The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of text difficulty on the oral reading prosody of young children. Fluency in reading is ideally determined by measuring rate, accuracy, and prosodic qualities in the oral reading of children. Spectrographic measurements of four prosodic variables—sentence‐final F0 change, intonation contour, intrasentential pausing, and ungrammatical pausing—were carried out on the oral readings of second‐grade students (N = 90) of an easy and a difficult text. Standardized measures of reading fluency (i.e., measuring only rate and accuracy) and reading comprehension were also given. Text difficulty had an impact on children's oral reading on three of the four prosody variables, and fluent children read more expressively than less fluent children. Prosody measured from the more difficult text was found to be more closely related to other aspects of fluency than prosody measured from the easy text. Additionally, prosody measured from the difficult text served as an independent predictor of comprehension skills once rate and accuracy were controlled for, whereas prosody from the easy text did not. It is proposed that good reading prosody is used by children to assist in comprehending the more difficult text. [Note: Rebekah Benjamin discusses the research presented in this article in a podcast from the “Voice of Literacy”: http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/41784.] إن الغرض من هذه الدراسة هو بحث تأثير صعوبة النص على عَروض القراءة الشفوية لدى القراء الصغار. مثاليا، يمكن تحديد السلاسة في القراءة بقياس معدل السرعة والدقة وجودة العروض في القراءة الشفوية عند الأطفال. لقد أجريت القياسات التصويربة والضوئية لأربعة متغيرات عروضية‐ تغيير نهاية الجملة ومحيط التنغيم والتوقف داخل الجملة والتوقف الخاطئ نحويا‐ على القراءات الشفوية لطلاب الصف الثاني لنص سهل وآخر صعب. و قُدمت أيضا مقاييس موحدة للقراءة السلسة ( أي قياس معدل السرعة والدقة فقط ) وفهم القراءة. كان لصعوبة النص تأثير على القراءة الشفوية لدى الأطفال في ثلاثة من المتغيرات العروضية الأربعة، كما أن الأطفال الذين يجيدون القراءة هم أحسن تعبيرا من الذين لا يجيدون القراءة. بيّنت العروض المقاسة على نص صعب أنها أوثق صلة بجوانب أخرى من السلاسة من تلك المقاسة على نص سهل. بالإضافة إلى ذلك، فإن العروض المقاسة على النص الصعب هي بمثابة منبّىء مستقل لمهارات الفهم بمجرد ضبط معدل السرعة والدقة في حين أن العروض المطبقة على النص السهل لا يمكن استخدامها كمنبىء مستقل. ويُقترح أن يستخدم الأطفال عروض القراءة الجيدة لمساعدتهم في فهم النصوص الصعبة. [Podcast: http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/41784.] 本研究旨在考查文本的艰深度对幼童朗读节律之影响。评量儿童朗读流畅度的理想方法是量度他们的朗读速度、准确度及节律素质。90名小学二年级学生接受一深一浅的文本朗读测试。研究者以语音的声谱图量度四个节律变数:句尾基本音频变化、语调轮廓、句子内之停顿及不合语法之停顿。受测试者亦接受标准化阅读流畅度(只量度速度与准确度)及阅读理解测试。文本的艰深度能影响儿童的朗读表现,尤其在四个节律变数之中的三个上;而在表情达意方面,流畅朗读者则比非流畅朗读者较为优胜。阅读流畅度的其他素质与从朗读艰深文本所量得的节律素质,比与从朗读浅易文本所量得的节律素质,有较为密切的相关。此外,当研究者在控制了阅读流畅度与准确度的情况下作分析时,其结果显示,从朗读艰深文本所量得之节律素质,可以成为一个预测阅读理解能力的独立因子,而从朗读浅易文本所量得之节律素质则不可以。本研究提出,儿童运用朗读的良好节律素质来帮助他们理解较艰深之文本。 [Podcast: http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/41784.] Cette étude avait pour but d'examiner l'impact de la difficulté du texte sur la prosodie de la lecture ...
Largely due to technological advances, methods for analyzing readability have increased significantly in recent years. While past researchers designed hundreds of formulas to estimate the difficulty of texts for readers, controversy has surrounded their use for decades, with criticism stemming largely from their application in creating new texts as well as their utilization of surface-level indicators as proxies for complex cognitive processes that take place when reading a text. This review focuses on examining developments in the field of readability during the past two decades with the goal of informing both current and future research and providing recommendations for present use. The fields of education, linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, discourse processing, and computer science have all made recent strides in developing new methods for predicting the difficulty of texts for various populations. However, there is a need for further development of these methods if they are to become widely available.
This study evaluated the validity of a new scale for assessing children's reading fluency skill called the Comprehensive Oral Reading Fluency Scale (CORFS). The CORFS consists of two subscales that capture key elements of the Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, and Meisinger (2010) definition of reading fluency: reading expression, reading rate, and accuracy. In study 1, the reading expression subscale was developed by examining spectrographically measured prosodic differences in the oral readings of children with varying fluency skill. Three experts independently rated the oral readings of 59 second‐grade children using the CORFS. Intraclass correlations among raters were strong for both reading expression, and reading rate and accuracy. Expression ratings correlated with all but one spectrographic indicator of reading prosody and highly with standardized assessments of reading fluency and comprehension. In study 2, the structure of the scale was replicated using spectrographic measures of the oral readings of 60 third‐grade children reading two new texts. Two experts independently rated these oral readings using a final version of the scale. Results were comparable to those of study 1. Together, these results support the validity of the CORFS as an assessment of reading fluency.
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