Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is considered one of the hallmarks of fluent reading. The major purpose of the study was to learn how reading prosody is related to decoding and reading comprehension skills. Suprasegmental features of oral reading were measured in 2nd-and 3rd-grade children (N = 123) and 24 adults. Reading comprehension and word decoding skills were assessed. Children with faster decoding speed made shorter and less variable intersentential pauses, shorter intrasentential pauses, larger sentence-final fundamental frequency (F 0 ) declinations, and better matched the adult prosodic F 0 profile. Two structural equation models found evidence of a relationship between decoding speed and reading prosody as well as decoding speed and comprehension. There was only minimal evidence that prosodic reading was an important mediator of reading comprehension skill.Prosodic reading, or reading with expression, is widely considered to be one of the hallmarks of the achievement of reading fluency. When a child is reading prosodically, oral reading sounds much like speech with appropriate phrasing, pause structures, stress, rise and fall patterns, and general expressiveness. However, exactly where does the development of prosodic reading or "making it sound like language" (Stahl & Kuhn, 2002, p. 582) fit in our conceptions of developing reading skill? The purpose of the current study was to determine how individual differences in developing reading skill are related to prosodic reading in order to better place prosodic reading in the process of learning to read fluently. Gough and Tumner's (1986) "simple view of reading" proposed that reading comprehension could be described in terms of two factors-language comprehension and word decoding. In this model, both language comprehension and decoding are seen as limiting factors in reading comprehension. If the child's decoding is less than fully automatic, his or her comprehension will suffer. As decoding moves toward full automaticity, reading comprehension skill should equal comprehension of oral language (Carver, 1993(Carver, , 2000Hoover & Gough, 1990). OthersCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paula J. Schwanenflugel, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Georgia, 323E Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602. E-mail: pschwane@coe.uga.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript (e.g., Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; National Reading Panel, 2000) suggested that more than automaticity of individual word decoding is necessary for comprehension to be enhanced. Instead, they suggested that fluency, defined as not only accuracy and automaticity of individual word reading, but also prosodic rendering of the text, is needed for children to adequately comprehend. What Is Reading Prosody?Despite its presumed status as the hallmark of fluent reading, we currently know little about the nature of reading prosody per se. To read prosodically, children must be able to do more than de...

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A simulation study was conducted to examine the effect of item parceling on goodnessof-fit indices at different levels of sample size, number of indicators per factor, factor structure/pattern coefficients, interfactor correlations, and item-level data distribution. Results revealed that the use of item parcels yielded more nonconverged solutions and Heywood cases than individual items. The likelihood of nonconverged solutions and Heywood cases increased as the number of indicators per factor (more items per parcel) decreased. Meanwhile, parcel solutions as compared with item solutions resulted in better fit as measured by the chi-square to degrees-of-freedom ratio, Goodness-of-Fit Index (GFI), Expected Cross-Validation Index (ECVI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), as well as two incremental fit indices, the Non-Normed Fit Index (NNFI) and Comparative Fit Index (CFI). The same pattern of results was found with data that varied in terms of skewness and kurtosis at the item level. However, the likelihood of nonconverged solutions and Heywood cases was more pronounced when data were extremely skewed/kurtotic at the item level.

The goals of this study were to (a) develop an empirically based model regarding the development of fluent and automatic reading in the early elementary school years and (b) determine whether fluent text-reading skills provided benefits for reading comprehension beyond those accounted for by fluent word decoding. First-, second-, and third-grade children completed a series of reading tasks targeting word and nonword processing, text reading, spelling knowledge, autonomous reading, and reading comprehension. Structural equation modeling was carried out to evaluate how these skills operated together to produce fluent text reading and good comprehension. Evidence supported a simple reading fluency model for the early elementary school years suggesting that fluent word and text reading operate together with autonomous reading to produce good comprehension.

The present study investigates the relationships among a variety of school-level climate variables and mean school achievement in a random, sample of Michigan elementary schools. School-level SES, racial composition and climate were each highly related to mean school achievement; only a small proportion of the between-school variance in achievement is explained by SES and racial composition after the effect of school climate is removed. The climate variable we have called Student Sense of Academic Futility had the largest correlation with achievement. An observational study of four schools with similar SES and racial composition but different achievement tended to support the more analytical findings and suggest the processes by which climate affects achievement.