bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Reading skills in extended discourse in English as a foreign language
Authors: Berkoff Nelson A. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTAre there different reading skills (Davis, 1944; 1968; 1972) or is there just one‘basic’(Spearitt, 1972) or‘common’(Thorndike, 173) reading skill? Tests designed to measure some posited reading comprehension skills were given to advanced students of English as a Foreign Language. There were five tests: I) Vocabulary Recognition as measured by a multiple‐choice test, 2) Extraction of Meaning during reading as measured by open‐end questions, 3) Extraction of Meaning during and after reading as measured by a question‐cued recall test, 4) Fast and accurate reading as measured by a Word Intrusion Test, and 5)‘Overall reading proficiency’as measured by a modified cloze test. Results indicate the existence of two factors: Factor I which is connected with‘receptive’reading skills, and Factor 2 which is connected with‘productive’reading skills. It is suggested that reading comprehension tests of extended discourse in English as a Foreign Language which do not tap‘productive’reading skills, such as are required in recall (and in real life), are only partial tests of reading comprehension.
The effect on the doze test of changes in deletion frequency
Authors: Alderson J. Charles 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTAlthough the pseudo‐random cloze procedure has been in use for some twenty‐five years as a measure of readability and reading comprehension, little research has been carried out into the effect of deleting words from text more or less frequently. This paper reports on an experiment in which the deletion frequency variable was systematically studied. Every 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th word was removed from three texts of differing difficulty, and the effect studied. Significant differences among cloze tests resulted, but the differences were unpredictable. Deleting every 12th word did not necessarily result in an easier test than deleting every 6th 8th or 10th word. However, when only items identical to both cloze tests under consideration were compared, no significant differences were found. It appears that cloze items are, on the whole, unaffected by context greater than five words. Testers are warned that changing deletion frequency may result in a different measure of readability or comprehension.
Devine comment j'apprends a lire?
Authors: Burion J. 
Published: November 2005

SUMMARYThe Swiss researchers Cardinet and Weiss (1975) have stressed, following recent psycholinguistic trends, the complexity of the intellectual activity involved in reading. A Belgian study (Burion, 1979) examined what constituted reading for a beginner, what were the general principles of teaching initial reading, and what the implications of these were for teaching early readers. Reading was taken to involve hypothesis forming and guessing, within constraints which vary according to the reader's skill. Beginning reading requires, among other things, motivation to learn and some relevant personal experience, both of which are aspects which parents and others have been encouraged to develop. Following Cardinet and Weiss (1974) and Inizan (1978) children's oral language is used as a basis for reading texts. The purpose and use of reading are stressed as well as the development of skills which are needed for continuing to learn how to read (see figure). In general, it is argued that the teaching of initial reading should focus upon the beginning reader rather than on teaching procedures and that account must be taken of factors in the individual child such as motivation, experience, oral language, cognitive development and pace of learning.
Visual performance and reading in seven and eleven year old children
Authors: Riding R. J. , Pugh J. C. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTGroups of seven and eleven year old children were given a test of visual performance in which they viewed a small white disc on a black background in a tachistoscope and reported whether the disc appeared to disappear when the experimenter switched very briefly to a second completely black field. The shortest disappearance reported was taken as a measure of their dark interval threshold. The threshold decreased with age for girls, who also had a higher threshold than boys at both ages. When the subjects were grouped according to their threshold, the girls at seven and eleven who had a moderate threshold were superior on reading accuracy to those of low and high threshold. For the boys this was so at eleven, but not at seven.
An approach to analysing teacher verbal moves in hearing children read
Authors: Campbell Robin 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTA study has been made to investigate the teacher‐child interaction of hearing children read in infant school classrooms. Recordings of 156 interactions from six different teachers have been collected from naturalistic settings. The transcriptions of these recordings have been analysed, and this paper is concerned with the descriptive system of the teacher verbal moves which has been developed. This system indicates three main variety of moves; pedagogical, feedback and asides. The pedagogical moves are sub divided into areas concerned with welfare, directions, providing words, word recognition, phonics and comprehension. The functional nature of the teacher moves is indicated and specific examples of thc moves are provided.
Reading research in Hungary
Authors: Kamarás Istvan , Nagy Attila 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTMuch recent reading research in Hungary has focused on the formation of readers’attitudes and value judgements. This paper reports the results of a number of such studies, based on research with various groups, including library users, ‘killed‐worker’ students, and children. A‘more books’programme has been found to be successful in developing a more discriminating approach to literature, but there is concern over national trends in reading. International studies have shown Hungarian students to be comparatively good at science but poor at reading. More books are being bought, and the proportion of women readers is increasing, but adults are spending less time on reading, and have a growing interest in non‐fiction. The results of reading research in Hungary are not regarded as of purely theoretical interest. Such results are regularly used by librarians and by educational administrators.
The family and the development of literacy skills and values
Authors: Taylor Denny 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis paper presents the initial findings of three years of field work with six families in which the children were considered by their parents to be successfully learning to read and write. The study represents an attempt to develop systematic ways of looking at reading and writing as activities which have consequences in and are affected by family life. In the present report, it is suggested that multigenerational family literacy patterns mediated by personal experiences of everyday life are of fundamental importance to the child's development of an individual educative style and, therefore, to learning to read and write. Consideration is given to the interplay of individual biographies and educative styles within each family. Variations are then explored in the degree to which each family specifically fostered literacy skills and values. Within this context emphasis is placed on the importance of the children's family experiences of print which are situationally diffuse, occurring at the very margins of awareness.
Cloze procedure and comprehension: an exploratory study across three languages
Authors: Grundin Hans U. , Leonard Brother , Langer Judith , Pehrsson Robert , Robinson H. Alan , Sakamoto Takahiko 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis cross‐cultural study of cloze procedure and comprehension involved samples of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old schoolchildren in Canada, Japan, Sweden and the United States. The aim of the study was to explore the nature of what might be called‘cloze comprehension’in relation to overall or‘global comprehension’of a passage; in particular to establish(a) whether cloze procedure measures the same facets of comprehension regardless of what language is being read; and(b) to what extent cloze procedure, in different linguistic areas, measures‘global comprehension', or comprehension of the general ideas contained in a passage, as distinct from literal comprehension.The results of the study indicate that cloze procedure is a valid and reliable measure of certain aspects of reading comprehension in all the linguistic and cultural areas sampled. Furthermore, comprehension as measured by cloze procedure seems to be a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for overall or global understanding of the meaning of a passage.The study also shows that the ability measured by cloze procedure is more generalized (i.e., less text specific) than the ability measured by our global comprehension task. One implication of this seems to be that the higher‐order skills necessary for global understanding do not always develop automatically once children have mastered the skills necessary for literal comprehension of simple texts. On the contrary, the higher‐order skills may have to be taught systematically at an appropriate stage in the children's reading development.
Reading retardation or linguistic deficit? II: test‐answering strategies in hearing and hearing‐impaired school children
Authors: Wood D. J. , Griffiths A. J. , Webster A. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThe reading test performances of 60 hearing and 60 hearing‐impaired children of similar measured reading ages on the Southgate reading test were analysed. As in an earlier study using the Brimer Wide‐span test it was shown that the performances of the two groups were quite different. Deaf children tackled significantly more test items than the hearing and made significantly more errors in achieving similar reading scores.A detailed examination of both correct and incorrect answers showed that the deaf children were not simply providing answers to questions at random. Even where they produced incorrect responses they tended, as a group, to select the same answer. Unlike the hearing group, who did not converge on the same incorrect solution to difficult test items, the deaf were systematic in their choices, indicating that they were using a consistent strategy.A post hoc examination of individual test items indicated that the deaf children were selecting answers on the basis of word associations in each test item. On some items these produced a correct response, on others the same (incorrect) response. The implications of these findings are discussed to argue that reading tests based on hearing norms are of little value in the assessment of reading abilities and reading problems in hearing‐impaired children.
Reading Relative Clauses
Authors: Beaumont Clare 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis study investigated children's ability to read and understand sentences containing relative clauses (RCs). A small group of seven‐year‐old children were tested on their comprehension of four different types of sentences containing them. It was anticipated that sentences without relative pronouns would be more difficult to understand than those where they were present: for example,The horse the man is chasing is fat would be more difficult thanThe horse that the man is chasing is fat.This was indeed the case in sentences where the pronoun functioned as object in the RC. Where the pronoun functioned as subject, presence or absence of the pronoun (plus auxiliary verb) was not an important factor. It seemed that the children did not make consistent use of pronouns to aid their parsing of the sentence. It is suggested that a still incomplete understanding of function words may contribute to beginning readers' difficulties. Moreover, these results did not entirely bear out predictions made from spoken language data, which suggests that syntactic complexity in written language may need special consideration.
Middle School Children's Responses to Enid Blyton in ‘The Bradford Book Flood Experiment’
Authors: Ingham Jennie 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTDuring‘The Bradford Book Flood Experiment’(1976–80), a longitudinal record was kept of the reading of one year‐group of children in each of four middle schools in predominantly working‐class areas. The children's choices of, and responses to, books were recorded on reading record forms, questionnaires which were completed by the children each time they read a book. Subsequently, it was possible to isolate responses to books written by Enid Blyton and compare responses to these books with responses to all the other authors together (i.e., to an‘average’other author). The chi‐square test of significance was applied throughout. It was found that children responded more favourably to Enid Blyton in response to every question, the differences being statistically significant in every instance. Children's reasons for choice of books by Enid Blyton are quoted and categorized. An attempt is made to analyse the reasons for Enid Blyton's popularity.
Verbal‐imagery Learning Style and Reading Attainment in Eight‐year‐old Children
Authors: Riding Richard J. , Anstey Linda 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTEight‐year‐old children were given a test of verbal‐imagery learning style and the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability. Both reading accuracy and comprehension were found to be significantly related to learning style. Reading accuracy was highest at the extreme verbalizer end and lowest at the imager end of the verbal‐imagery continuum, with a plateau of average performance at the central positions. The pattern for comprehension was similar. The results were discussed in terms of the manner in which individuals represent information during learning.
Effects of Contextual Constraints and Non‐fixated Words in a Simple Reading Task
Authors: UNDERWOOD GEOFFREY , WHITFIELD ALISON , WINFIELD JANE 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTAn experiment is reported which investigates the perceptual span available to skilled readers in a single fixation. After adult readers had listened to an incomplete sentence they were presented tachistoscopically with a word which they were to name aloud. Congruency between sentence and word facilitated naming, but the presence of an unattended word in the right visual field confounded this relationship. If the unattended word was also congruent, then the naming response was further facilitated, but a congruent unattended word interfered with the naming of an incongruent attended word. This relationship did not hold for unattended words which were presented in the left visual field, and which did not appear to have been processed for meaning. An effect of an unattended word upon the naming of a fixated word suggests that skilled readers recognize the meanings of more words than are fixated. Skilled readers may use the meanings of words ahead of fixation to enrich their interpretation of the text, or use those words more simply as markers to guide future eye‐movements to the location of the next useful fixation.
Primary School Students' Attitudes towards Reading
Authors: Lewis Ramon , Teale William H. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the applicability to upper primary school children of a multidimensional conceptualization of attitude towards reading which previous research (Lewis and Teale, 1980; Teale and Lewis, 1981) had shown to be useful for characterizing the reading attitudes of secondary school students. Self‐report scales designed to measure Individual Development, Utilitarian, and Enjoyment dimensions were found to be both internally consistent (α= 0.65 to 0.88) and stable (rtr= 0.73 to 0.86). Concurrent validity data based on peer ratings are also provided. Factor analyses showed that primary school students also hold attitudes about reading which are multidimensional. Enjoyment was clearly one facet of their feelings about reading. Although the primary school students did not discriminate between valuing reading as a means of facilitating success at work and at school, they did consistently discriminate between valuing reading and enjoying it. Implications for pedagogical and research issues arising from this conceptualization of attitude towards reading are also discussed.
Control processing vs. information processing in models of reading
Authors: Reilly Ronan G. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to highlight some important ways in which standard information‐processing models of language, and specifically of reading, are deficient. It is proposed that the standard models do not provide an adequate framework for dealing with a number of central issues in reading. Their deficiencies are considered under four headings, (1) theoretical rigour, (2) the interaction of different levels of information during reading, (3) the parallel nature of much of human information processing, and (4) reading comprehension. The source of the problems is considered to be the view of information as an inert encoding and of information processing as a series of these encodings. A distinction is made between models which emphasize a flow of information and models which emphasize a flow of control. Production systems are proposed as examples of the latter type of model. Their use is seen as a qualitatively different approach to language processing which provides a solution to many of the problems inherent in the standard models.
School reading volunteers: results of a postal survey of primary school head teachers in England
Authors: Stierer Barry 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis article reports the results of a postal survey of primary school head teachers in England carried out in order to take a broad ‘sounding’ of mainstream practice with respect to volunteer help with reading within schools. The objective was to build up a general picture of the scale of the practice in schools and of its significance to teachers. From an initial random sample of 500 schools, an overall response rate of 76 per cent was achieved. Issues raised by the results include: (i) the special status of reading in the relationship between home and school; (ii) the issues of professionalism raised by head teachers with respect to the use of volunteer reading helpers; (iii) the question of whether parents' help with school reading can in all cases legitimately be called ‘parental’; and (iv) the relationship between volunteer help with reading and teachers' working conditions in a contracting education service.
The effects of illustrations on children's comprehension of abstract and concrete passages
Authors: Moore Phillip J. , Skinner Michael J. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the effects of illustrations on 11‐year‐olds' comprehension of abstract and concrete passages. For half the subjects, illustrations were provided and these subjects were instructed to utilize the illustrations in comprehending each of the stories. Results for the concrete passage revealed no significant effects due to the illustration, although ability effects were found for literal, inferential and total comprehension. Similar ability effects were found for the abstract passage. In addition, for the abstract passage significant effects attributable to the illustration were revealed for inferential and total comprehension. A more detailed analysis of this facilitative effect showed that both text‐based and script‐based inferences were significantly enhanced when an illustration accompanied the abstract passage.
A longitudinal study of deaf students’ use of an associational strategy on a reading comprehension test
Authors: Wolk Steve , Schildroth Arthur 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTThe present investigation focused upon the use of a choice‐dependent associational strategy by hearing‐impaired students during a test of reading comprehension. An analysis of selected test items from the Stanford Achievement Test indicated that hearing‐impaired students significantly favoured answers based upon association cues unrelated to the overall meaning of the preceding paragraph or stimulus sentence. The use of this strategy was highly stable over time; nearly seven of every ten students who used the strategy during an initial test administration reused the strategy a year later. Significant numbers of students also shifted away, after the year's interval, from the selection of correct answers or other incorrect distractor choices to the selection of the association‐based answers. Finally, those students with the most profound hearing losses were even more likely to use and reuse the strategy, suggesting that hearing‐impaired students are limited in those reading skills required for inferential processing and thus rely upon more concrete and comprehensible semantic cues.
Are cloze items sensitive to constraints across sentences? A review
Authors: Rye James 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTFour types of study relating to the sensitivity of cloze to intersentential constraint are reviewed: (1) factor analytical and correlational studies; (2) studies which varied the length of available context; (3) studies which varied the mode of presentation; (4) studies which varied the quality of coherent context. Many of the investigations failed to provide convincing evidence that cloze is sensitive to intersentential constraint. However, this could be explained in part by weaknesses in the studies themselves. The factor analytical and correlational studies often failed to employ an adequate measure of global comprehension. While other studies demonstrated the importance of immediate context they did not specifically address the question of intersentential constraint. Quality of context needs to be considered separately from length of context. The quality of context studies provided conflicting results. Again, some of these investigations have serious weaknesses which tend to prejudice the results. The most reliable recent studies suggest that cloze is sensitive to intersentential constraint. Finally, tentative recommendations are made for establishing testing conditions which are most likely to encourage the use of intersentential constraint.
The influence of lexical and structural variables on lexical decision and syllable judgment tasks
Authors: Parkin Alan J. 
Published: November 2005

ABSTRACTIn this study subjects were presented with a series of letter strings and required to either make a lexical decision about each one or to judge the number of syllables present. The factors manipulated were lexicality (word/nonword), word frequency (high/low), syllables (one/two), and array length (4, 5, 6 letters). The results showed that neither task was affected by number of syllables. Lexical decision times were influenced by word frequency and lexicality but not affected by array length or number of syllables. Syllable judgments were found to be significantly quicker for four‐ and six‐letter words compared with five‐letter words. Implications of these results in relation to the processing demands of lexical decision and syllable judgment tasks are discussed.