Search results for "COMPREHENSION"

Special Education Teachers’ Identification of Students’ Reading Difficulties in Grade 6

2020

his study investigated special educational needs (SEN) teachers’ (n = 29) assessment practices and the accuracy of their ratings of the students’ (M age = 12.75 years, n = 55) skill levels in reading fluency and reading comprehension. Teachers rated their sixth grade students’ fluency and comprehension on a three-point scale, and the students were also tested in group tests. Results showed that SEN teachers used several assessment practices simultaneously but mostly relied on observations. The correlations between the teacher ratings and the test scores were significant but moderate in fluency and weak in comprehension. Only two thirds of low-performing students having difficulties in fluen…

Strategic Decisions in Task-Oriented Reading.

2015

AbstractAnswering questions from texts are assessment and instructional activities that are frequently used in schools. Nevertheless, little is known about the strategic processes that students take while performing these tasks. We explored the amount and frequency that students initially read of a text before they answered questions pertaining to the material. In a procedure similar to the one used in the PISA (Program for International Students Assessment), one-hundred-seventy students between 7thand 9thgrade read and answered several questions designed to assess task-oriented reading in three specific texts. We recorded on-line indexes that evaluated student behavior (e.g., the amount of…

Reading Disabilities in children with Specific Language Impairment

2019

El presente estudio examinó el rendimiento en lectura de los niños con Trastorno Específico del Lenguaje (TEL). Treinta niños con TEL y 32 niños con desarrollo normal del lenguaje, equilibrados en género, edad cronológica e inteligencia, fueron evaluados mediante el PROLEC-R. Los resultados de los ANOVAs indicaron que ambos grupos difieren en el rendimiento en lectura. Como grupo, los niños con TEL tuvieron significativamente un rendimiento inferior, tanto en la exactitud como en el tiempo de la lectura de palabras y pseudopalabras, por lo que tenían una menos eficacia de lectura. En la misma línea, el rendimiento de los niños con TEL en comprensión literal e inferencial también fue inferio…

Using visual strategies to support verbal comprehension in an adolescent with Down syndrome

2011

International audience; It has been frequently reported that children with Down syndrome have deficits in verbal short-term memory while having relatively good performance in visual short-term memory tasks. Such verbal deficits have a detrimental effect on various high-level cognitive processes, most notably language comprehension. In this study, we report the case of an adolescent with Down syndrome whose verbal short-term memory and comprehension capacities are impaired. Noting that his visual memory remained relatively well preserved, we developed a remediation strategy based on his visual abilities to support his verbal memory deficit. This remediation led to significant improvements in…

Mejorando el procesamiento macro-estructural en L2 en estudiantes con niveles de inglés elementales o intermedios: un procedimiento instruccional cen…

2014

Previous studies have shown that students have difficulties building the macro-structure from expository texts in English (as L2). The usual cause pointed out is a lack of language proficiency. Thus, instructional methods have focused on providing students with the necessary vocabulary and grammar knowledge. This study proposes and validates an instructional approach which improves students’ L2 processing on the macro-structural level, focusing on reading strategies rather than on vocabulary or grammar. Comprehension monitoring on the macro-structural level was improved by performing instructional tasks devoted to establish global coherence. As a consequence, students’ reading comprehension…

Do graphical overviews facilitate or hinder comprehension in hypertext?

2009

Educational hypertexts usually include graphical overviews, conveying the structure of the text schematically with the aim of fostering comprehension. Despite the claims about their relevance, there is currently no consensus on the impact that hypertext overviews have on the reader's comprehension. In the present paper we have explored how hypertext overviews might affect comprehension with regard to (a) the time at which students read the overview and (b) the hypertext difficulty. The results from two eye-tracking studies revealed that reading a graphical overview at the beginning of the hypertext is related to an improvement in the participant's comprehension of quite difficult hypertexts…

Scientific abstracts and plain language summaries in psychology: A comparison based on readability indices.

2020

Findings from psychological research are usually difficult to interpret for non-experts. Yet, non-experts resort to psychological findings to inform their decisions (e.g., whether to seek a psychotherapeutic treatment or not). Thus, the communication of psychological research to non-expert audiences has received increasing attention over the last years. Plain language summaries (PLS) are abstracts of peer-reviewed journal articles that aim to explain the rationale, methods, findings, and interpretation of a scientific study to non-expert audiences using non-technical language. Unlike media articles or other forms of accessible research summaries, PLS are usually written by the authors of th…

Kindergarten pre-reading skills predict Grade 9 reading comprehension (PISA Reading) but fail to explain gender difference

2020

AbstractOne of the aims for compulsory education is to diminish or alleviate differences in children’s skills existing prior to school entry. However, a growing gender gap in reading development has increasingly been documented. Regrettably, there is scant evidence on whether differences between genders (favouring girls) have their roots in pre-reading skills or whether determining mechanisms are related to factors to do with schooling. We examined the extent to which pre-reading skills assessed in Kindergarten (age 6) predict reading comprehension in Grade 9 (age 15) and, whether the gender difference in reading comprehension can be explained by gender differences in the Kindergarten pre-r…

Learning to Read in a Digital World

2018

Los procesos inferenciales en lectores con síndrome de Down

2013

The aim of this work is to know if the source of the difficulty in making inferences, readers with Down syndrome, is in access to prior knowledge or constructing ideas from purely textual knowledge (based on Saldaña and Frith, 2002 for autism). Involved a sample of 20 students with Down syndrome and mild mental retardation (mean IQ = 60) and a control group of 20 children without cognitive deficits. They were matched as to their extent read metal age via Prueba de Evaluación del Retraso Lector (average 8 years). We created two experimental situations: a) subjects had to generate inferences based on physical knowledge, b) social inferences about knowledge. The ability to check and reaction t…