Elfrieda H. Hiebert

Vocabulary Assessment: What We Know and What We Need to Learn.

The authors assert that, in order to teach vocabulary more effectively and better understand its relation to comprehension, we need first to address how vocabulary knowledge and growth are assessed. They argue that “vocabularly assessment is grossly undernourished, both in its theoretical and practical aspects—that it has been driven by tradition, convenience, psychometric standards, and a quest for economy of effort rather than a clear conceptualization of its nature and relation to other aspects of reading expertise, most notably comprehension.”

National Reports in Literacy: Building a Scientific Base for Practice and Policy

The authors examine the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP; 2008) report from two complementary vantage points: (a) the historical tradition of research syntheses in reading research, beginning with Chall and extending through the NELP report, and (b) other recent attempts to examine or synthesize early reading development. While acknowledging the care and precision that characterized the work, the authors of this response raise concerns about the reluctance of the NELP authors to contextualize their findings in relation to both historical and contemporary efforts.

AWARENESS OF TEXT STRUCTURE IN RECOGNITION AND PRODUCTION OF EXPOSITORY DISCOURSE

This study had three purposes in examining college students awareness of four expository text structures. The first was to determine whether students were more aware of some text structures than of others in reading and writing. A second was to determine how performance on these text structure measures related to performance on a general comprehension measure. The third was to examine the relationship between awareness of these text structures in reading and writing. Fifty-two college students who were equally divided into two ability groups were given two tasks, one which assessed their awareness of the text structures in reading and the other which assessed awareness in writing. Findings related to the first aim indicated that awareness of the four text structures varied in both the recognition and production of relevant information. With respect to the second aim, performance on both recognition and production measures was related to performance on a general comprehension measure, with high-ability students more sensitive to intrusive information in the recognition task and more able to produce missing text structure information than low-ability students. Findings related to the final aim indicated that the relationship between recognition and production performances was moderate.

The Relationship Between a Silent Reading Fluency Instructional Protocol on Students’ Reading Comprehension and Achievement in an Urban School Setting

Reading fluency has been identified as a key component in effective literacy instruction (National Reading Panel, 2000). Instruction in reading fluency has been shown to lead to improvements in reading achievement. Reading fluency instruction is most commonly associated with guided repeated oral reading instruction. In the present retrospective study we examine the effects of a computer-based silent reading fluency instructional system called Reading Plus (Taylor Associates, Winooski, Vermount, USA) on the reading comprehension and overall reading achievement of a large corpus of students in an urban school setting. Findings indicate that the program resulted in positive, substantial, and significant improvements in reading comprehension and overall reading achievement on a criterion referenced reading test for Grades 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 and on a norm-referenced test of reading achievement for Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. Moreover, mean gains made by students in the Reading Plus intervention were greater than mean gains for all students at the state and district level. The findings were generally positive for all subpopulations studied, including special education and regular education students. Qualitative reports from teachers who participated in the study were also supportive of the program. Implications for the study are explored for particular subgroups of students and for the role of fluency instruction with struggling adolescent readers.

Fathers' and mothers' perceptions of their preschool children's emergent literacy☆

Abstract This study examined parents perceptions of their preschool childrens emergent literacy. Of particular interest was the relationship of several childrens characteristics (age, gender, and achievement) to the predictions of fathers and mothers. Fathers and mothers of 3- and 4-year-old boys and girls were asked to predict their childrens performances on six measures of emergent literacy: letter naming, auditory discrimination, context-dependent word recognition, storybook orientation, writing, and interest. In comparing these predictions with childrens actual performances, both fathers and mothers were found to significantly overestimate their childrens performances on over half of the measures. Parents made appropriate differentiations for the age of the child. Furthermore, the accuracy of predictions did not differ significantly between parents of boys and girls. On most measures, a higher degree of association was found between the predictions of mother and father than between either parents prediction and childs performance.

Text Genre and Science Content: Ease of Reading, Comprehension, and Reader Preference

This study examined ease of reading, comprehension, and recall and preference for the same scientific content under two conditions: an informational text and a fictional narrative text. Seventy-four third and fourth graders were assessed individually around the reading of fictional narrative and informational texts that were about either snails or sand. Students’ accuracy and rate of reading were comparable across the two genres. However, students answered more comprehension questions correctly and recalled more key concepts in response to informational text than fictional narrative text. Moreover, students did not express a clear preference for one type of text over the other.

An Analysis of English–Spanish Cognates as a Source of General Academic Language

Three analyses of Spanish–English cognates were conducted, with the purpose of identifying features that might facilitate or inhibit bilingual students cognate recognition and cross-language transfer of vocabulary knowledge. Results revealed that both the General Service List and the Academic Word List (AWL) contain a substantial number of English–Spanish cognates, a high percentage of which can be categorized by 1 of 20 cognate patterns. Orthographic and phonological transparencies were analyzed, suggesting that cognates are more transparent in terms of orthography than phonology. A frequency analysis indicated that most AWL cognates are more common in Spanish than in English. Results suggest that carefully designed cognate instruction may provide Spanish-speaking students with a “cognate advantage” in comprehending English academic texts.

Children's attributions for failure and success in different aspects of reading.

The purpose of this study was to extend attribution theory to childrens conceptions of reading by examining (a) the effect of reading context on childrens attributions, (b), the supplementation of conventionally used causes with several that seem particularly salient explanations for success and failure in reading settings, and (c) the effect of developmental status and achievement on childrens attributions. The attributions of children of low and high reading achievement in third and sixth grade were assessed in two reading situations (evaluation of reading performance and reading for meaning). Children were asked to rate the degree to which each of six causes (ability, paying attention, studying, luck, task difficulty, and assistance from others) was responsible for their success or failure in the two reading situations. The three major findings were that (a) sixth graders locus of control scores varied across situations, while third graders scores did not, (b) two of the new causes—studying and paying attention—were particularly salient to children, and (c) age and achievement interacted, with low-achieving third graders giving higher ratings to causes more clearly beyond their control than high-achieving third graders, whereas low- and high-achieving sixth graders did not differ. These results corroborate those of previous attribution studies and extend them to the critical area of reading instruction.

The Effects of Text Difficulty on Second Graders' Fluency Development.

In this study, two groups of second graders participated in Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) but their repeated reading experiences used different kinds of texts. One group—the Literature group—read texts from the districts literature-based, basal reading program. The second group—the Content group—read from a set of science and social studies texts that were written to have few rare, multisyllabic, single-appearing words. Control-group students read from the districts literature-based program. Both intervention groups made greater gains in reading rate than Control group students and Content students made greater gains in reading rate than Literature students. Content and Literature groups outperformed Control students on the comprehension measure but did not perform significantly differently from one another. The gains made by the Content classrooms were made in approximately half the amount of time allocated to reading instruction as by Literature classrooms.

Spelling Unfamiliar Words By an Analogy Strategy

This study investigated the effects of instructing an experimental group of mildly handicapped students in a strategy for spelling new words by using spelling patterns from known words. The control group learned to read and spell sight word vocabulary. Results indicated that the experimental group was significantly superior to the control group in spelling both highfrequency sight words and an untrained set of transfer words; however, there was no significant difference between groups in their ability to read sight words or to read transfer words. These findings support the notion that direct instruction in an analogy strategy (e.g., comparing unfamiliar words with known words) can assist mildly handicapped students in spelling new words.