Gains in College Students from Reading Fluency Interventions
Location
Room 218
Proposal Track
Research Project
Session Format
Presentation
Abstract
This pretest, intervention, posttest design with treatment and control conditions examined support structures for the development of reading skills through fluency training interventions on a group of struggling college readers’ component skills of word recognition and vocabulary. Random assignment of participants (n = 30) resulted in 11 students in a Repeated Reading (RR) condition, nine students in the Wide Reading (WR) condition and 10 students in the Vocabulary Study (VS) control condition. RR condition involved reading a grade-level text four times and answering comprehension questions about it while the WR condition entailed reading four different grade-level passages and answering questions during a session. The VS students studied academic vocabulary words and were not exposed to any connected text reading. Individual training was conducted three times a week for three weeks during a summer term. Results indicated significant group-specific gains only in vocabulary knowledge from WR and VS training. There were no gains in word recognition ability or reading comprehension. Vocabulary gains appear to result from broader exposure to words in varied contexts and focused vocabulary study rather than repeated exposure to a smaller amount of text. Implications are discussed which likely will contribute to supporting struggling college readers.
Keywords
Reading interventions, Reading fluency, Vocabulary knowledge, Automatic word recognition
Recommended Citation
Ari, Omer, "Gains in College Students from Reading Fluency Interventions" (2014). Georgia Educational Research Association Conference. 37.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/gera/2014/2014/37
Proposal
Gains in College Students from Reading Fluency Interventions
Room 218
This pretest, intervention, posttest design with treatment and control conditions examined support structures for the development of reading skills through fluency training interventions on a group of struggling college readers’ component skills of word recognition and vocabulary. Random assignment of participants (n = 30) resulted in 11 students in a Repeated Reading (RR) condition, nine students in the Wide Reading (WR) condition and 10 students in the Vocabulary Study (VS) control condition. RR condition involved reading a grade-level text four times and answering comprehension questions about it while the WR condition entailed reading four different grade-level passages and answering questions during a session. The VS students studied academic vocabulary words and were not exposed to any connected text reading. Individual training was conducted three times a week for three weeks during a summer term. Results indicated significant group-specific gains only in vocabulary knowledge from WR and VS training. There were no gains in word recognition ability or reading comprehension. Vocabulary gains appear to result from broader exposure to words in varied contexts and focused vocabulary study rather than repeated exposure to a smaller amount of text. Implications are discussed which likely will contribute to supporting struggling college readers.
