Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Studien syftar till att undersöka lärares uppfattningar om läsförståelseutveckling och om hur läsförståelseundervisning. Det är en kvalitativ studie inspirerad av fenomenografisk metodansats med halvstrukturerade intervjuer som datainamlingsmetod. Resultatet visar att det finns en variation i lärares uppfattningar om vad som utvecklar läsförståelse och hur läsförståelseundervisning ska genomföras. Det som framkommer i intervjuerna med pedagogerna är att de flesta vill och försöker arbeta medvetet med sin läsförståelseundervisning men att det till stor del förekommer mest implicit undervisning. Resultatet påvisar en tendens till att eleverna blir sittande att genomföra uppgifter på egen hand eller i par och pedagogen blir instruktionsgivare och kontrollant istället för undervisare och övervakare av elevernas läsning. Det finns även en risk att de läsare som inte har några svårigheter inte får möjlighet att utveckla sin läsförståelse utan att fokus endast blir på de elever som är svaga läsare.

published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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The aim of this degree thesis is to see what research says about the use of computer and video games to support upper elementary pupils’ development in English reading comprehension in Swedish schools. Other goals are to see how online and offline gaming can be integrated in the Swedish schools and what attitudes teachers have towards gaming. The method used is a systematic literature review and the purpose is to analyze chosen articles and to find relevant content that answers the research questions. Five articles were chosen from different databases and were systematically analyzed in this thesis. The results show that online gaming as support for education can be rewarding for some upper elementary pupils in English learning. However, in English reading comprehension there is not much research found which means that more research needs to be made within this area. Moreover, involving online gaming in English language learning seems to be a challenge for teachers mostly because of their lack of knowledge about the subject, even though they are positive to gaming. The lack of knowledge about the subject could be altered with more education and courses in the area.

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There is growing evidence that young adult readers frequently fail to create exhaustive textbased representations as they read. Although there has been a significant amount of research devoted to age-related effects on text processing, there has been little research concerning this so-called shallow processing by older readers. This dissertation uses eye tracking to explore age-related effects in shallow processing across different levels of text representations. Experiment 1 investigated shallow processing by older readers at the textbase level by inserting semantic anomalies into passages read by participants. Older readers frequently failed to report the anomalies, but no more frequently than did younger readers. The eye-fixation behaviour revealed that older readers detected some of the anomalies sooner than did younger readers, but had to allocate disproportionately more processing resources to looking back to the anomalies to achieve comparable levels of detection success as their younger counterparts. Experiment 2 examined age-related effects of shallow processing at the surface form by inserting syntactic anomalies into passages read by older and younger adults. Older readers were less likely to detect syntactic anomalies when first encountering them relative to younger readers and engaged in increased regressive fixations to the anomalies. However, older readers with high iii reading comprehension skill were able to use their familiarity with text content to increase their likelihood of syntactic anomaly detection. Experiment 3 investigated the role of aging on shallow processing of the temporal dimension of the situation model. No age-related differences reporting the anomalies were found. The eye-fixation behaviour revealed that older readers with high working memory capacity detected some anomalies sooner than did younger readers; however, they had to allocate increased processing resources looking back to the anomalies to achieve comparable levels of detection as younger readers. Together, the results demonstrate that older readers are susceptible to shallow processing, but no more so than younger readers when they can rely on their linguistic skill or their existing knowledge to help reduce processing demands. However, older readers appear to require additional processing time to achieve comparable levels of anomaly detection as younger readers.

This case study explored how ten English as a First Language (Li) and ten English as a Second Language (L2) average Grade Three readers used Prior Knowledge and Non Prior Knowledge strategies to understand two Science texts and to answer three types of questions on the texts. The questions were classified according to the Pearson and Johnson taxonomy (1978). Answers to Textually Explicit questions could be found in the text; answers to Textually Implicit questions invited inferences from the text and answers to Scriptally Implicit questions required readers to use their own resources. Readers thought out loud or verbalized their thoughts after reading each sentence of the text, rated reading strategy statements, orally answered the three types of questions and then rated question-answering strategy statements. Patterns of strategies emerged from the Text and Questions protocols. Frequency counts of strategies were tallied and percentages were calculated. Analyses of the bar graphs showed that there were apparent differences between Li and L2 students in their use of Prior Knowledge and Non Prior Knowledge strategies when they read texts and answered questions on texts. It was felt that these differences indicated that Li readers seemed to be less “text-bound” or focussed on the text than L2 readers were. There were also apparent differences between the three types of questions and Li and L2 readers’ use of Prior Knowledge and Non Prior Knowledge strategies, providing evidence that the three types of questions elicited use of different types of strategies, and lending support to Wixson’s comment (1983) that the types of questions asked influenced the kinds of strategies used.

This master paper tries to analyse the structure of reading as a complicated multiple process, to reveal its components, to study the aspects of reading evaluation, text formation, the levels of reading comprehension, etc. Reading is one of the most important abilities the man has. At first sight it may seem as a simple and matter-of-course ability, but after studying it thoroughly it becomes clear that it is not true. Not only mechanical decoding of signs (reading), but also reading comprehension is significant to the growing, developing and mature enough personality. The problem of reading comprehension evaluation has been holding the interest of not only foreign, but also Lithuanian educators and researchers who go deep into this problem, try to carry out various investigations for the last decades. There is not much methodological literature about this topic but all the investigations that have been carried out to date are rather important and informative. United standardized test of reading comprehension has not been prepared yet, so teachers of the Lithuanian language try to create them themselves or to adapt tests prepared by others. The preparation of the valid test itself is a very complicated and responsible process that requires many efforts. Certain requirements are brought, so there were attempts to study the principles of the test formation during this research as in detail as possible, to check the reliability of the test in the different stages of its... [to full text]