This research project investigated the effects of UFLI Foundations, a foundational reading skills instructional program, on early literary development with kindergarten and first grade students with below average early literacy skills using a cross-cohort quasi-experimental design. Multilevel modeling showed that students in the treatment group demonstrated significantly higher early literacy skills in March or April of the school year, as compared to the control group, and high adherence of program implementation led to higher growth.

Abstract

Research has demonstrated the positive effects of systematically teaching phonemic awareness and phonics in kindergarten and first grade, but many commonly used reading curricula do not adequately incorporate these foundational skills. In this study, we examined the efficacy of an instructional program (UFLI Foundations) in foundational reading skills (i.e., phonemic awareness and phonics) with students in kindergarten and first grade. We compared students who received a full year of the instructional program to propensity score matched control students, who received business-as-usual instruction, with a cross-cohort quasi-experimental design. Multilevel modeling results demonstrated that adding instruction in foundational skills increased early literacy skills scores by more than 1.0 standard deviation. Further, we found that students of teachers who taught with greater adherence to the UFLI Foundations program had larger effects. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Abstract

Previous studies uncover that vocabulary knowledge may be related to compound structure awareness (the awareness of relational structure embedded in compound words), and they both contribute to reading comprehension. Yet, limited studies have examined the dynamic relationship between vocabulary knowledge and compound structure awareness, or their joint contributions (including growth rates) to reading comprehension. Our study aimed to fill this gap in Chinese, an ideal target language with complex grammatical structures of compound words. We followed 125 native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking children in Mainland China from Grades 3 to 6, with one testing point in the fall of each grade and a total of four testing times. These children's vocabulary, compound structure awareness, and text reading comprehension were measured as three key variables, and their Chinese character reading, word reading fluency, and compounding awareness were measured as three control variables in model analyses; all materials were adopted from previous research and were highly reliable and valid. We fitted the latent growth models and found that children's initial vocabulary in Grade 3 significantly predicted their compound structure awareness growth over Grades 3 to 6, and then predicted reading comprehension in Grade 6. However, such results were not evident the other way around. Importantly, initial vocabulary knowledge and compound structure awareness in Grade 3 and their growth rates from Grades 3 to 6 contributed to reading comprehension skills in Grade 6. Our findings demonstrate the necessity of considering vocabulary knowledge and compound structure awareness jointly and longitudinally to support early reading development.

Abstract

The article explored the impact of topic background knowledge (TBK) on children's language ability development and reading-related emotional factors. TBK refers to the foundational knowledge that children possess concerning a specific subject or topic. The content schemata theory suggests that a high level of TBK facilitates information processing during reading activities, benefiting language learning outcomes, fostering reading interest, and reducing reading anxiety. The current study used experts' evaluation of TBK levels that children might have towards books, children's key cue predictions, eye-tracking indicators, and topic-related knowledge test to select low-level TBK books that children had. A total of 346 kindergarteners and their parents were selected and randomly divided into four groups across TBK levels (high level vs. low level) that children had in selected books, and the parent–child interactive reading approach [Dialogic reading (DR) vs. Typical reading (TR)]. This study enhanced children TBK through pre-learning activities which provided relevant information related to the target book content. The high-level TBK children received relevant knowledge pre-learning activities towards books used in formal reading intervention, while low-level TBK children received irrelevant knowledge pre-learning activities to counterbalance. The children were pretested on their receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, listening comprehension, reading interest, and reading anxiety. After an eight-week intervention, a posttest was administered to assess the same measures. The results showed that both TBK and parent–child interactive reading approach enhanced children's language development via book reading activities. Furthermore, a pre-learning activity is an appropriate approach to enhance the level of TBK. This study extended the application of the content schemata theory in parent–child reading activities and highlighted the importance of TBK in parent–child reading.

We examined the effectiveness of phonological awareness (Rosner’s Auditory Segmentation) and working memory (pseudoword repetition) tests in the Russian language for students with different levels of phonological ability. The findings suggest that the overall item difficulty is too low to fully capture the range of phonological ability in native Russian-speaking children. Based on item analysis, we argue that increasing syllable count and subsyllabic complexity in pseudoword items, as well as using auditory segmentation items with middle or final elision will be most effective for detecting higher levels of ability.

Abstract

Phonological awareness and phonological working memory are essential for successful language acquisition and development of literacy. Although this essence is language-universal, its degree varies for different languages, depending, in part, on language transparency. The current study analyzes the adapted versions of the pseudoword repetition test (assessing phonological working memory) and Rosner's Auditory Segmentation test (assessing phonological awareness) in a typically developing Russian native sample of children (n = 502). As a preparatory step to item analysis, we investigated the effects of grade and gender on performance using a mixed effects model. The initial item analysis was carried out using model comparison within the Item Response Theory model framework and threshold/slope analysis. The majority of the items in both assessments did not differentiate between students with different levels of phonological ability. Further item selection using regression tree models led to the formation of predictive and non-predictive item subsets for each assessment. After comparing the item subsets on various linguistic metrics, the differences were found in number of syllables and subsyllabic complexity for the pseudoword repetition test and elision segment position for the auditory segmentation test. The findings inform test development strategies in the cases of extremely low difficulty/discrimination of the items and outline a blueprint of pseudoword repetition and auditory segmentation test's adaptation for potentially detecting higher levels of phonological ability in transparent languages such as Russian.