Many adolescents struggle to comprehend text, a fact which has led educational researchers to speculate that these reading struggles might be linked with students’ levels of familiarity with the vocabulary and language found in these texts. However, few studies have identified the school-relevant language skills beyond vocabulary that contribute to variation in reading comprehension growth during the middle school years. With the goal of focusing additional attention on the central role of academic language in text comprehension, I explore the relationship between these language skills, referred to as Core Academic Language Skills (CALS), and reading comprehension. Study 1 of this thesis examines the concurrent development of academic language skills and reading comprehension for English Learners and their English proficient peers attending urban middle schools and followed over two academic years, from grade 6 to 7 (n=833). Parallel process latent growth modeling results suggest that academic language and reading comprehension skills develop concurrently, with rapid growth in CALS being associated with rapid growth in reading comprehension skills. Furthermore, initial levels of CALS predict rates of growth in reading comprehension. Focused on learners mostly reading below grade-level, this study highlights the potential for CALS-focused instruction to serve as a point of leverage for improving pre-adolescent and early adolescent learners’ reading comprehension outcomes. Study 2 builds on this first study by examining the co-development of academic language and reading comprehension in a broader age range for whom academic language instruction may be most critical—English proficient middle grade learners attending schools serving predominately low-income students. For decades, research has highlighted the impact of socioeconomic status on reading achievement suggesting the need to further investigate potentially malleable skills, such as academic language skills, that might be taught as part of comprehensive literacy initiatives designed to support pre-adolescent and adolescent struggling readers. Results revealed that students’ initial level of academic language proficiency was associated with their rate of reading comprehension growth across the two years they were followed and that socioeconomic status impacted reading comprehension growth indirectly via its influence on students’ initial levels of academic language skill. Results are not surprising given that academic language skill is a core component of reading comprehension. The main contribution of these findings is in revealing the significant impact of a specified core set of academic language skills on reading comprehension development. Findings suggest that these potentially malleable school-relevant language skills, shown to be unequally distributed within classrooms, constitute a promising skillset that can inform interventions designed to achieve both excellence and equity in literacy instruction during early adolescence.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate applications of the mnemonic keyword method to the recall of unfamiliar words when cued with their meanings. Both experiments used a study-test procedure and involved university students who were asked to study a list of 6-letter pseudowords, each with an English "translation". Keyword groups were presented with a concrete noun keyword for each pseudoword/translation pair, the first three letters of which were identical to the first half of the pseudoword. Subjects were asked to respond in writing with the pseudoword when cued with its translation, and keyword subjects in Experiment 1 were asked to also recall the keyword. Subjects were asked to describe, in a post-experimental interview, the method used to study each item set. Dependent measures were proportions of correctly-recalled pseudowords, letters in correct serial position, halves of pseudowords, and (only for keyword subjects in Experiment 1) keywords. Experiment 1 examined the effects of instructions to use a modification to the mnemonic keyword method, in which the orthographic form of the pseudoword was to be added to the interactive image containing the keyword and translation, were compared to free-strategy and to standard mnemonic keyword instructions across 4 study-test trials. The modified instructions neither helped nor hindered backward recall, as all groups recalled equivalent proportions of pseudowords and letters. Both keyword groups recalled more keyword-mapped portions of the pseudowords than did controls, and both groups recalled a large proportion of keywords by the second trial. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of training (including instruction, practice, and feedback) on backward recall for both subjects either provided or not provided with a keyword to map the first half of the pseudoword, across 3 study-test trials. Trained subjects were instructed to either generate mediators for the entire pseudoword (trained control group) or were instructed to use the provided keyword and generate a second to map the second half of the pseudoword (trained keyword group) and to associate the mediators with each other and with the translation, either imaginally or verbally. Individual differences in aptitude for acoustically decoding unfamiliar words into familiar words were measured with Part III of the Modern Languages Aptitude Test. An effect of training was found for recall of pseudowords, and a Trials x Training interaction for letters and for halves was observed due to differences between trained and untrained groups by the second and third trials respectively. Providing a keyword facilitated recall of first, but not second halves for trained subjects. Interestingly, more first halves were recalled by untrained than by trained keyword subjects. The opposite was true for second halves, indicating that the cognitive effort expended by trained subjects to generate further mediators may have detracted from their ability to exploit the provided mediator. MLAT scores were positively correlated to recall scores, but the correlations reached significance only for the untrained keyword group. Tests of heterogeneity of slopes revealed a significant difference in the relationship of MLAT and recall of first halves only between the trained and untrained keyword groups. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

As the English language continues to hold a prominent international position both politically and academically, the need for second/foreign language (L2) learners especially those involved in the scientific and technological disciplines to read from their books in English remains a vital social and educational issue. Even though language learners seem to understand this urgency, they often show resistance towards the L2 literacy package and reading in the language which not only introduces new linguistic knowledge, but more importantly suggests change in a learner's identity. The latter seems to occur more often in situations where the learners' literacy practices do not match those in the second language. This mismatch seems to be more salient between languages in which the construction of orthographic systems are different from the Roman script. Researchers have suggested that in cultures where literacy is negotiated through scripts differing from English; as in Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic/Farsi, the levels of processing language is different in comparison to languages which use the Roman script in their literacy practices. Furthermore, research has indicated a relationship between first language reading and what takes place in the second/foreign language. For example, investigations of several variables such as background knowledge, text format, and rhetorical structure of the first language, seem to show that they either transfer to or influence second/foreign language reading. However, what has received little attention in ESL/EFL research is the influence of the first language writing system when it differs from the Roman script. The present research that was conducted in Iran, is an inquiry into reading processes of sixty-three Iranian undergraduate students. An attempt was made to explore multiple variables related to L2 reading by applying both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. For the quantitative data, multivariate statistical procedures were conducted to see which variables, namely L1 reading proficiency (first language cloze task), L2 language proficiency (second language cloze task), L1 and L2 visual search strategy (L1 and L2 visual search task) contributed most to comprehension of English text related to both a general topic and a chemistry topic. In the qualitative analysis, introspective techniques were adopted to investigate hidden issues (through think-aloud-protocols) related to social and community literacy practices not tapped in the product-oriented quantitative investigation. Results of this study reveal the influence of both sociopolitical and linguistic factors in reading English as a second/foreign language.

The purpose of this research study is to examine the emergent literacy of seven special needs youngsters who are included in a regular classroom. The special needs of these children, according to school authorities, ranges from autism, Down's syndrome and fragile x syndrome to severe language and intellectual impairment. There are few studies which address the emergent literacy of these special needs children. If special educators and regular teachers are to provide appropriate literacy instruction for these children, it is essential to investigate the ways these youngsters experience, participate in, use, and understand literacy. This dissertation responds to that need through a field-based qualitative study. The research design is that of an in-depth case study, with the researcher acting as the prime instrument of data collection and analysis. The case study has an ethnographic orientation and is interpretive in nature. The qualitative approach to data collection and analysis ensured thick, comprehensive descriptions and explanations using a systematic series of phases to investigate the seven youngsters' experiences with literacy in multiple contexts (school and home). Gathered over 44 weeks, the types of data collected, include audio recordings of focused interviews with the parents, teachers, teaching assistants, principals, and any others relevant to the child's instruction, as well as videotaped classroom observations, observational notes, focused literacy tasks developed from An Observation Survey (Marie Clay, 1993) and Literacy Tasks (J. Harste, V. Woodward & C. Burke, 1984), notes from school records and documents, artifacts of the children's written products from home and school. The data was analysed across the seven youngsters and described from the perspective of four themes: Beliefs/Values: about literacy, about inclusion; Experiences with and Participation in literacy; Characteristic uses of literacy at home and at school; Uses of literacy and language. The findings from this special needs population indicated that the home literacy settings of all these youngsters were highly convergent while the classroom settings were divergent. The parents' and educators' beliefs/values about inclusion and literacy played an important role in each child's literacy achievements. Despite the differences in their special needs, as evident in their written products, the children were similar in their use of literacy and their understanding of literacy concepts. The results of the study of this special needs population bear a remarkable similarity to the emergent literacy findings of researchers who have examined non special needs populations. Verbal proficiency among this special needs population did not appear to be a necessary prerequisite for them to demonstrate differing uses of literacy.

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Reading is a transaction, a two-way process, involving a reader and a text at a particular time under particular circumstances (Rosenblatt, 1982). An interest in working with children, and an intrigue in the ways children transact with the stories they hear and/or read has turned me into a "Storycatcher" (Baldwin, 2005). As a storycatcher-researcher, I ventured into the world of stories at the Ottawa Public Library in order to exp-lore the narrative transactions of children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old. My Storycatching is a narrative within a narrative because my focus is on the four (4) child-storytellers' verbal and pictorial narratives, as they embody the literary transactions between themselves, their imaginations, and their live(d) experiences in response to the stories they hear during storytimes at the library.

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