Examining the effects of Structured Word Inquiry on the reading and spelling skills of persistently poor Grade 3 readers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI; an orthography intervention with a focus on morphology and how morphology interrelates with phonology and etymology) and Simplicity intervention (a novel phonics intervention) on the reading and spelling skills of persistently poor Grade 3 readers. Forty‐eight English‐speaking Canadian children (19 females, M_{age} = 8.73 years) with persistent reading difficulties were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: SWI, Simplicity and Control. Interventions were delivered by trained graduate students over 10 weeks, 3 times a week, for 30 minutes. Children were tested three times (pre‐test, post‐test and delayed post‐test) on measures of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, reading (Word Reading, Morphological Relatedness and Word Attack) and spelling. Results of hierarchical linear modelling showed a significant main effect of condition for Morphological Relatedness at post‐test favouring SWI and Simplicity over Control and a significant interaction between a latent variable of all secondary decoding measures and morphological awareness. Effect sizes (Cohen's d) showed medium to large effects for both interventions on primary outcomes of Word Reading and Morphological Relatedness. These findings suggest that SWI and Simplicity can help persistently poor readers improve in some reading skills, but neither programme is a panacea as a number of children continued to struggle after the intervention

Decoding and reading comprehension:a meta-analysis to identify which reader and assessment characteristics influence the strength of the relationship in English

The twofold purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine the relative importance of decoding skills to reading comprehension in reading development and to identify which reader characteristics and reading assessment characteristics contribute to differences in the decoding and reading comprehension correlation. A meta-analysis of 110 studies found a sizeable average corrected correlation (rc = .74). Two reader characteristics (age and listening comprehension level) were significant moderators of the relationship. Several assessment characteristics were significant moderators, particularly for young readers: the way that decoding was measured and, with respect to the reading comprehension assessment, text genre, whether or not help was provided with decoding, and whether or not the texts were read aloud. Age and measure of decoding arose as the strongest moderators. We discuss the implications for assessment and the diagnosis of reading difficulties

Cross-language contributions of rapid automatized naming to reading accuracy and fluency in young adults : Evidence from eight languages representing different writing systems

Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is a strong predictor of reading across languages. However, it remains unclear if the effects of RAN in first language (L1) transfer to reading in second language (L2) and if the results vary as a function of the orthographic proximity of L1–L2. To fill this gap in the literature, we examined the role of RAN in reading accuracy and fluency in eight languages representing different writing systems. Seven hundred and thirty-five university students (85 Chinese-, 84 Japanese-, 100 Kannada-, 40 Oriya-, 115 English-, 115 Arabic-, 105 Portuguese-, and 91 Spanish-speaking) participated in our study. They were assessed on RAN (Digits and Objects) and reading (accuracy and fluency) in both L1 and L2 (English). Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed significant effects of L1 RAN on L2 reading accuracy in the Chinese-, Portuguese-, and Spanish-speaking groups. In addition, L2 RAN was a significant predictor of reading fluency in L1 in the same language groups. No cross-language transfer was observed in the other languages. These findings suggest first that L1 and L2 RAN capture similar processes and controlling for one does not leave unique variance for the other to explain. Second, to the extent there is cross-language transfer of RAN skills, this appears to be independent of the orthographic proximity of the languages