Word recognition skill is fundamental for readers to successfully process any given text. Proficiency in the component skills of word recognition, orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge, is what readers need to accurately and automatically decode words to apply meaning to what they have read. For second language readers, the challenge of reading is often hindered by a lack of word recognition skills and therefore, they often suffer from low reading rates and consequently poor reading comprehension. This study was a quasi-experimental longitudinal inquiry into the effects of extensive reading, word recognition training, and timed reading on second language reading comprehension. Through word recognition tasks focused on orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge development, the aim of this study was to (a) better understand the effects of orthographic, phonological, and semantic skill training on word recognition skills, (b) better understand the effects of word recognition training on reading rate and reading comprehension, (c) understand the effects of long-term word recognition training on reading comprehension, (d) investigate if changes in word recognition components correlate with changes in reading comprehension, and (e) better understand reasons for expected and unexpected outcomes of participants in the study. A total of 248 participants took part in the study. The participants were a combination of first- and second-year economics majors from a private university in western Japan. They were from ten intact classes that were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The first group acted as a comparison group and focused on intensive reading training. The second group did extensive reading and included sustained silent reading. The third group did extensive reading and received word recognition training. The fourth group did extensive reading, word recognition training and timed reading training. All participants took a reading course as part of the required English program that lasted for two 15-week academic terms. The first 30 minutes of each class were used for each group’s respective training, and the remaining 60 minutes were used to teach general reading strategies. Quantitative data were gathered using a variety of instruments that included a lexical decision test, an antonym pairs test, a pronunciation test, a reading comprehension test, and a reading rate test. Additional qualitative data were gathered via selected participant interviews and a post-study survey. The results showed that the participants who received word recognition training in conjunction with extensive reading, produced positive changes in reading comprehension. However, only two of the components of word recognition ability improved with training, semantic knowledge and phonological knowledge. This indicated that more focus on specific components of word recognition might provide better scaffolding to foster reading development. The results also indicated that the three treatment groups all performed significantly better than the comparison group in reading rate gain and those improvements were reflected in reading comprehension gains. With respect to word recognition and its impact on reading comprehension, there was evidence showing that word recognition training did positively impact reading comprehension, but that more time might be required than used in this study to see its full impact. Finally, there were data to indicate that there was a correlation between semantic knowledge and reading comprehension. This study shows that although extensive reading is an effective approach to teaching L2 English reading, the addition of word recognition training and timed reading can benefit readers by improving reading comprehension. The addition of word recognition training can assist lower-proficiency readers to automatize low-level cognitive processes such as orthographic, semantic, and phonological processes, and by doing so, reallocate cognitive resources to higher-level cognitive processes such as inferencing and schemata activation required for reading comprehension. Finally, the addition of timed reading seems to have contributed to overall reading rate and reading fluency development. / Applied Linguistics

This study examined reading programs in 68 Texas elementary schools that were identified as successful by their scores on TAAS assessment results in the 1999-2000 school year. These schools’ student populations had a high proportion of culturally diverse and low-SES students. The purposes of this study were: (1) to determine if and how teaching methods and collaboration (intervention/support teams) were used by effective schools to foster reading success in all students; (2) to identify cohesive patterns (clusters) or models in schools’ use of collaboration and teaching methods; (3) to examine these clusters of similar schools and see if the patterns differed based on the school/community demography (urban, suburban, or rural). The study was conducted in 68 schools in 33 school districts that represented various demographic settings from 12 different Education Service Centers across Texas. From these original 332 variables, 26 variables were selected that were of medium frequency and strongly correlated with high TAAS scores over a 4- year period. These 26 variables were used to examine the 68 high-performing Texas elementary schools for clusters. K-means analysis and HCA were both applied to the 26 response variables, using them as complementary techniques to arrive at a five cluster solution. Results from correlations of individual characteristics and from identifying school clusters suggested that school community type could possibly be moderately predictive of student performance on the TAAS/TAKS over time.

Second language (L2) reading fluency has not received sufficient attention in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and applied linguistics, especially regarding the types of treatments that promote reading fluency (Grabe, 2009). Hence, this study was a longitudinal, quasi-experimental investigation of the effects of timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading on the development of reading fluency among Japanese university students. The eight purposes of this study were to: (a) better understand how timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading treatments contribute to reading fluency in terms of reading rate and comprehension over one academic year; (b) distinguish how extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading treatments differentially promote reading fluency; (c) elucidate on how timed reading, repeated oral reading, and extensive reading treatments affect the automatization of word recognition sub-processes over time; (d) investigate differences between the reading fluency treatment groups in terms of their word recognition sub-processes; (e) further understand how reading fluency treatments contribute to oral reading fluency; (f) examine differences in oral reading fluency between the reading fluency treatment groups; (g) determine how reading fluency training affects learners’ perception of their L2 reading self-efficacy; and (h) shed light on differences in L2 reading self-efficacy between reading fluency treatment groups. This study was conducted in a private university in western Japan. The participants (N = 101) were first- and second-year Japanese university students. These participants formed four quasi-experimental groups: (a) Group 1, labeled as the oral reading group, received a reading fluency treatment consisting of extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading; (b) Group 2, the timed reading group, participated in extensive reading and timed reading; (c) Group 3, the extensive reading group, did extensive reading only; and (d) Group 4, the comparison group, practiced speaking and communication activities. Data for this study were obtained using the following instruments: a vocabulary size test, timed reading tests, timed reading practice passages used throughout the treatment period, an extensive reading test, a lexical decision task, an antonym semantic decision task, a pseudoword homophone judgment task, an oral reading task, and an L2 reading self-efficacy questionnaire, a utility of the reading fluency treatments questionnaire, as well as individual interviews with 20 of the participants. Excluding the vocabulary size test, the timed reading treatment passages, the utility of the reading fluency treatments questionnaire, and the interviews, the other measures were administered three times over the course of one academic year—once prior, once in the middle, and once at the end of the reading fluency treatment period. Prior to conducting quantitative analyses on the data gathered with the instruments mentioned above, the L2 reading self-efficacy questionnaire data were analyzed using the Rasch rating-scale model in order to confirm the validity and reliability of the instrument as well as to transform the raw scores into equal interval measures. In addition, the Rasch model was used to check for interrater reliability and rater severity of the scores of the oral reading task. Data cleaning procedures were also applied to the reaction time and reading rate data. The data were then analyzed using repeated-measures ANOVAs and MAN(C)OVAs in order to ascertain differences in within-subjects and between-subjects measures. The results showed that the three reading fluency treatment groups made significant within-subjects increases in their reading fluency with the oral reading group making the most reading rate gains, followed by the timed reading group, and the extensive reading group. Moreover, the oral reading group generally outperformed the other groups on reading rate measures. However, the extensive reading group did not significantly outperform the comparison group. In addition, while the timed reading group had the fastest word recognition reaction times, the oral reading group made the most gains in orthographic, semantic, and phonological processing. Furthermore, no significant differences were found between the groups on orthographic processing, but the oral reading group, timed reading group had significantly faster semantic and phonological processing reaction times compared to the comparison group. With regards to oral reading fluency, the oral reading group made the most gains and achieved the highest scores, but the timed reading group also made significant gains. Finally, the oral reading groups’ L2 reading self-efficacy increased the most. The results of the study underscore the importance of using a multifaceted approach of extensive reading, timed reading, and repeated oral reading in the development of L2 reading fluency. Through this reading fluency training, the learners not only became more proficient readers in both silent and oral modes, but they also became more self-efficacious in L2 reading tasks. Ultimately, these learners became more empowered to achieve success in their L2 learning endeavors. / Teaching & Learning