Randall J. Ryder

The effects of vocabulary instruction on readers’ ability to make causal connections

Abstract Recent research has shown that for comprehension to take place, a reader must form strong, coherent mental representations of text. The reader accesses prior knowledge, makes inferences when necessary, and makes causal connections. This study investigated the effects of teaching text specific vocabulary on eighth graders’ comprehension of expository text and their ability to make causal connections. The materials used were similar to those that children would read in school, and the vocabulary instruction was intended to enhance subjects’ knowledge of concepts with which they are somewhat familiar. The results of the study give convergent evidence that vocabulary instruction prior to reading improves comprehension. The results also indicate that vocabulary instruction was effective among students of varying reading abilities. Average ability subjects who received vocabulary instruction did as well as high ability subject who received no instruction. The results also show that text specific vocabu...

The Effect on Text Comprehension of Word Frequency.

AbstractThis study examined the relationship between word difficulty, as measured by morphological family frequency counts, and passage comprehension. Fifth graders were presented with either a high-frequency version or a low-frequency version of a social studies passage w here 25% of the substance words had been replaced with synonyms of either high or low family frequency values. Following the reading of the passages, literal and inferential comprehension measures were obtained. Results indicated no significant differences between the two passages on either of the comprehension measures.

The Relationship between Word Frequency and Word Knowledge.

AbstractThis study examined the relationship between two measures of word frequency and elementary students’ word knowledge. Fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students of low, average, and high reading ability were administered a 71-item multiple-choice vocabulary test. Vocabulary items were generated from a random sample of a corpus of 1,000 family word types. Responses were analyzed according to a logarithmic distribution of frequency values for family frequency and single-form frequency values. Results indicate that family frequency tends to be a sizably better predictor of student word knowledge than does form frequency. They support the notion that lexical access is driven by a word’s base as well as by its morphemic forms.

Secondary Students’ Internalization of Letter-Sound Correspondences

AbstractThis study examined secondary students’ knowledge of eight types of letter-sound correspondences. Equal numbers of high, average, and low ability readers in grades seven, nine, and eleven were administered a forty- eight-item multiple-choice test that required them to identify the letter-sound correspondences in synthetic words. Results indicated that, in general, secondary students have mastered letter-sound correspondences. However, results further revealed that in the seventh and ninth grade low ability readers have not fully mastered certain correspondence types, while in the eleventh grade low ability readers’ knowledge of letter-sound correspondences is similar to good readers for all but one correspondence type.

Elementary Students' Internalization of Selected Vowel Patterns.

ABSTRACT This study examined elementary students’ knowledge of variant‐predictable vowel patterns. Equal numbers of high and low ability students in grades one, three and five pronounced six synthetic words containing one of three variant‐predictable vowel patterns of three frequency levels. Results indicated that elementary students greatly increase their mastery of vowels, and that high ability students have more fully mastered vowels of the selected patterns than low ability students. The effect of the frequency of a vowel pattern was not significant.