No abstract

Using structural equation modeling the authors evaluated the contribution of morphological awareness, phonological memory, and phonological decoding to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, spelling, and accuracy and rate of decoding morphologically complex words for 182 4th-and 5th-grade students, 218 6th-and 7th-grade students, and 207 8th-and 9th-grade students in a suburban school district. Morphological awareness made a significant unique contribution to reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and spelling for all 3 groups, to all measures of decoding rate for the 8th/9th-grade students, and to some measures of decoding accuracy for the 4th/5th-grade and 8th/9th-grade students. Morphological awareness also made a significant contribution to reading comprehension above and beyond that of reading vocabulary for all 3 groups.

No abstract

A study investigated the factors influencing the English word identification performance of Spanish-speaking beginning readers. Beginning readers were administered tests of letter naming, Spanish phonological awareness, Spanish and English word recognition, and Spanish and English oral proficiency. Multiple-regression analyses revealed that the readers' performance on English word and pseudoword recognition tests was predicted by the levels of both Spanish phonological awareness and Spanish word recognition, thus indicating cross-language transfer. In contrast, neither English nor Spanish oral proficiency affected word-identification performance. Results suggest a specific way in which first-language learning and experience can aid children in the beginning stages of reading.The number of students from linguistically diverse backgrounds who are enrolled in U.S. schools is increasing rapidly (Hakuta & Garcia, 1989). For these students, learning to read in English is one of the crucial components of academic success. Hence, how these students' first-language knowledge may affect their reading in a second language is of great pedagogical importance. In addition, the effects of first language on second-language reading (i.e., cross-language transfer) is also of theoretical interest, as evidenced by the increase in research devoted to this issue in the last few years. After two decades of little attention to cross-linguistic transfer, researchers in the area of second-language acquisition have returned to studying acquisition and production of second-language structures as a function of the characteristics of the first language (for reviews, see Gass &

There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students’ success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this review, we discuss the role of academic vocabulary within academic language, examine recent research on instruction in academic vocabulary, considering both general academic words and discipline‐specific words, and offer our perspective on the current state of this research and recommendations on how to continue inquiry and to improve practice in this area. We use the metaphor of ‘words as tools’ to reflect our understanding that instruction in academic vocabulary must approach words as means for communicating and thinking about disciplinary content, and must therefore provide students with opportunities to use the instructed words for these purposes as they are learning them.