We present a method for data-based decision making at the school level using student achievement data. We demonstrate the potential of a national assessment database [i.e., the University of Oregon DIBELS Data System (DDS)] to provide comparative levels of school-level data on average student achievement gains. Through the DDS as a data source,…

Hyperlexia is a syndrome of reading without meaning in individuals who otherwise have pronounced cognitive and language deficits. The present study investigated the quality of word representation and the effects of deficient semantic processing on word and nonword reading of Korean children with hyperlexia; their performances were compared to…

This longitudinal study examined the development of reading motivation, engagement, and achievement in early adolescence by comparing interrelations of these variables in struggling and advanced readers. Participants were 183 pairs of seventh grade students matched in gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and school attended. They completed…

This study focused on examining the effects of early literacy intervention on the emergence and development of at-risk kindergartners' spelling. Spelling data were selected from Scanlon et al.'s (2005) study which demonstrated the efficacy of reading intervention in reducing the incidence of at-risk children who show reading difficulties…

High quality lexical representations in memory, characterized by accuracy and stability, are said to underpin fluent reading. Here, the relationship between orthographic quality and reading speed was examined by asking undergraduates (N = 74) to repeatedly read and spell words. Spelling performance over five trials indicated orthographic quality.…

Beginning readers in shallow orthographies acquire word reading skills more quickly than in deep orthographies like English. In addition to extending this evidence base by comparing reading acquisition in English with the more transparent German, we conducted a longitudinal study and investigated whether different early reading skills made…

During a visual rhyming task, deaf participants traditionally perform more poorly than hearing participants in making rhyme judgements for written words in which the rhyme and the spelling pattern are incongruent (e.g. "hair/bear"). It has been suggested that deaf participants' low accuracy results from their tendency to rely on…

We investigated the effects of three facilitators: adults' support, dynamic visual vocabulary support and static visual vocabulary support on vocabulary acquisition in the context of e-book reading. Participants were 144 Israeli Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (aged 4-6) from middle SES neighborhoods. The entire sample read the e-book without a…

Students from Turkish-speaking families are the largest minority language group in Germany. Yet, little is known about this group's literacy development. Using data from a 3-year longitudinal study, we examined whether the same base reading skills are involved in early reading comprehension of 100 Turkish-German bilingual and 69 German…

The study investigated the role of word-level and verbal skills in writing quality of learners who spoke English as a first (L1) and second (L2) language. One hundred and sixty-eight L1 and L2 learners (M = 115.38 months, SD = 3.57 months) participated in the study. All testing was conducted in English. There was a statistically significant L1…

The present study explored the early predictors of reading comprehension difficulties in Chinese children. We originally recruited 290 Beijing and 154 Hong Kong children and further selected from each sample those (30 from Beijing and 22 from Hong Kong sample) in the lowest 25% on reading comprehension tests across the last two consecutive testing…

We investigated the spelling of derivational and inflectional suffixes by 10-13-year-old Greek children. Twenty children with dyslexia (DYS), 20 spelling-level-matched (SA) and 20 age-matched (CA) children spelled adjectives, nouns, and verbs in dictated word pairs and sentences. Children spelled nouns and verbs more accurately than adjectives and…

This study examined the nature and frequency of error in high school native English speaker (L1) and English learner (L2) writing. Four main research questions were addressed: Are there significant differences in students' error rates in English language arts (ELA) and social studies? Do the most common errors made by students differ in ELA…

This research embedded in the National Study of Writing Instruction examines higher- and lower-achieving adolescents' stances toward content-area writing through a qualitative discourse analysis of interviews with 40 students in California, Kentucky, New York, and Texas secondary schools. The study asked: (1) How do students' stances…

Almost half of American adults struggle with reading but there is a dearth of reading-related assessments for these adults. In turn, researchers and practitioners use assessments designed for children with these adults. This study examined the psychometric and descriptive attributes of the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing (CTOPP)…