A study of reading attitude and reading achievement among young learners in middle school

This study examines the relation between reading attitude and reading achievement in three languages among sixth- and eighth-grade students in Kazakhstan. Participants were randomly chosen from seven secondary schools in a major city. Their native languages were Kazakh or Russian (N = 1,505). Reading tests in English, Kazakh and Russian and a reading attitude questionnaire were administered via the eDia online assessment system. The results indicate that 85% of the sixth graders and 79% of the eighth graders enjoy reading. Correlations in reading achievement between English, Kazakh and Russian ranged from r = .55 to r = .61 (p < .01). Kazakh native speakers performed better in the respective languages than speakers of Russian and other languages. A factor analysis demonstrated a three-factor model for Grade 6 and a four-factor model for Grade 8, corresponding to reading attitude and reliability coefficients for these factors from .71 to .86. In both grades, factor loading showed a good fit to the data. Regression analysis showed a weak relation between reading attitude and reading achievement among sixth and eighth graders in the targeted languages despite a positive attitude towards reading

Assessing 6th and 8th Grades Students’ Reading Skills and Literacy in Kazakh, Russian, and English Languages in Kazakhstan

This research study aimed to assess and explore the issue of poor reading literacy skills among young learners in the middle school in Kazakhstan. In particular, our broader goal is to develop a modified framework of recommendation and suggestions for teaching and learning reading skills in Kazakhstan in the native and second languages (i.e. Kazakh or Russian), and in English as a foreign language. Consequently, we firstly focused on assessing reading skills and literacy development in Kazakh and Russian languages as a native and/or second language (L1)/ (L2), and English as a foreign language (EFL). This could help us to define the core issue while teaching reading skills to young Kazakhstani learners. Secondly, we revealed several factors in questionnaires regarding students’ socio-economic status, reading attitude, classroom climate, engagement, and reading metacognitive awareness while reading process. The evidences may assure explanation of poor results in reading literacy among Kazakhstani 15-year-old students, which were below the average while performing international surveys like PISA, and PIRLS. Thirdly, we assessed 6th and 8th grade students’ reading skills in English, Kazakh, and Russian. In total (N = 4,274) participants took part in the computer based assessment. Finally, the obtained results may track us to provide suggestions and recommendations for reading literacy, and further modification in the assessment process in the middle secondary education of Kazakhstan. Even young adolescents had positive reading attitude and insignificant gender differences (49.9% - boys, 51.2 % - girls), the analysis showed that middle school learners in Kazakhstan had poor reading skills in the target languages. In addition, we found that latent factors (i.e., classroom climate, engagement, reading attitude, and reading strategies) did not affect reading comprehension tests in English, Kazakh, and Russian languages. The weak relationship between classroom climate and engagement towards reading achievement might indicate insufficient learning environment, low teacher-student interaction, and scarce support from peers or parents towards reading skills in the target languages. Moreover, the analysis highlighted several drawbacks among young learners while teaching and learning reading skills and developing literacy in the languages. Likewise, policy makers, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders should put serious attention to the content of core curricular programme for teaching reading skills in L1, L2, and EFL. The findings also suggested that reading for pleasure in and out of school might consider being a challenging activity for children in the middle school. Interestingly though, bilingual learners seemed to use more reading strategies in performing reading comprehension tests than monolinguals in the respected languages. Therefore, to boost the importance of reading literacy for young learners in the middle school, appropriate programme are required to preparing young learners think critically, and improving the quality. Furthermore, the qualitative assessment of teachers and the school staff are necessary to explore the quality of teaching and assessing reading literacy skills in the respective languages

Guías para la selección y utilización de términos de búsqueda en bases de datos con campos de lengua natural

Fields containing natural language terms are valuable as access points to databases contents. However, information services users have varied problems when trying to make use of them. A description scheme was developed considering the possible actions during a search process of this kind. Difficulties, deviations and faults of the terms selection and combination processes were recorded. Finally,  recommendations were carried out in order to produce search aids.Los campos que contienen lengua natural son de gran valor como puntos de acceso a los contenidos de las bases de datos. Sin embargo, los usuarios de los servicios de información se encuentran con diversos problemas cuando intentan utilizarlos. Se elaboró un esquema descriptivo de las acciones que pueden realizarse durante un proceso de búsqueda de este tipo; se registraron también dificultades, desviaciones y carencias del proceso de selección y combinación de términos tal como lo efectúan los usuarios finales. Finalmente se formularon  recomendaciones para la elaboración de guías de ayuda

Priming stress patterns in word recognition

This study addresses the lexical representation of stress in a series of five intra-modal and cross-modal priming experiments in the Greek language using lexical decision tasks with auditory and visual targets. Three-syllable primes and targets were matched in first syllable segments, length, and other variables, and differed segmentally in the second and third syllable. Primes matched or mismatched targets in stress, which was placed on the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable. There was no evidence for stress priming in either accuracy or latency of responses to either words or pseudowords in any of these experiments, either intra-modally or cross-modally. In contrast, a control fragment priming experiment using only the first two syllables of the primes produced a significant effect of stress congruence for words but not for pseudowords. The results are interpreted in the context of previous findings in the literature as arising from lexical activation rather than from matching stress patterns. Overall, findings are consistent with lexical representations including stress information that is inseparable from segmental specification, rather than with abstract representations of metrical templates

Brain Bases of Reading Fluency in Typical Reading and Impaired Fluency in Dyslexia

Although the neural systems supporting single word reading are well studied, there are limited direct comparisons between typical and dyslexic readers of the neural correlates of reading fluency. Reading fluency deficits are a persistent behavioral marker of dyslexia into adulthood. The current study identified the neural correlates of fluent reading in typical and dyslexic adult readers, using sentences presented in a word-by-word format in which single words were presented sequentially at fixed rates. Sentences were presented at slow, medium, and fast rates, and participants were asked to decide whether each sentence did or did not make sense semantically. As presentation rates increased, participants became less accurate and slower at making judgments, with comprehension accuracy decreasing disproportionately for dyslexic readers. In-scanner performance on the sentence task correlated significantly with standardized clinical measures of both reading fluency and phonological awareness. Both typical readers and readers with dyslexia exhibited widespread, bilateral increases in activation that corresponded to increases in presentation rate. Typical readers exhibited significantly larger gains in activation as a function of faster presentation rates than readers with dyslexia in several areas, including left prefrontal and left superior temporal regions associated with semantic retrieval and semantic and phonological representations. Group differences were more extensive when behavioral differences between conditions were equated across groups. These findings suggest a brain basis for impaired reading fluency in dyslexia, specifically a failure of brain regions involved in semantic retrieval and semantic and phonological representations to become fully engaged for comprehension at rapid reading rates

ORTHOGRAPHIC ENRICHMENT FOR ARABIC GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Linguistics, 2010The Arabic orthography is problematic in two ways: (1) it lacks the short vowels, and this leads to ambiguity as the same orthographic form can be pronounced in many different ways each of which can have its own grammatical category, and (2) the Arabic word may contain several units like pronouns, conjunctions, articles and prepositions without an intervening white space. These two problems lead to difficulties in the automatic processing of Arabic. The thesis proposes a pre-processing scheme that applies word segmentation and word vocalization for the purpose of grammatical analysis: part of speech tagging and parsing. The thesis examines the impact of human-produced vocalization and segmentation on the grammatical analysis of Arabic, then applies a pipeline of automatic vocalization and segmentation for the purpose of Arabic part of speech tagging. The pipeline is then used, along with the POS tags produced, for the purpose of dependency parsing, which produces grammatical relations between the words in a sentence. The study uses the memory-based algorithm for vocalization, segmentation, and part of speech tagging, and the natural language parser MaltParser for dependency parsing. The thesis represents the first approach to the processing of real-world Arabic, and has found that through the correct choice of features and algorithms, the need for pre-processing for grammatical analysis can be minimized

Easy Language - Plain Language - Easy Language Plus. Balancing Comprehensibility and Acceptability

This book shows how accessible communication, and especially easy-to-understand languages, should be designed in order to become instruments of inclusion. It examines two well-established easy-to-understand varieties: Easy Language and Plain Language, and shows that they have complementary profiles with respect to four central qualities: comprehensibility, perceptibility, acceptability and stigmatisation potential. The book introduces Easy and Plain Language and provides an outline of their linguistic, sociological and legal profiles: What is the current legal framework of Easy and Plain Language? What do the texts look like? Who are the users? Which other groups are involved in the production and use of Easy and Plain Language offers? Which qualities are a hazard to acceptability and, thus, enhance their stigmatisation potential? The book also proposes another easy-to-understand variety: Easy Language Plus. This variety balances the four qualities and is modelled in the present book