This study examined the hypothesis that assisted writing during reading improves reading comprehension. The hypothesis was derived from sociocognitive and constructivist theory and research and implemented in the form of a curricular intervention called Writing Intensive Reading Comprehension after its main feature of bringing together reading…

This study explored the relationship between the reading ability and science achievement of students in grades 5, 8, and 9. Reading ability was assessed with four measures: word recognition, vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and comprehension (23% of all passages were on science topics). Science achievement was assessed with state…

Previous research has identified various factors that contribute to readers' comprehension of expository texts, including strategy expertise, language proficiency, prior knowledge, and more recently, readers' beliefs about knowledge. This study addresses the need to understand the relative contributions of these predictors to readers'…

The aim of the present study was to examine the relation between decoding and segmental and suprasegmental phonology, and their contribution to reading comprehension, in the upper primary grades. Following a longitudinal design, the performance of 99 Dutch primary school students on phonological awareness (segmental phonology) and text-reading…

The online reading, writing, and communication practices of students have been of significant interest to literacy researchers and teachers throughout the last several years, as insights into what students are currently doing in and outside of school can inform what they can be expected to know and be able to do in digital environments. Yet,…

Peer review is a reciprocal process in which writers both give and receive feedback. Both activities may contribute to student learning; however, few studies have examined the effects of giving feedback separately. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of giving feedback on the quality of the reviewers' own persuasive writing.…

The Common Core State Standards emphasize students writing analytically in response to texts. Questions remain about the nature of instruction that develops students' text-based writing skills. In the present study, we examined the role that writing task quality plays in students' mastery of analytic text-based writing. Text-based writing tasks…

The primary aim of this study was to explore the relationship between teachers' instruction and students' vocabulary and comprehension in grades 3-5. The secondary aim of this study was to investigate whether this relationship differed for English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual students. To meet these aims, we observed and…

This study examined the role of reading amount as a mediator of the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation on higher order reading comprehension (comprised of paragraph-and passage-level comprehension) in a sample of 159 fifth-grade elementary students. A positive association between intrinsic reading motivation and reading amount…

In this article, I examine French language instruction in an elementary classroom serving primarily children of Afro-French immigrants in Paris. I show that a prevalent French language ideology privileges written over oral expression and associates full mastery of written French with rational thought and full inclusion in the French polity. This…

This article problematises a broad consensus in favour of importing popular culture into classrooms as a means of engaging pupils, transforming interactional norms and facilitating pupil understanding. A literacy lesson in which an English primary school teacher invoked the televised talent show, "X factor", in organising the class to…

This study examined whether morphological analysis may be a mechanism underlying the relationship of morphological awareness to vocabulary and comprehension. Eighty-eight fifth- and 74 eighth-grade students completed a task designed to assess whether students use morphological analysis to infer meanings of low-frequency, presumably unfamiliar,…

This study investigated the effects of different versions of Web-based instruction focused on text structure on fifth- and seventh-grade students' reading comprehension. Stratified random assignment was employed in a two-factor experiment embedded within a pretest and multiple posttests design (immediate and four-month delayed posttests). The two…

In the present study, 81 fifth grade and 82 eighth grade children completed a continuous lexical decision priming task that examined their reading times for evidence of sensitivity to the morphological structure of words during reading. A lexical decision task measured students' response times to target words preceded by a prime (which children…

Reports from research and the larger educational community demonstrate that too many students have limited ability to comprehend texts. The research reported here involved a two-year study in which standardized comprehension instruction for representations of two major approaches was designed and implemented. The effectiveness of the two…