of children's silent reading began in 1958 when I was teaching a Standard 5A of 24 boys and 15 girls in a two-stream Primary School in Rhodesia. the majority of children were able readers and the mean Word Reading Age was 12.7 which, in relation to an average chronological age of 12.3, yeilded an above average Reading Quotient of 103. These children needed lots of reading practice, and in addition to the usual Reading periods I resolved to set aside at least one period a week for Comprehension, as reading for meaning was then called.

Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / F. Todd Goodson / The purpose for this study is to look at the effects of a specific comprehension strategy—Reciprocal Teaching (RT; Palincsar & Brown, 1983,1984) on the performance of intermediate elementary students in the intermediate elementary grades on a standardized literacy assessment. The study was carried out in two implementation stages: a pilot with a small sample of fourth graders and a full-scale study with third, fourth, and fifth graders in a suburban public school district in the Midwest. The pilot study was implemented in two fourth grade classrooms, a total of 39 students, nine of which met the criterial for the experimental group who scored below the 25th percentile on an AIMSweb Maze 2016 fall benchmark. The full-scale study consisted of 269 students in grades three, four, and five across the same district, except for the fourth graders who previously were involved in the pilot. There were 71 students who met the criteria for the experimental group of scores below the 25th percentile on an AIMSweb Maze 2016 winter benchmark; however, after signed consent forms were returned, 59 participated. The students in the experimental group participated in intervention utilizing RT for approximately four weeks in Tier II small groups, instructed by classroom teachers at each elementary school. Regression discontinuity was used to determine the effect of RT on the students’ comprehension as indicated by their spring benchmark scores. The results of the pilot study showed a significant main effect in the scores along the regression line, indicating a positive effect for the intervention. Regression discontinuity analysis between groups indicated that a significant main effect exists for the intervention group. The full-scale study examined the effects per grade level for all students and with a set caliper for students whose scores were four points above and below the cut-off point, or winter 2016 benchmark, for the grade level. The results of the full-scale study focusing on all scores showed a significant main effect in the scores along the regression line, indicating a positive effect for the intervention for all grades; the effect was significant for all grades, but mostly for fourth and fifth graders. Regression discontinuity analysis between groups indicated that a significant main effect exists for the intervention group. When looking at scores within the caliper of four points above or below the benchmark, all scores showed a significant main effect in the scores along the regression line, indicating a positive effect for the intervention for all grades. Regression discontinuity analysis between groups indicated that a significant main effect exists for the intervention group within the caliper at each grade level.

There is a need for methods that understand and represent the meaning of text for use in Artificial Intelligence (AI). This thesis demonstrates a method to automatically extract a lexical knowledge base from dictionaries for the purpose of improving machine reading. Machine reading refers to a process by which a computer processes natural language text into a representation that supports inference or inter-connection with existing knowledge (Clark and Harrison, 2010).1 There are a number of linguistic ideas associated with representing and applying the meaning of words which are unaddressed in current knowledge representations. This work draws heavily from the linguistic theory of frame semantics (Fillmore, 1976). A word is not a strictly defined construct; instead, it evokes our knowledge and experiences, and this information is adapted to a given context by human intelligence. This can often be seen in dictionaries, as a word may have many senses, but some are only subtle variations of the same theme or core idea. Further unaddressed issue is that sentences may have multiple reasonable and valid interpretations (or readings). This thesis postulates that there must be algorithms that work with symbolic rep- resentations which can model how words evoke knowledge and then contextualize that knowledge. I attempt to answer this previously unaddressed question, “How can a sym- bolic representation support multiple interpretations, evoked knowledge, soft word senses, and adaptation of meaning?” Furthermore, I implement and evaluate the proposed so- lution. This thesis proposes the use of a knowledge representation called Multiple Interpre- tation Graphs (MIGs), and a lexical knowledge structure called auto-frames to support contextualization. MIG is used to store a single auto-frame, the representation of a sen- tence, or an entire text. MIGs and auto-frames are produced from dependency parse trees using an algorithm I call connection search. MIG supports representing multiple different interpretations of a text, while auto-frames combine multiple word senses and in- formation related to the word into one representation. Connection search contextualizes MIGs and auto-frames, and reduces the number of interpretations that are considered valid. In this thesis, as proof of concept and evaluation, I extracted auto-frames from Long- man Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE). I take the point of view that a word’s meaning depends on what it is connected to in its definition. I do not use a 1The term machine reading was coined by Etzioni et al. (2006). ii  predetermined set of semantic roles; instead, auto-frames focus on the connections or mappings between a word’s context and its definitions. Once I have extracted the auto-frames, I demonstrate how they may be contextu- alized. I then apply the lexical knowledge base to reading comprehension. The results show that this approach can produce good precision on this task, although more re- search and refinement is needed. The knowledge base and source code is made available to the community at http://martin.scaiano.com/Auto-frames.html or by contacting martin@scaiano.com.

A survey of related literature showed that, although many educational researchers have stressed the importance of idioms in the English language, very few experimental studies have been carried out to ascertain the role played by idioms in the reading process. The author conducted a study to determine whether idioms cause difficulty for children in the reading and understanding of prose. A pilot study was performed to facilitate the selection of test items and to establish testing procedures. The experimental study consisted of four randomly chosen groups in each of two schools. Randomly assigned children in each group were given one of the four reading tests as follows: Non Literal 1 (N.L. 1), which contained idioms in all eighteen test items; Non Literal 2 (N.L. 2), which contained idioms in twelve of the eighteen test items; Non Literal 3 (N.L. 3), which contained idioms in six of the eighteen test items; Literal, which did not contain idioms in any of the eighteen test items. The children read their assigned test and answered comprehension questions by selecting one of the four multiple choice alternatives for each test item. The following statistical results were obtained: the treatment effect was highly significant; the means increased steadily, with the highest scores associated with the Literal test and the lowest scores associated with Non Literal 1 test. There was no significant difference between the performance of girls and boys in the tests; there was no linear or curvilinear interaction with I.Q. and treatment, nor was there a sex by treatment interaction. An analysis of the four treatment groups showed that there were significant differences between the means of all groups except Non Literal 1 and Non Literal 2, the two groups containing the greatest number of idioms in the test items. The results of the study raised several implications which necessitate further research. Several questions are concerned with the incidence and type of idiomatic language used in books and the best method of teaching idioms to school children. Another raises the possibility of having to allow for idioms when compiling readability formulae. A further implication is that there may be a need for strictly literal reading materials which would serve as a transitional link between the multiplicity of dialects existing in society today, and the need to read and understand written Standard English. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

No description available.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether extensive reading has positive effects on developing inferencing skills. Extensive reading is a language learning method of reading large amounts of comprehensible texts. This method limits the use of dictionaries while reading; therefore, extensive readers have greater practice in dealing with unfamiliar words than non-extensive readers. One of the ways to deal with unfamiliar words is to infer the meaning of the word using contextual clues. Knowing how to infer the meaning of unknown words is a helpful skill for language learners. Due to the fact that extensive readers have a greater practice in dealing with unknown words, this study examines whether there are any differences in the precision of inferencing skills between extensive readers and non-extensive readers. There were 39 participants analyzed in this study, 28 non-extensive readers and 11 extensive readers. The results showed that extensive reading has positive effects on language learners’ inferencing skills. In terms of accuracy, we could not see a statistical difference; however, the extensive readers had a higher percentage in accurately inferring the word meaning. In terms of the use of knowledge sources, extensive readers were able to choose the appropriate knowledge source when inferring the target word. These results indicate that extensive reading can enhance language learners’ inferencing skills.