Reading Research

" This paper aims to present a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), with special focus on the relationship between the UK Department for Education's policy-making and the evidence considered in the process of developing and evaluating the PSC. The reports from the in-house Standards and Testing Agency and from commissioned external organisations with limited remits have been analysed, with emphasis on how the screening check findings have been used in DfE decision-making. My conclusion is that the department has overestimated both the validity and the reliability of the check: partly because important sources of measurement error have not been explored, and partly because the available evidence has not been analysed in sufficient depth — or perhaps simply been ignored by the department. The whole phonics screening check seems to be the product of policy-based evidence, rather than evidence-based policy-making. This has, in my view, seriously undermined the value of the PSC as a screening instrument, and one must wonder whether it is 'fit for purpose'.

Publikácia Metodika na podporu čitateľstva žiakov v mladšom školskom veku je výstupom výskumného projektu VEGA 1/0455/18 Výskum a rozvoj čitateľstva žiakov mladšieho školského veku.
Zámerom projektu bolo objaviť príčiny znižovania čitateľstva žiakov s ich rastúcim vekom a zistiť možnosti stimulácie kognitívnej a receptívno-zážitkovej stránky čitateľstva na primárnom stupni školy a jeho následnej udržateľnosti. Našou ambíciou sa stalo vytvorenie čitateľského programu na podporu čitateľstva detí mladšieho
školského veku „Čítame deťom, čítame s deťmi“, ktorý synergicky spojil dospelých a deti s cieľom nájsť spôsoby, ako čitateľstvo „resuscitovať“ a zároveň inšpirovať k čítaniu.

In many EFL contexts, including language education milieu in Iran, reading fluency is usually taken for granted since
language education in public high schools mainly focuses on reading comprehension. Taking the detrimental effect of
fluency deficiency into account, some practitioners foreground reading fluency and try to develop it early on. To give
voice to their theories of practice, this qualitative study interviewed teachers who were willing to share their experience
with the researchers. In line with grounded theory, the iterative process of data collection and analysis continued until
the  conceptualization  of  fluency  development  techniques  was  saturated.  The  techniques  emerged  are  conducive  to
fluency development and as such the findings have clear implications for practitioners and policy makers nation-wide.

Bibliographical reference:
Rühr, Sandra / Mahling, Marina / Kuhn, Axel (2013): Methoden der modernen Lese- und Leserforschung. In: Umlauf, Konrad / Fühles-Ubach, Simone / Seadle, Michael (Hrsg.): Handbuch Methoden der Bibliotheks- und Informationswissenschaft: Bibliotheksforschung, Benutzerforschung, Informationsanalyse. Berlin: deGruyter, S. 525-546.

My English Translation from the German:
Rühr, Sandra / Mahling, Marina / Kuhn, Axel (2013): Methods in modern reading and reader research. In: Umlauf, Konrad / Fühles-Ubach, Simone / Seadle, Michael (Ed.): Handbook Methods of Library and Information Science: Library and User Research, Informationanalysis. Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 525-546.

This paper describes the National Reading ResearchCenter (NRRC), a federally funded center that intends to carry outresearch to discover what promotes readers' engagement in literacyactivities, foster their critical thinking and strategic learning,and prepare them to meet the challenges of a technological age. Thepaper describes the mission of the NRRC, perceived needs in readingresearch, the people in the NRRC, research programs in the NRRC(embracing instruction, learning, assessment, and professionaldevelopment), planned collaborations and activities, and forthcomingproducts and publications. The paper concludes that the NRRC researchagenda incorporates the goals and problems identified in the America2000 plan. Twenty-four references, a list of the members of the NRRCnational advisory board, and a list of the 41 research projects atNRRC are attached.

Educational research is used to create the theories upon we design educational policies and practices are designed. Theories help to organize relevant empirical facts (empirical means they can be observed or measured), in order to create a context for understanding phenomena.  Theoretical models of reading are used to understand the reading process as well as to design and evaluate instructional practices. As such, the theoretical model of reading one adheres to has tremendous impact on the type of reading instruction and interventions that are used.

The standard orthography of Kabiye (Togo) does not mark tone. In such a context, how can a researcher adequately assess the degree of ambiguity in the written language and make a valid contribution to the debate about how tone might be incorporated in the second generation of language development? This article approaches that question, not from the perspective of phonological analysis which has tended to dominate the literature, but from the point of view of the linguistics of writing. Applying Catach's (1984) model of lexical ambiguity for Kabiye, it advocates the development of a homograph corpus in which words, roots and affixes are included or excluded on the basis of semantic, morphological and dialectal criteria. A homographic prefix with pronominal, negative and immediative interpretations illustrates how the corpus is then applied to a frequency and distribution analysis of ambiguity in natural written contexts, and an analysis of oral reading errors in the classroom. A dictation task reveals that subjects who were taught a segmental modification of the negative prefix write with greater accuracy than subjects who were taught to add tone diacritics.

This is a review of the research on secondary school reading from 1921-1988.  The chapter has five sections. The first section is a brief rationale for separating secondary school reading from research on reading in the lower grades. The second section reviews the experimental research on teaching and learning strategies designed to improve secondary students' learning from text. The third section, which describes the reading practices that have predominated in secondary schools, draws from observational, ethnographic, and survey data.  The fourth section provides reasons for the predominance of certain secondary reading practice (interpreted through conceptual and historical research). The last section presents implications for future research in secondary school reading.

Resumen La investigación sobre la lectura durante décadas ha centrado su atención en los procesos de alfabetización, en la formación del lector, en las dificultades para el desarrollo de competencias lectoras y en los patrones de comportamiento de los lectores desde un punto de vista estadístico. La aparición de dispositivos de lectura electrónica, y de contenidos digitales sobre todo a finales del siglo XX, ha generado una corriente de investigación orientada a examinar las circunstancias en las que está produciendo la migración de un sistema analógico a otro digital y la incidencia de la tecnología en algunas de las funciones asociadas con la práctica lectora, como la concentración, la memorización y la interpretación. En este artículo se traza un panorama del desarrollo de algunas de estas investigaciones, estableciendo algunos de los elementos críticos para la consolidación de las mismas. Palabras clave Lectura, lectura digital, dispositivos de lectura, comprensión lectora. Abstract Research on reading has focused on literacy processes, reader training, difficulties in developing reading skills, and on the behavioural patterns of readers from a statistical point of view. The emergence of electronic reading devices and digital content, especially at the end of the 20th century, has generated a stream of research aimed at examining the circumstances in which the migration from an analogue to a digital system is taking place and the incidence of technology in some of the functions associated with reading practice, such as concentration, memorization and interpretation. This article presents an overview of the development of some of these investigations, establishing some of the critical elements for their consolidation.

Eye movement characteristics and duration of reading were studied when subjects were read-ing aloud from 1) normal text; 2) scrambled text with letters within the word mixed; and 3) continuous text with spaces between the words omitted. Fixation-speech interval (i.e. the inter-val between the first fixation to a word and the start of speech) was also measured. The results did not support the standard linear information processing model of reading, where reading of the scrambled text should be associated with changes in the eye movement pattern and slower reading as compared with normal or continuous text. Instead, the most conspicuous changes in relation to normal reading were associated with continuous text. Fixation-speech interval ranged from 200 ms to several seconds, being shortest with the normal text. The results support the theory of reading aloud as an anticipatory and continuous process of meaning generation, in which visual fixation confirms and culminates rather than initiates the process.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of homogeneous versus heterogeneous reading-style grouping on EFL students' non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension. The study used a pretest-posttest experimental design. The original subjects of the study (N=86) were Egyptian English major senior students during the 2005/2006 academic year. At the beginning of this academic year, the Analytic/Global Reading Styles Inventory (AGRSI) was administered to these subjects to measure each student's analytic and global reading styles. Based on their scores on the inventory, strongly analytic and strongly global subjects (N=62) were randomly assigned to homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. Afterwards, both groups were tested to measure each student's reading comprehension before treatment using the Reading Comprehension Test developed by the researcher. Each group was then randomly assigned to pairs. During treatment, the members of each pair alternatively exhibited their reading behaviors by thinking aloud while reading and sharing answers to post-passage questions after reading. The study lasted for 28 weeks, one ninety-minute session per week. After treatment, the AGRSI and the Reading Comprehension Test were re-administered to both groups to measure each student's non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension. The differences in the pre-to-posttest improvement between the two groups were then analyzed for significance using ANCOVA. The results indicated that the heterogeneous group students demonstrated significantly greater pre to- posttest improvement in both their non-preferred reading style and reading comprehension than the homogeneous group students [f (1, 59)=60.33, p less than 0.001; f (1, 59)=43.18, p less than 0.001, respectively]. Based on these findings, the researcher concludes that the non-preferred reading style can be developed when students learn with and from others with different reading styles and that reading comprehension is neither a bottom-up nor a top-down process but an interaction between the two. Therefore, it demands the development and integration of both the left and right hemisphere functions of the brain. The study concludes with suggestions for further research.

Keywords: Reading Comprehension; Cognitive Style; Brain Hemisphere; Reading Comprehension; Cognitive Style; Brain Hemisphere

In this article, we explore the matters that relate to three approaches in theories of reading: 1) the transactional approach, 2) the subjective approach, and 3) the phenomenological approach. We first review more than 20 years of research on reading subjectivity to better seize its importance today. Our goal is to use a conceptual framework rooted in research on reception theory, transaction theory, and phenomenological theory of reading to shed light on subjective reactions in reading. Through examples from recent studies on reading with secondary 3 students, we explain how these complementary approaches inform one another to promote understanding of subjective reactions.

Lesen ist Thema eines anhaltenden Diskurses. Eine besondere Bedeutung haben dabei die Auswirkungen des Lesens auf Identität, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Technische und kulturelle Entwicklungen verändern die sozialen Praktiken des Lesens und die Leser selbst. Dieser Band verdeutlicht die Ausprägungen des Diskurses um das Lesen anhand der Gegenstände und Darstellungen sowie der Argumente für und gegen das Lesen vom Mittelalter bis zu einer möglichen Zukunft. Die versammelten Beiträge bieten einerseits einen historischen Überblick, andererseits eine interdisziplinäre Auseinandersetzung mit den kulturellen Phänomenen des Lesens in Geschichte und Gegenwart. So entsteht eine erste diskursanalytische Historiographie im heterogenen Forschungsfeld rund um das Lesen.

Bibliographical reference:
Rühr, Sandra / Kuhn, Axel (Hrsg.) (2013): Sinn und Unsinn des Lesens: Gegenstände, Darstellungen und Argumente aus Geschichte und Gegenwart. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Reading is part of an ongoing discourse about reading objects, reading behaviour and functions and impacts of reading in society. Actually this becomes evident in the discussions about the PISA-Surveys, in history this can be seen in the different attributions to reading for personal and social identities. The transformations of reading and readers by new technologies or social and cultural developments are aspects of comprehensive historical perceptions which are reflected in different social practices of reading. The characteristics of the reading discourse are illustrated in this volume by examining the objects and representations of reading as well as the arguments for or against reading from medieval to present times. The collection of contributions develop a discourse-analytical historiography in a heterogenous field of research and create on the one hand an historical overview and on the other hand an interdisciplinary examination of the social and cultural phenomenons associated with reading.

My English translation from the German:
Rühr, Sandra / Kuhn, Axel (Ed.) (2013): Sense and Nonsense of Reading. Objects, representations and arguments from history and present. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

The Extensive Reading Foundation's bibliography now boasts over 530 articles with "Extensive Reading" in the title. About 35% of this rich and diverse body of papers were published in the past decade. A meta-review of this literature shows it is quite fragmented as evidenced by considerable variability in the conceptualization of extensive reading (ER) itself. For example, some researchers suggested that reading graded readers meant the subjects were therefore reading extensively (e.g., Kirchhoff, 2013; Yamashita, 2013) whereas others were more circumspect. Some suggested students were reading extensively by reading as few as 9 books or 140 pages over the duration of the study, or 5 books over an academic year (e.g., Robb & Kano, 2013; Shue, 2003), while others conducted ER over several years (e.g., Nishizawa, Yoshioka, & Fukuda, 2010), and yet others operationalized ER as the intensive reading of difficult material (e.g., Kweon & Kim, 2008). Given the variety and apparent fragmentation of the conceptualization of ER, we believe that it is necessary that our field share a common understanding of what ER is so we can evaluate and interpret ER research within a stable framework and talk a common language. But what is it that forms the core of ER? Is there a defining aspect of ER that determines whether a practice or research design can be called ER, or by its absence, not ER? This paper is an attempt to initiate a dialog to answer these and other questions.

Abstract—This study aims at finding out whether there are any significant differences between perceived use
of the metacognitive reading strategies by Iranian Master of Science (MSc) students for hypertext and printed
academic  materials.  To  this  end,  fifty  four  students  in  total  were  randomly  selected  from  MSc  students  of
Gonabad  University  of  Medical  Sciences  in  Iran.  Having  received  the  research  instruments,  the  subjects
completed  the  demographic  information  sheet  and  two  other  questionnaires,  i.e.,  the  survey  of  reading
strategies (SORS) and the online survey of reading strategies (OSORS).  The researchers then used the SPSS
software for data analysis.  The  results  showed  that  research subjects  reported  a  moderate  perceived  use  of
metacognitive reading strategies while reading academic hypertext and printed materials.

The paper introduces measurement of fixation-speech intervals (FSI) as an important tool for the study of the reading process. Using the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto 1998a), we developed experiments to investigate the time course of reading. By combining eye tracking with synchronous recording of speech during reading in a single measure, we issue a fundamental challenge to information processing models. Not only is FSI an authentic measure of the reading process, but it shows that we exploit verbal patterns, textual features and, less directly, reading experience. Reading, we conclude, is not a matter of decoding linguistic information. Far from being a text-driven process, it depends on integrating both sensory and motor processes in an anticipatory meaning generation based on the history of experience and cultural context of the reader. Finally, we conclude with remarks on the social character and cognitive history of reading.
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This is a review of the research on secondary school reading from 1921-1988. The chapter has five sections. The first section is a brief rationale for separating secondary school reading from research on reading in the lower grades. The second section reviews the experimental research on teaching and learning strategies designed to improve secondary students' learning from text. The third section, which describes the reading practices that have predominated in secondary schools, draws from observational, ethnographic, and survey data. The fourth section provides reasons for the predominance of certain secondary reading practice (interpreted through conceptual and historical research). The last section presents implications for future research in secondary school reading.

Despite a wealth of research data from wide variety of areas supporting a psycholinguistic model of reading, there are still many researchers who choose to understand the reading process only in terms of the phonological processing model. I call them sounder-outers.  The deficits of this approach are examined here.

Bibliographical reference:
Kuhn, Axel / Rühr, Sandra (2010): Stand der Lese- und Leserforschung. Eine kritische Analyse. In: Rautenberg, Ursula (Hrsg.): Buchwissenschaft in Deutschland. Ein Handbuch. Berlin: de Gruyter, S. 585–654.

My English translation from the German:
Kuhn, Axel / Rühr, Sandra (2010): Status quo of reading and reader research. A critical analysis. In: Rautenberg, Ursula (Ed.): Book Studies in Germany. Reference Book. Berlin: de Gruyter, p. 585–654.