We began our studies with a journal article by Perfetti and Hogaboam. This article was about the Relationship between single word decoding and reading comprehension skill. In reading this study we discovered how higher skilled and lower skilled readers compared on the decoding of words that they know the meanings of and on the words for which they did not know the meanings.
We also read an article about eye movements and reading. The parallel letter recognition model best explains the Word Superiority Effect, thus it is the best explanation for how letters are processed. This is based on the findings during eye movement studies that proved that words are processed as whole units rather than letter by letter.
Our discussion then turned to correlation. Correlation is a staple of reading research. We discussed ways to read correlation on charts. Correlation was included in every reading study and it was found that reading correlation and writing correlation go hand in hand.
Next we discussed orthographic knowledge. Orthographic knowledge is knowing how a word is spelled or how it should appear in text. Orthographic knowledge is built by exposure to print. Ways to expose students to print are many. These include, but are not limited to, word sorts; repeated readings, observations and tests help an instructor to measure orthographic knowledge over time. These instructors must have random assessments and random selections in order to achieve the best responses. Cassar and Treiman conducted a research study on the knowledge of double letters in English. The study showed students from kindergarten through college. Their interest in the study was to find out how orthographic knowledge plays a role in the letter choices of young children’s created spelling. This study shows us that with exposure to print, young children are able to generalize correct spellings. Even when students are unable to read independently, they are forming a knowledge of how letters work together and are ordered to form words. Exposing students to print is the key in the early grades in order to develop this understanding from the beginning.
We also studied the Amalgation Theory. This theory states that the way a word appears and the phonic spelling for a word contain glue that makes the word remember able. Students who have the most problems with this are students with fluency and comprehension difficulties. Studies for the Amalgation Theory were based on two tests: wide reading and vocabulary study.
The Matthew Effects were our next topic. The Matthew Effects were named for a passage in the Bible. The Mathew Effect simply states that GPC, exposure to print, and vocabulary all work together when reading and form a reciprocal relationship. In applying the Matthew Effects, one would state that “The Rich get richer and the Poor get poorer.” Just as in reading, the good readers get better and the bad readers get worse. This happens because if one part of the reading process is lacking, then the cycle cannot be completed and thus there is no reciprocation. The Matthew Effect states that poor readers tend to read easier materials and fewer books than good readers do. A poor reader’s vocabulary grows at a slower rate than students with a larger vocabulary because the books that they are being assigned have poorer quality vocabulary in them. Students with a larger vocabulary read more and better comprehend the material they read. A student’s vocabulary knowledge is affected by the amount of words they are exposed to. Children with a lower vocabulary tend to define words in terms of the context that they were read in, while children with a larger vocabulary were able to define words in more general terms and show examples of the word meanings.
Exposing students to print at an early age still remains the most important factor in a student learning to read. Exposure to print leads to incidental learning. Students who are exposed to a wide variety of prints are more likely to be exposed to a richer vocabulary including tier one, tier two, and tier three words. Tier one vocabulary words are those words considered “high frequency” words. Tier two words are words that are not well known, but occur a lot in the text. Tier three words are domain specific content words. Cunningham and Stanovich’s research enhances Cassar’s by trying to separate phonological and orthographic processing skills in word recognition during the very earliest stages of reading acquisition. They also asked if print exposure predicted variance in orthographic knowledge. Using several different measures, including the Stanford Achievement Test, phoneme deletion, phoneme transpostion, experimental spelling tasks, letter-string choice tasks, and Title Recongition Test, Cunningham and Stanovich proved there was a 40% correlation between exposure to print and orthographic knowledge for early readers.
Memory also plays a key factor in reading. There are three main parts to Bladdely’s model of working memory.. The three main parts are the central executive, phonological loop, and the visuo-spatial sketchpad. The central executive is a system responsible for the control and regulation of cognitive processes. The phonological loop deals with sound or phonological information. The visuo-spatial sketchpad holds information about what we see. It is used in the temporary storage and retrieval of spatial and visual information. The episodic buffer is the third part, it links information across domains to form integrated units of visual, spatial, and verbal information with time sequencing. The episodic buffer also forms links to long-term memory. The findings of the Daneman and Carpenter article were that the traditional short term memory tests of digit and word span tasks do not tax the processing component of the working memory test. Studies using such measures do not find strong correlations with reading. If a short memory test was used with heavier demands on processing, poor readers would have less attention left to retain information. The reading span test was correlated significantly .90 with the pronominal reference test and .72 with the fact retrieval task. Its correlation with the global assessment reading comprehension (Verbal SAT) was also significant: r = .59. The word span task correlated non-significantly only .33, .37, and .35 with the reading tests respectively. The results indicate that the reading span task is related to working memory capacity.
Next, we covered phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that differentiates meaning. Full phoneme awareness is built over time by blending sounds and deleting sounds. The stages of learning are: beginning sound, beginning and ending sound, beginning sound, vowel sound, ending sound, beginning sound, vowel sound, ending sound, and attention to vowel markers. During this study, we also discussed graphemes. A grapheme is a combination of letters that match to the phoneme. Patterns for graphemes include: cvc, cvvc, cvc”e”. Grapho-phonemic awareness is the relationship between graphemes the symbols written to represent the sound phonemes make. Readers connect the spellings of words to their pronunciations. This view is different from traditional phoneme awareness because phonemic awareness refers to the smallest speech sounds. Phonemic awareness works for beginning readers when there is a one-to -one grapheme/phoneme relationship, however, there are countless words in which sounds are ambiguous phonetically.
Ehri’s research studied 1st and 2nd grader responses to spoken pseudowords. Students were shown letter prompts and the pseudoword was pronounced, students then saw the spellings of the pseudoword. Students were then shown misspellings of pseudowords.
This research discovered that when students saw correct spelling they remembered the pseudoword better than when they were shown no spellings. The visual representation produced a connection between spelling and pronunciations in their memory.
Ehri’s research studied 1st and 2nd grader responses to spoken pseudowords. Students were shown letter prompts and the pseudoword was pronounced, students then saw the spellings of the pseudoword. Students were then shown misspellings of pseudowords.
This research discovered that when students saw correct spelling they remembered the pseudoword better than when they were shown no spellings. The visual representation produced a connection between spelling and pronunciations in their memory.
We moved along with our discussions to next cover vowels. There are 15 phonemes and 5 vowel letters in the English language. Vowels make sounds from different parts of the mouth. The position from which they are spoken affects the way the vowel sounds. Some vowels are high in the mouth, others are low, and some are in the middle. During this process, vowels are also pronounced for the front, middle, or back of the mouth. Combining these two positions together is what gives each vowel its sound. There are also diphthongs. A diphthong is a vowel that starts in one location in the mouth and ends in another when being pronounced in a word or as a sound unit. Some common diphthongs in the English language include: /aw/ as in “mouse”, /aw/ as in “bow”, /oy/ as in “boy”, /oy/ as in “soil”, /oo/ as in “look”, and /u/ as in “boot”. There are no diphthong patterns for the letter /i/ as in “why” or “like”. Upon completing this lesson, we practiced saying words and finding the vowel sound location in our mouths. As a follow up, we also discussed how different accents can cause different pronunciations of certain vowels.
Next, we studied propositions. A proposition is a meaning unit. This is how our brain breaks down a sentence for comprehension purposes. The basic break down in comprehension is to find a verb and a subject. This answers the question “Who does what?” These basic units are then built upon until the entire sentence is comprehended. Each segment influences the comprehension of the next segment to form a complete understanding of the sentence. After this study, we were timed while reading consistent and inconsistent passages to show that longer reading times were recorded on inconsistent passages when there is a longer filler time because of memory. Poor comprehension readers meet road blocks here when practicing reading. Propositions are idea units that combine more than one word in a schematic form. Propositions allow the theorist to represent the meaning of sentences, independent of their syntactic structure. Just like letters combine to form words, words combine to form sentences. Surface level memory is the memory for the actual words and phrases of the text. Surface memory is often short-lived. The propositional level of representation deals with the ideas in the text. The microstructure of a text is the network of propositions that represents the meaning of the text. One can think of it as a translation from the actual words used into an idea-level format. Microstructure and macrostructure together form the textbase. This is where sentences combine to create a larger picture – a paragraph or more complex idea or story. The situation model represents the information provided by the text, independent of the particular manner in which it was expressed in the text, and integrated with background information from the reader’s prior knowledge. Studies were performed to base findings of the Inconsistency Effect on skilled readers and on unskilled readers. After reading four passages that were in global condition, consistent; global condition, inconsistent; local condition, consistent; and local condition, inconsistent, the findings were as follows:
Skilled readers were able to understand and reflect on all four passages.
This is found true because skilled readers have the focued memory and comprehension skills desired to retain information about all types of passages.
Less skilled readers were able to understand and reflect both local passages, but neither of the global condition passages.
This is found true for the global condition, inconsistent passage because longer reading on inconsistent passages is required when there is longer filler time. This occurs because of long term memory use required in order to process the passages. The reading time should be longer because of the inconsistency.
It is also found true because in the global condition, consistent passage, because less skilled readers are having to process more information due to a 6 sentense filler before the target action takes place.
Skilled readers were able to understand and reflect on all four passages.
This is found true because skilled readers have the focued memory and comprehension skills desired to retain information about all types of passages.
Less skilled readers were able to understand and reflect both local passages, but neither of the global condition passages.
This is found true for the global condition, inconsistent passage because longer reading on inconsistent passages is required when there is longer filler time. This occurs because of long term memory use required in order to process the passages. The reading time should be longer because of the inconsistency.
It is also found true because in the global condition, consistent passage, because less skilled readers are having to process more information due to a 6 sentense filler before the target action takes place.
Compensatory mechanisms are a form of remediation or metacognition techniques that older readers use to comprehend text. They can be used to overcome inefficient subcomponents such as decoding and limited resources such as attention and working memory. Examples of compensatory mechanisms are: slowing the reading rate, looking back in text and rereading earlier portions or pausing to consolidate information in memory. In the article there are weak correlations between lower level reading processes and comprehension in older children and adults. Students that are above the third grade level are usually efficient at decoding and can have efficient semantic memory access. With these students decoding comes naturally to most of them and they do not have to focus on this. Students that have inefficient subcomponents need interventions to help them improve students of upper levels into adulthood, often have a harder time grasping this concept. According to Walczyk, there is a stronger correlation only in situations such as testing. In situations such as timed tests and there is pressure on students, their compensatory mechanisms are tested. Students do not tend to use strategies for reading, but rather use strategies for test taking and because of this, their reading comprehension is not as good as it could be. In this article, it is stated that older readers and adults compensate for inefficient lower level processes, limited resources, or difficulty of text when reading under normal conditions. This is because it is harder for long time readers to adpat their own reading strategies to euipt themselves with newer better strategies of learning and comprehending.
We then studied fluency and its part in reading. Fluency is the capability to move through text with a grace and ease of flow. Fluency is built from three concepts. These concepts are: accuracy, automaticity (rate) and prosody. Prosody is the measure of duration of a pause in spoken language as a passage is read aloud. Accuracy is measured by number of words read correctly. This sis measured by reading selected passages. Errors in accuracy include substitutions, omissions, teacher help, inserting words, and self corrections. Automaticity is the rate of reading and is measured in words per minute (wpm). This is measured with word flashes. All of these together give a total score that reflects a student’s fluency.
Finally, we discussed and reviewed how these processes join together to form reading as a whole unit or activity. It all begins with reading processors. Reading processors are influenced by context processors, imagery, meaning processors, orthographical processors, and phonographical processors. Context processors are affected by vocabulary knowledge. Meaning processors are affected by semantics, syntax, and language comprehension. Orthographical processors are affected by mental lexicon, lexicon bundles, writing, and reading. Phonographical processors are affected by decoding skills and phonemic awareness. Both Orthographical processors and meaning processors are affected by prosody. Both Phonographical processors and Orthographical processors are affected by automaticity and accuracy. Through out the process working memory is a key factor.
