Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study investigated the concept of syntactic awareness as a reading strategy for complex sentence comprehension and the relationship between instruction in syntactic awareness and improved reading comprehension among mainstream high school students. When given the insight that sentences are important and when given simple rules to map syntactic structures onto thematic roles, with discussion and practice in simplification and restructuring of complex sentences, 91h and lth grade students demonstrated that they could significantly improve their reading comprehension abilities. The results support the concept that many high school students default to simple reading heuristics which work well on canonical sentence types, but which can fail with complex content-area texts. Sixty-three eleventh grade and forty-seven ninth grade mainstream students participated in a study in which one group of ninth and one group of eleventh graders, the experimental groups, were given a sentence comprehension strategy to help them when confronted with text that they block on, in many cases typical texts that are part of the high school curriculum. The control groups were given regular instruction in reading comprehension skills and strategies. Eleventh grade students who were enrolled in a SAT Preparation elective class were pre-tested and post-tested using both Real SAT tests from The College Board and the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (SDRT). A third group, the maturation group, was pre-tested and post-tested using the SDRT to control for normal academic growth. Ninth grade students who were enrolled in a reading elective course were pre-tested and post-tested using the SDRT. For the Eleventh Grade Experiment results were significant at the .01 level for the SDRT and at the .01 level for the SAT. The difference between the maturation group and the intervention group was significant at the .01 level but was not significant between the control and maturation group. The Ninth Grade Experiment results were significant at the .05 level for the SDRT. / 2031-01-02

Há na literatura especializada fortes evidências empíricas a respeito das relações entre habilidades de leitura e escrita e habilidades metalingüísticas. Entretanto, ainda são pouco numerosos os trabalhos que analisam efeitos de intervenções, sobretudo com falantes do português brasileiro. A presente pesquisa investigou a influência de um programa de intervenção, baseado em atividades voltadas para o desenvolvimento da consciência dos aspectos formais e estruturais da linguagem, com vistas ao domínio de habilidades metafonológicas e metassintáticas, sobre o desenvolvimento de habilidades de leitura e de escrita. O estudo teve um delineamento do tipo experimental realizado com um grupo experimental e um grupo controle, em três fases: pré-teste e pós-teste para todos os participantes e intervenção para o grupo experimental em sala de aula. Participaram deste estudo 44 crianças de ambos os sexos, de 2ª séries do ensino público fundamental, com idades de 08 a 12 anos, originárias de duas classes regulares nas quais as crianças apresentavam diversidades em termos de desempenho no processo de alfabetização. Algumas já dominavam o sistema escrito, mas muitas delas ainda não tinham este domínio. Foi feita aplicação coletiva de tarefas de avaliação de escrita e aplicação individual de tarefas de avaliação de leitura, consciência fonológica e consciência sintática antes e depois da intervenção. Esta consistiu em 16 sessões de aplicação coletiva de atividades lúdicas metafonológicas e 15 sessões de atividades lúdicas metassintáticas. Os dados foram submetidos ao teste T de significação de Student. Os resultados demonstraram que, apenas para o grupo experimental, houve diferenças significativas na comparação das médias pré e pós-teste para tarefas de escrita de palavras e de habilidades metafonológicas. Em tarefas de leitura e habilidades metassintáticas ambos os grupos progrediram significativamente. Concluiu-se que a efetividade do programa de intervenção constitui uma importante implicação pedagógica, pois evidencia que é possível recuperar atrasos em linguagem escrita em crianças dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental através de treino em consciência fonológica, correspondência grafemafonema e consciência sintática, em situação real de sala de aula. / There are strong empirical evidences in the specialized literature regarding the relationship between reading and writing skills and metalinguistic skills. However, there is still little research that analyzes the effects of interventions, especially with speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. This research investigated the influence of an intervention program, based on activities focused on the development of awareness of formal and structural aspects of the language, with a view to the field of metaphonological and metasyntactical skills on the development of reading and writing skills. The survey had an experimental type delineation carried out with an experimental group and a control group in three phases: pre-test and posttest for all participants and intervention for the experimental group in the classroom. Forty four children of both gender of the second year of the public elementary education, aged from 08 to 12 years, took part in this survey. The children were from two regular classrooms in which they had diversity in terms of performance in the literacy process. Some of them already dominated the writing system, but many of them didnt have this domain. It was accomplished collective application of writing valuation tasks and single application of reading, phonological awareness and syntactical awareness valuation tasks before and after the intervention. The intervention consisted of 16 sessions of collective application of metaphonological ludic activities and 15 sessions of metasyntactical ludic activities. The data were submitted to the Students T test. The results showed that there were significant differences, comparing the pre-test and post-test means, to the tasks of words writing, reading and metaphonological and metasyntactical skills. Both groups made a significant upgrade in tasks of reading and metasyntactical skills. It is concluded that the effectiveness of the intervention program has an important pedagogical implication as it shows that it is possible to recover lateness in written language in children of the early years of elementary education through training in phonological awareness, grapheme-phoneme matching and syntactical awareness in actual circumstances of the classroom.

Há na literatura especializada fortes evidências empíricas a respeito das relações entre habilidades de leitura e escrita e habilidades metalingüísticas. Entretanto, ainda são pouco numerosos os trabalhos que analisam efeitos de intervenções, sobretudo com falantes do português brasileiro. A presente pesquisa investigou a influência de um programa de intervenção, baseado em atividades voltadas para o desenvolvimento da consciência dos aspectos formais e estruturais da linguagem, com vistas ao domínio de habilidades metafonológicas e metassintáticas, sobre o desenvolvimento de habilidades de leitura e de escrita. O estudo teve um delineamento do tipo experimental realizado com um grupo experimental e um grupo controle, em três fases: pré-teste e pós-teste para todos os participantes e intervenção para o grupo experimental em sala de aula. Participaram deste estudo 44 crianças de ambos os sexos, de 2ª séries do ensino público fundamental, com idades de 08 a 12 anos, originárias de duas classes regulares nas quais as crianças apresentavam diversidades em termos de desempenho no processo de alfabetização. Algumas já dominavam o sistema escrito, mas muitas delas ainda não tinham este domínio. Foi feita aplicação coletiva de tarefas de avaliação de escrita e aplicação individual de tarefas de avaliação de leitura, consciência fonológica e consciência sintática antes e depois da intervenção. Esta consistiu em 16 sessões de aplicação coletiva de atividades lúdicas metafonológicas e 15 sessões de atividades lúdicas metassintáticas. Os dados foram submetidos ao teste T de significação de Student. Os resultados demonstraram que, apenas para o grupo experimental, houve diferenças significativas na comparação das médias pré e pós-teste para tarefas de escrita de palavras e de habilidades metafonológicas. Em tarefas de leitura e habilidades metassintáticas ambos os grupos progrediram significativamente. Concluiu-se que a efetividade do programa de intervenção constitui uma importante implicação pedagógica, pois evidencia que é possível recuperar atrasos em linguagem escrita em crianças dos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental através de treino em consciência fonológica, correspondência grafemafonema e consciência sintática, em situação real de sala de aula. / There are strong empirical evidences in the specialized literature regarding the relationship between reading and writing skills and metalinguistic skills. However, there is still little research that analyzes the effects of interventions, especially with speakers of Brazilian Portuguese. This research investigated the influence of an intervention program, based on activities focused on the development of awareness of formal and structural aspects of the language, with a view to the field of metaphonological and metasyntactical skills on the development of reading and writing skills. The survey had an experimental type delineation carried out with an experimental group and a control group in three phases: pre-test and posttest for all participants and intervention for the experimental group in the classroom. Forty four children of both gender of the second year of the public elementary education, aged from 08 to 12 years, took part in this survey. The children were from two regular classrooms in which they had diversity in terms of performance in the literacy process. Some of them already dominated the writing system, but many of them didnt have this domain. It was accomplished collective application of writing valuation tasks and single application of reading, phonological awareness and syntactical awareness valuation tasks before and after the intervention. The intervention consisted of 16 sessions of collective application of metaphonological ludic activities and 15 sessions of metasyntactical ludic activities. The data were submitted to the Students T test. The results showed that there were significant differences, comparing the pre-test and post-test means, to the tasks of words writing, reading and metaphonological and metasyntactical skills. Both groups made a significant upgrade in tasks of reading and metasyntactical skills. It is concluded that the effectiveness of the intervention program has an important pedagogical implication as it shows that it is possible to recover lateness in written language in children of the early years of elementary education through training in phonological awareness, grapheme-phoneme matching and syntactical awareness in actual circumstances of the classroom.

Στην παρούσα ερευνητική εργασία, θα μελετηθεί η επίδραση διαφόρων παραγόντων, όπως η ικανότητα στην αποκωδικοποίηση, η εργαζόμενη μνήμη, η προσωδιακή ευαισθησία και η συντακτική επίγνωση, στη συντακτική επεξεργασία προτάσεων από παιδιά και ενήλικες, που έχουν ως μητρική γλώσσα την ελληνική. Σκοπό της έρευνας αποτελεί η διερεύνηση της φύσης της δυσκολίας που αντιμετωπίζουν οι φτωχοί αναγνώστες της Στ΄ Δημοτικού, οι οποίοι αποτελούν την πειραματική ομάδα, στη συντακτική επεξεργασία προτάσεων. Χρησιμοποιήθηκαν δύο ομάδες ελέγχου: μια εξισωμένη ηλικιακά με την πειραματική ομάδα (Στ΄ Δημοτικού) και μια εξισωμένη αναγνωστικά (Δ΄ Δημοτικού). Στα έργα που χορηγήθηκαν για την αξιολόγηση της συντακτικής επίγνωσης (έργο αξιολόγησης συντακτικής επίγνωσης, έργο αποκατάστασης αποδομημένων προτάσεων, έργο επισύναψης κατηγορούμενου σε υποκείμενο με ανάγνωση), οι μαθητές με δυσκολία στην ανάγνωση σημείωσαν χαμηλότερη επίδοση από την ηλικιακά εξισωμένη ομάδα ελέγχου. Με συγκρίσεις των επιδόσεων της πειραματικής ομάδας και της αναγνωστικά εξισωμένης ομάδα ελέγχου, δε βρέθηκε διαφορά στη συντακτική επεξεργασία ανάμεσα στις δύο αυτές ομάδες. Η επίδραση των διαφόρων παραγόντων βρέθηκε ότι ήταν διαφορετική ανάλογα με τη φύση του έργου. Τέλος, βρέθηκε ότι οι φτωχοί αναγνώστες δεν παρουσιάζουν κάποια διαφορά, σε σύγκριση με την ηλικιακά εξισωμένη ομάδα ελέγχου, όσον αφορά στον τρόπο με τον οποίο χειρίζονται τους προσωδιακούς δείκτες, κατά τη επεξεργασία συντακτικά αμφίσημων εκφωνημάτων. / In the current study, the effect of various factors, such as decoding, working memory, prosodic sensitivity and syntactic awareness, on the syntactic processing of sentences will be investigated on children and adults, whose native language is Greek. The purpose of this research is to investigate the nature of the difficulty of sixth-grader poor readers, who constituted the experimental group, in syntactic processing. Two control groups were used, one age matched (sixth-graders) and one reading matched (fourth graders) with the experimental group. In the tasks used to evaluate syntactic processing (syntactic awareness task, word ordering task, attachment reading task), students with reading difficulty had lower performance than the age matched control group. Comparisons of the performance of the experimental group with the reading control group, showed that there is not significant difference in syntactic processing between these groups . Τhe influence of various factors on performance was found to be differentiated, according to the nature of each task. Finally, no difference concerning poor readers’ handling of prosodic information as compared to the age control group was found, during the processing of syntactically ambiguous utterances.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:39:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Miriam Segin.pdf: 2813413 bytes, checksum: f192e7858349d5ff3ad275af7e9ccf69 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-08-25 / Williams-Beuren Syndrome (WBS) is a genetic affection determined by the microdelation of contiguous genes in 7q11.23. The genetic profile of WBS is characterized by the visualconstructive deficit that contrasts with the good performance in verbal tasks, which sustains the hypothesis of dissociation between these abilities. This grants the syndrome peculiar cognitive and behavioral frames. The objective of this research is to describe the pattern of competences in tasks of linguistic abilities in 22 children and adolescents with WBS, aged between 7and 18 (M=11,6; DP=3,7), students of the 1st to 6th grades of elementary and special schools. We used the following instruments: WISC-III (to evaluate intellectual abilities); Wisconsin (used in neuropsychological assessment of abstract reasoning and cognitive strategies); CBCL/6-18 (behavioral assessment); Token-Comp (TT) used to working memory assessment; Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) used to receptive language assessment; Phonological Awareness by Oral Production Test; Syntactic Awareness Test; Word-Reading Efficiency Test; Test of Naming Images by Choosing Words; Test of Naming Images by Writing. The results of WISC-III, Wisconsin and CBCL/6-18 demonstrate mild to moderate intellectual disability, difficulty in concentration and identification of patterns of change, emotional and relationship problems, lack of attention, behavior disorders, challenge and opposition and somatic complaints. The results of TT and PPVT show that the receptive vocabulary is below expected for the level of schooling and age, and is close to the data found in 4-year-old-children. In the abilities of phonological and syntactic awareness, results indicate great deficiencies, with performances equivalent to those of 3-year-old children at the Phonological Awareness by Oral Production Test and of 4-year-olds at the Syntactic Awareness Test. No progression was found according to the increase of school grade. The tests Word-Reading Efficiency, Naming Images by Choosing Words and Naming Images by Writing were taken by 4 participants that presented deficits in the reading ability with graphophonemic decoding. They make more orthographic and semantic mistakes and show low capacity of naming by writing. Thus, it was possible to verify that the sample presents deficits in receptive language and work memory, difficulties in phonological and syntactic processing tasks, which are important factors to the proper development of the capacity to read and write / A Síndrome de Williams-Beuren (SWB) é uma afecção genética determinada pela microdeleção de genes contíguos em 7q11.23. O perfil cognitivo da SWB é conhecido pelo prejuízo viso-construtivo que contrasta com melhor desempenho em tarefas verbais, o que sustenta a hipótese de dissociação entre essas habilidades, conferindo a esta síndrome um quadro cognitivo e comportamental peculiar. O objetivo deste estudo é descrever o padrão das competências em provas de habilidades lingüísticas de 22 crianças e adolescentes com SWB, com idades entre 7 e 18 anos (M= 11,6; DP=3,7), estudantes do 1º ao 6º ano do ensino fundamental e de Escolas Especiais. Foram utilizados os instrumentos: WISC-III (avaliação do potencial intelectual); Wisconsin (avaliação neuropsicológica de habilidades de raciocínio abstrato e estratégias cognitivas); CBCL/6 18 (perfil comportamental); Token-Comp (TT) (memória de trabalho); Teste de Vocabulário por Imagens Peabody (TVIP) (linguagem receptiva); Prova de Consciência Fonológica por produção Oral (PCFO); Prova de Consciência Sintática (PCS); Teste de Competência de Leitura de Palavras (TCLP); Teste de nomeação de figuras por escolha de palavras (TNF1 escolha) e o Teste de nomeação de figuras por escrita (TNF2 escrita). Os resultados nos testes WISC-III, Wisconsin e CBCL/6 18 apresentaram deficiência intelectual de leve à moderada, maior dificuldade em concentração e identificação de padrões de mudança, problemas afetivos e de relacionamento, desatenção, transtornos de conduta, desafio e oposição e queixas somáticas. Nos testes TT e TVIP foi possível observar que o vocabulário receptivo está abaixo do esperado para a escolaridade e para a idade, próximo ao encontrado em crianças de 4 anos. Nas habilidades de consciência fonológica e consciência sintática, os resultados mostraram grande comprometimento, com desempenho equivalente ao de crianças de 3 anos de idade na PCFO e de 4 anos na PCS, sendo que não foi identificada progressão em relação á série. Os testes TCLP, TNF1 e TNF2 foram realizados por 4 sujeitos que apresentam déficits de habilidade de leitura com decodificação grafofonemica, cometem mais erros semânticos e ortográficos e revelam baixa capacidade de nomeação por escrita. Desta maneira, foi possível identificar que, nessa amostra, há comprometimento de linguagem receptiva e de memória de trabalho, dificuldades em tarefas de processamento fonológico e sintático, os quais são fatores importantes para o bom desenvolvimento da leitura e da escrita