TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kirschmann, Nicole
A1  - Lenhard, Wolfgang
A1  - Suggate, Sebastian
T1  - Influences from working memory, word and sentence reading on passage comprehension and teacher ratings
JF  - Journal of Research in Reading
N2  - Reading fluency is a major determinant of reading comprehension but depends on moderating factors such as auditory working memory (AWM), word recognition and sentence reading skills. We investigated how word and sentence reading skills relate to reading comprehension differentially across the first 6 years of schooling and tested which reading variable best predicted teacher judgements. We conducted our research in a rather transparent language, namely, German, drawing on two different data sets. The first was derived from the normative sample of a reading comprehension test (ELFE-II), including 2056 first to sixth graders with readings tests at the word, sentence and text level. The second sample included 114 students from second to fourth grade. The latter completed a series of tests that measured word and sentence reading fluency, pseudoword reading, AWM, reading comprehension, self-concept and teacher ratings. We analysed the data via hierarchical regression analyses to predict reading comprehension and teacher judgements. The impact of reading fluency was strongest in second and third grade, afterwards superseded by sentence comprehension. AWM significantly contributed to reading comprehension independently of reading fluency, whereas basic decoding skills disappeared after considering fluency. Students' AWM and reading comprehension predicted teacher judgements on reading fluency. Reading comprehension judgements depended both on the students' self-concept and reading comprehension. Our results underline that the role of word reading accuracy for reading comprehension quickly diminishes during elementary school and that teachers base their assessments mainly on the current reading comprehension skill.
KW  - word recognition
KW  - reading skills
KW  - reading comprehension
KW  - teacher assessments
KW  - passage comprehension
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-258043
VL  - 44
IS  - 4
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Müller, Bettina
A1  - Richter, Tobias
A1  - Karageorgos, Panagiotis
A1  - Krawietz, Sabine
A1  - Ennemoser, Marco
T1  - Effects of a syllable-based reading intervention in poor-reading fourth graders
JF  - Frontiers in Psychology
N2  - In transparent orthographies, persistent reading fluency difficulties are a major cause of poor reading skills in primary school. The purpose of the present study was to investigate effects of a syllable-based reading intervention on word reading fluency and reading comprehension among German-speaking poor readers in Grade 4. The 16-session intervention was based on analyzing the syllabic structure of words to strengthen the mental representations of syllables and words that consist of these syllables. The training materials were designed using the 500 most frequent syllables typically read by fourth graders. The 75 poor readers were randomly allocated to the treatment or the control group. Results indicate a significant and strong effect on the fluency of recognizing single words, whereas text-level reading comprehension was not significantly improved by the training. The specific treatment effect provides evidence that a short syllable-based approach works even in older poor readers at the end of primary school.
KW  - word reading fluency
KW  - syllable-based intervention
KW  - older poor readers
KW  - primary school
KW  - reading comprehension
Y1  - 2017
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-158841
VL  - 8
IS  - 1635
ER  -