Theories of reading development emphasize the importance of syntactic skills, which involve understanding and manipulating sentence structures, in relation to reading comprehension. Some researchers regard syntactic skills to be universal predictors of reading comprehension. A recent meta-analysis by Tong and colleagues investigated the relation between syntactic skills and reading comprehension for two languages with distinctive syntactic structure: Chinese and English. The meta-analysis included a total of 59 articles, comprising 75 independent samples and 235 correlations. Among these, 37 studies had participants whose first language was English, while 22 studies involved participants whose first language was Chinese.  The results of the meta-analysis are shown below: Overall, a positive moderate correlation was found between syntactic skills and reading comprehension (r=+0.54). There was no significant difference in this correlation between English and Chinese (r = +0.54 for both languages). For English language studies, correlations were generally higher among secondary school students compared to...

The National Student Support Accelerator has released a report on the impact of the second year of a randomized controlled trial of Chapter One, an early reading tutoring program that places part-time tutors in the classroom to work individually with students in short bursts of instruction for the entire school year. The study was conducted during the 2021-2022 school year with kindergarten students and continued in 2022-2023 with first grade students from 13 schools in a large Southeastern school district. In study year one, 50% of the students within 49 kindergarten classrooms were randomly assigned to receive Chapter One and 50% to a business-as-usual control group (N = 420, 398 respectively). Results at the end of kindergarten were positive, with Chapter One students performing higher on measures of oral fluency and on the district reading assessment. The second year of the study continued with first grade students who remained in...

Robot-assisted language learning involves the use of robots to aid students in learning and expressing language. In this educational approach, robots engage in interactive social behaviors. A recent systematic review and meta-analysis by Wang and Cheung investigated different types of robots’ social behaviors in language learning and their impacts. The review synthesized 59 empirical studies to explore in what contexts and how different social behaviors exhibited by robots have contributed to language learning, and the effectiveness of robots’ social supportive behaviors compared to their neutral behaviors. Results showed that robots’ social behaviors have predominantly been observed in contexts involving fewer than 80 K-12 students, for learning English vocabulary within a single session. In the process, robots interacted with students socially via non-verbal and verbal behaviors. Non-verbal behaviors consisted of physical appearance, gesture, posture, face and eye behaviors, and environment and space. Verbal behaviors included vocal behaviors, verbal immediacy, verbal feedback,...

The influence of family socioeconomic status (SES) on the development of children’s reading ability has been widely studied. A meta-analysis by Li and colleagues explored a mechanism through which SES affects reading ability. They proposed that SES not only has a direct effect on reading outcomes (reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension), but also indirectly affects reading ability through two linguistic skills, namely, phonological awareness (PA) and vocabulary knowledge (VK). To test this proposed mediation role, meta-analytic structural equation modeling was employed. The results of the modeling, based on 385 studies with participants age ranging from 2.16 to 17.9 years, revealed that SES had significant direct effect on linguistics skills and reading outcomes. Both PA and VK played a significant mediation role in the relation between SES and reading. Put differently, SES influenced students’ reading both directly and through its impact on phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Moderation effects were also...

Recognizing the importance of instilling vital reading skills from an early age, practitioners and researchers are seeking systematic approaches to support young learners over multiple years. The 95 Phonics Core Program (95 PCP) is a whole-class Tier 1 program for students in grades K-5, which was recently evaluated by Schechter and colleagues in Arizona. In their study of 405 kindergarten through first grade students (199 control and 206 treatment) across five schools in Flagstaff, Arizona, researchers followed students during the 2022-2023 school year. Students in the sample included 40% Hispanic students and 46% Low Income students. The program was used as the core reading curriculum in two volunteer schools, while the three comparison schools used National Geographic (NatGeo) as their core reading curriculum. Students in each group were matched through propensity score matching based on grade level/age, baseline achievement scores, gender, race and ethnicity, special education status, homeless status and...

Efforts to address student reading increasingly look to technological solutions as a means of reaching more students in effective ways. In particular, the need for remote and blended learning options increased as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Personalized and adaptive learning technology (PAL) has become a key focus on innovation and research to address ongoing reading needs of students across the world. To be adaptive and deliver personalized learning support, PAL analyzes student responses and skills to adapt the pace, content, and difficulty of material for each student, ideally moving students through the program at their ideal pace. To address ongoing uncertainty as to the effectiveness of PAL in K-12 settings, Alrawashdeh and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis including 27 studies from 12 countries, including both high- and low-income nations (U.S.A., U.K., China, France, Malawi, and France, among others). Their analysis found that PAL interventions were significantly positive overall (ES...

The effectiveness of early literacy tutoring interventions in the short term, specifically in grades K-2, has been supported by various studies. One such intervention is Literacy First, which offers tutoring to students from kindergarten through Grade 2 in underserved communities in the central Texas area, especially those reading below grade level at the beginning of the school year. Participating students receive daily one-on-one 30-minute lessons from a highly trained volunteer, customized based on data obtained through a response-to-intervention approach. The American Institute of Research (AIR) has been investigating whether Literacy First, when implemented in Grade 2, exhibits persistent effects up to three years after program completion. The evaluation, conducted through a multisite randomized control trial, involved 22 elementary schools within a Texan school district. Following a screening process that utilized standardized assessments, the randomization of the 1,046 Grade 2 students who had scored at Tier 2 and were eligible to...

The Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning recently conducted a systematic review examining the effects of native language-based education policies and Language of Instruction (LoI) transition policies on students’ literacy, biliteracy, and multilingual literacy skill development. The review summarized evidence from 45 high-quality studies carried out in low-and middle-income countries, focusing on education in a range of native languages, as well as post-colonial languages acquired later on, such as English, French and Portuguese. The results of the review found that 70% of all 10-year-old students in low- and middle-income countries struggled to read simple texts. Moreover, an average of 40% of these students received their education in languages not spoken at home, leading to comprehension difficulties. In addition, nearly all students were required to transition to yet a different language of instruction at the end of primary school. The systematic review uncovers compelling evidence that teaching children in their...

Meta-analytic reviews have found that readers understand texts slightly worse on screens than in print, particularly for expository texts and when time is constrained.  This is called the “screen inferiority effect.” Given that most primary studies from these reviews used computers for on-screen reading, it remains an open question whether this is also true when using handheld devices for on-screen reading. To address this gap, a set of recent meta-analyses, one using a between-participant design and the other using a within-participant design, explored potential moderating factors for the screen inferiority effect on reading comprehension using handheld devices versus in print. The review was comprised of 49 studies that met eligibility criteria, including that they: (1) compared reading on tablets or e-readers with reading in print; (2) involved participants who read independently; (3) were published or presented in English, Spanish, German, French, or Greek; and (4) were published after 2010. Results...