The purpose of this study is to ascertain the effectiveness of a reading program based on children's experiences, interests, and needs, in which the mechanics of reading are kept subordinate to meanings. This study will be delimited to Princeton Avenue Elementary School, Orlando, Florida; a sample of three grades in Princeton School to be selected for intensive study; reading in the total school program; one year for the investigation. / Typescript. / "August, 1957." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Advanced Master in Education." / Advisor: Harris W. Dean, Professor Directing Study. / Includes bibliographical references.

"The problem in this study was an attempt to determine whether phonics serves as an aid to the teaching of first-grade reading and to weigh and examine its possibilities in the light of the consequences in the first grade. It has been a question in the minds of authorities in reading as to how much phonics should be taken up during the first year of a child's experience in school and what steps should be taken in presenting this aid. Some related questions suggested by this study are: (1) What is the status of phonics at the present time? (2) What are the views of the leading authorities in this field? (3) Should phonics be taken up during the child's first year in school? (4) How much phonics should be taught in the first year? (5) What steps should be taken up first? (6) What are the advantages to be derived from phonics? (7) What are the disadvantages resulting from phonetic training? (8) What precautions should be taken in teaching phonics? (9) Have any experiments been made; what conclusions were drawn from them? (10) Is phonics the only desirable method of word analysis? (11) Do all children need phonics and if so, do they all need the same amount? (12) Should phonics be presented during the reading period? (13) Is reading the only subject which is aided by phonetic training?"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "July, 1945." / "Submitted to the Faculty of the Florida State College for Women in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: M. R. Hinson, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-37).

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Researchers and educators agree that reading comprehension and interest in reading are strong predictors of future success in academics. I studied the effects of establishing interest for reading (i.e. increased reinforcement value for reading) and reading achievement with 4th grade students. In Experiment I, I tested the correlations between a measure of reinforcement value for reading level (determined by a 20-min, 10s whole interval probe session) and reading achievement tests of 30 fourth-grade students. The reading achievement tests measured passage comprehension, literary comprehension, informational comprehension, and vocabulary. I found significant correlations between reinforcement value for reading and all reading achievement measures. In Experiment II, using a pre- and postintervention design with a multiple probe logic, I tested the effects of establishing a level of interest in reading (CR+ for reading) through a 4-step, peer-collaborative procedure on reading achievement outcomes for 6 fourth grade students. The 4-step procedure included 1) shared reading period, 2) vocabulary task 3) independent reading period, and 4) a comprehension drawing task. The establishment of CR+ for reading in all 6 participants resulted in grade-level increases from 0.8-4.1 in WJ-IV passage comprehension, -0.4- 2.3 in WJ-IV vocabulary, and 0.2-2.3 in Gray Silent Reading Tests (GSRT). In Experiment III, I conducted a component analysis to test the significance of the independent and shared reading component of the 4-step peer-collaborative procedure. Using a simultaneous treatment design with a built-in crossover, I studied the effects a Collaborative Independent Reading Treatment (CIR) and Collaborative Shared Reading Treatment (CSR) on establishing CR+ for Reading and the overall effect it had on reading achievement. The 4-step peer-collaborative procedure was the same except students were either exposed to only shared or independent reading and not the other. Participants were yoked into dyads across treatment conditions and completed intervention with a partner in the same treatment condition. Participants in the CIR treatment met CR+ for reading in 1 phase while participants in the CSR treatment did not meet CR+ for reading in 1 phase. The establishment of CR+ for reading in the CIR treatment group resulted in grade-level increases from 1.2 to 3.4 in the WJ-IV passage comprehension, 0.4 to 4.5 in the WJ-IV vocabulary, and -1.2 to 4.3 in the GSRT. Without the establishment of CR+ for reading in the CSR treatment group, grade-level increases for WJ-IV passage comprehension was -1 to 2.1, WJ-IV vocabulary was -0.9 to 0, and GSRT was -0.3 to 1.5). I conducted a crossover treatment where participants in the CSR treatment group underwent the CIR treatment procedure. All 4 participants acquired CR+ for reading in 1 phase of the intervention and increases were 0.6 to 2.2 for WJ-IV passage comprehension, 0.8 to 4.3 for WJ-IV vocabulary, and -0.5 to 2.7 for GSRT. The CIR treatment procedure was more effective in, not only establishing reinforcement value for reading, but also in increasing reading achievement in a very short amount of time.

Reading Chinese is one of the most challenging tasks for learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL learners). Studies showed that effective use of strategies (e.g. inferring meaning from context) helps to enhance reading comprehension. However, so far, most studies about reading Chinese as a foreign language have focused on lower-level processing (e.g. word learning strategies, the effects of orthography on word acquisition, etc.). Studies about reading process and strategies of adult CFL learners engaging in independent Chinese text reading are extremely limited, and few studies compare reading strategies and perceptions of successful and less successful CFL readers. This study filled these gaps by investigating adult CFL learners’ reading strategies and comparing strategy use and perceptions of successful CFL readers and less successful ones. Using the Compensatory Model of Second Language Reading (Bernhardt, 2005; 2011) as the theoretical framework, this study answered three research questions with sub questions: 1. What are the reading strategies used by adult CFL learners? (a) What are overall reading strategies used by adult CFL readers? (b) What are effective strategy combinations used by adult CFL readers? 2. How do successful adult CFL readers apply and perceive reading strategies when reading in Chinese? 3. How do less successful adult CFL readers apply and perceive reading strategies when reading in Chinese? Qualitative research methods were used to collect and analyze the data. Twelve college level third-year Chinese learners were asked to read a Chinese text, finish a think-aloud task (verbally express their thought process), recall the content of the text, answer several text-related questions, and engage in semi-structured interviews. This study identified 14 bottom-up strategies and 12 top-down strategies. The effective reading strategy combinations used by CFL readers included 1) inferring word meaning by accessing context cues, character meaning, and mental lexical networks; 2) monitoring comprehension by using context information, rereading, summarizing, noticing text structure, paraphrasing, or translating difficult parts; 3) segmenting Chinese words by checking the dictionary, conducting grammar analysis, and referring to mental lexicons. Through comparing the cases of successful and less successful CFL readers, this study revealed that successful readers were good at using context information, monitoring comprehension, and distinguishing important text segments from less important ones. They showed confidence in applying reading strategies and consciously acquired and practiced using strategies while reading. Less successful readers, on the other hand, had more difficulties in decoding characters and words as well as understanding complicated sentence structures. They did not trust their ability to infer about words and phrases, and relied more on the dictionary and translation. In addition, compared with less successful readers, successful readers used more top-down strategies, and they had better metacognitive competences in applying a wide range of strategies effectively. The findings of this study provide useful pedagogical implications to improve Chinese reading instruction and a better understanding about reading Chinese as well as L2 reading.

Students’ attitudes to reading and the texts they choose to read impact on literacy achievement and willingness to engage with literacy-related activities in the primary years of schooling. This study was conducted in an urban Catholic school in Queensland in Years 1 to 7. Students’ developing attitudes to reading and the perceptions of these attitudes held by their teachers were examined. An adapted version of the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (McKenna & Kear, 1990) and Teacher Checklist (Young, 2003) was utilized. Results from the study indicate older students’ attitudes towards recreational reading (in primary school) are not significantly different to younger students’ attitudes. Female students however, show more positive attitudes to recreational reading than male students. Older students’ attitudes towards academic reading are more negative overall and female students showed significantly more positive attitudes than their male peers. Students’ choice of texts varied across the year levels with the most preferred reading materials being chapter books, children’s magazines and comics. Teachers’ perceptions of students’ enjoyment of reading in class correlated significantly with students’ own perceived level of reading achievement. Teachers perceive that as students’ level of reading enjoyment increases, their level of academic reading achievement also increases. Five recommendations are made from the findings of this study. First, recreational reading engagement needs to be publicly promoted and positively celebrated within the school community. It was found that for students to be motivated and see the value of engaging in reading they must be immersed in a school classroom environment that offers a range of recreational activities and opportunities. Second, a structured approach to literacy sessions (literacy block) needs to be established and implemented with students across all primary year levels. This enables students to be scaffolded in their literacy learning and so develop positive attitudes towards themselves as academic readers. Third, it is recommended that guided reading occur as a key instructional approach to the teaching of reading across all primary year levels. This may serve to increase students’ motivation and interest in reading a range of text types and may provide a source of information for the teacher in relation to students’ engagement with reading. Fourth, a range of text types need to be purchased and made available for students to read independently and for teachers to use in class shared reading activities across all primary year levels. Students should be exposed to various text types throughout their primary years of schooling. Finally, the teaching of reading needs to be ‘data-driven’ rather than based on teachers’ perceptions of students’ reading needs. Periodic assessments of students’ reading achievement should occur to provide these data for teachers. The recommendations from this study align with priorities and recommendations included in current Commonwealth and State documents. Directions for future research also are suggested especially for qualitative data collection. This methodology, if included, would glean more in-depth data concerning students’ attitudes to reading and the perceptions held by their teachers. Investigating students’ attitude towards and use of digital literacies also would provide a greater understanding of primary-age students’ attitudes towards reading in the 21st century.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 18, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-238).

Research reports as PISA and PIRLS show that reading comprehension among Swedish students have deteriorated in recent years and that girls have better reading comprehension than boys. The basis for this study is Maj-Gun Johansson's reading comprehension test done during the four years between the years 2005-2008 in the seventh grade in a municipality in Sweden. The main purpose of this study is to examine reading literacy in terms of the influence of content and form of texts viewed from a gender perspective. The study is divided into two parts. The first part is a survey on local reading comprehension compared with results from a similar national text. The second part examines the texts where the students had the lowest result, and the texts with highest differences in comparison between girls and boys. The results show that the most difficult text for both girls and boys was a factual text in which the content had no links to students' everyday lives and containing mathematical symbols. The form of the text made it more difficult to read when it contained difficult words, long sentences and was written in the passive form. The text had neither narration nor causal words. A literary text with two female characters showed the highest difference between girls' and boys' reading comprehension. The result indicates advantage to the girls. The result also indicates that although the form of the text was relatively simple, the text content and the identification factor plays a greater role for the boys in reading comprehension. From a gender perspective considered boys were more affected by the text content than its form.

This study examined the effects of the number of columns and type of justification on reading speed, reading comprehension, and satisfaction for online text. Sixty-six participants read a single narrative passage of approximately 2200 words presented in one of six conditions: one, two, or three columns and full- or left-justification. Results from this study found that reading speeds for the two-column full-justified condition and one-column left-justified condition were fastest overall. Fast readers performed best under the two-column full-justified condition, and slow readers performed best under the one-column left-justified condition. No significant differences were found for overall satisfaction or comprehension. Further studies are needed to examine the importance of individual difference in reading ability on online reading performance. / "May 2005." / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Wichita State University, Dept. of Psychology

The purpose of this study was to determine whether good and poor second grade readers differed in their abilities to respond orally with words which were syntactically correct and were semantically equivalent while reading aloud a fifty item oral cloze test. An extreme range in variance on the dependent measure of semantic equivalence prohibited the planned multivariate analysis of the two dependent measures of syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence. A nonorthogonal univariate analysis of variance was conducted on the dependent measure of syntactic correctness, with intelligence and sex controlled.The subjects for the study were second grade students randomly selected from six middle class elementary schools in a middle size midwestern city. Only students who fit the criteria of a second grade reader and a user of language, employed in this study, formed the population from which the sample was selected. In order to control for the effects of sex, four groups of subjects were used -- twenty male good readers; twenty female good readers; twenty male poor readers; and eighteen female poor readers. Level of reading achievement was based on the subject's score on the reading subtest of the Metropolitan Achievement Tests: Reading Tests, Primary II, Form F. Intelligence was controlled in the statistical analysis through use of the stanine scores of the subjects on the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test, Elementary I Level, Form J.The subjects were administered a fifty item cloze test, constructed and piloted by the researcher. Subjects read the cloze test aloud and supplied responses for the deleted items, which were recorded on answer sheets. A trained judge scored the responses. The criterion for syntactic correctness was as follows: A response was considered to be syntactically correct if it belonged to the same grammatical class as the deleted word. The criterion for semantic equivalence was as follows: A response was considered to be semantically equivalent if, when substituted for the deleted word, it did not alter the meaning of the passage up to the point of the deletion and the meaning of the sentence in which it occurred.The three independent variables in the study were intelligence with two levels (high and average), sex with two levels (male and female), and reading achievement with two levels (good and poor.) Intelligence and sex were used as controlling factors. The two dependent measures were syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence. However, the extreme variability within the dependent measure of semantic equivalence prohibited statistical analysis.A nonorthogonal univariate analysis of variance was conducted on the dependent measure of syntactic correctness, with intelligence and sex controlled. The null hypothesis was rejected (F=13.195, with 1 and 70 degrees of freedom p < .0001). Good second grade readers did have significantly higher syntactic correctness scores on the oral cloze test than poor second grade readers. While the difference between the marginal means for good and poor second grade readers was small, it was statistically significant. Although the dependent measure of semantic equivalence was not analyzed, the within-cell correlation between syntactic correctness and semantic equivalence was high (.794).The finding of the study was interpreted to mean that good second grade readers appeared to be more aware of and more able to use the syntactical constraints of the printed text to supply missing words. It was concluded that poor readers may need to be specifically taught to use the syntactical constraints of the printed text, rather than expecting this ability to develop naturally.