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In Canada, approximately 12% of school-aged children are enrolled in French Immersion (FI), with some provinces estimating close to 30%. FI programs are intended to produce bilingual individuals who can functionally communicate in both of Canada's official languages. Yet, we are currently underinformed as to how to identify children with French word reading difficulties in such programs. Within this context, and in the interests of informing early identification of second language reading challenges, we examined early English predictors of French word reading difficulties. We also examined potential overlap of these difficulties as well as the stability of these difficulties over time. A total of 108 children in FI participated, completing measures of English nonverbal intelligence, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and receptive vocabulary in kindergarten, as well as English and French word reading in grades 1, 2, and 3. Logistic regressions revealed that kindergarten English phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) distinguished between good and poor French word readers in grade 3, with adequate sensitivity and specificity. These results suggest that English phonological awareness and RAN may be appropriate early skills to identify children at risk of word reading challenges in bilingual programs. Chi-square analyses demonstrated significant overlap of English and French word reading challenges in grades 1, 2, and 3, highlighting the possibility that English and French word reading difficulties do not exist independently. Finally, chi-square analyses revealed retrospectively stable word reading difficulties in English and French. Interestingly, prospective stability was stronger for French than English word reading challenges. Overall, our results underscore the importance of considering the specific nature of word reading difficulties in bilingual readers.

Orthographic knowledge is predicted to be central in the process of children's reading development. We examined both the temporal order between orthographic knowledge and each of word reading and word spelling--effectively, which predicts which by including autoregressive controls--and cross-linguistic transfer between English and French for our emerging bilingual participants. Seven-three children (36 males) were followed from Grades 1 to 3 in a French immersion program in which instruction was entirely in French. We conducted cross-lagged panel models of orthographic knowledge, word reading, and spelling that included controls of phonological awareness, non-verbal ability. In terms of temporal order, word reading (at grade 1) and word spelling (at grade 2) predicted gains in each of English and French orthographic knowledge. In contrast, early orthographic knowledge did not predict gains in word reading or word spelling in either language. In terms of transfer, from their earliest point of measurement, English word reading and spelling consistently predicted later French orthographic knowledge; French word reading and spelling contributed to English orthographic knowledge only from Grade 2. These findings illustrate a dynamic picture of the relations between orthographic knowledge and word reading and spelling both within and across languages, informing current models of each reading with both monolinguals and bilinguals.

Purpose: Despite abundant evidence that morphemes are important in reading and spelling, little is known about the nature of processing in spelling. This study identifies multiple morphological processes over the time course of spelling, revealing that these processes are influenced by development. Method: Twenty adults and 46 children (8;0-12;1 years) completed an auditory lexical decision task followed by a spelling task, to explore the effects of morphological structure and cross-modal morphological priming by analyzing handwriting latencies before and during spelling production. Results: Adults and children both demonstrated morphological processing during lexical access -- they were faster to begin to write morphologically complex words (e.g., artist) compared to matched monomorphemic controls (e.g., article). Adults (but not children) also demonstrated cross-modal morphological priming. Further, adults (but not children) demonstrated the effects of morphological processing during spelling production. Inter-letter latencies were shorter between the last two letters of a root morpheme than the same letters in monomorphemic control words (e.g., ar[]tist compared to ar[]ticle). Conclusion: Together, these findings reflect multiple facilitative effects of morphological processing during spelling production -- during lexical access and spelling production. This highlights the need for greater integration of morphological processes into theories of skilled spelling and spelling development.

All dominant models of reading development ascribe a central role to learning about the orthography in reading acquisition, particularly as children transition to fluent word reading (e.g., Ehri, 2014; Share, 1995). And yet, we know far less about the contributions to word reading development of children's learning about the orthographic form of language than about its phonological dimensions. Through a focused review, we put forward a new conceptualization about the role of learning about the orthography in reading development. This new theoretical framework defines a broader conceptual and developmental scope of print learning, and it predicts bidirectional relations between print learning and word reading development. This theoretical framework both encompasses and expands traditional views on the role of learning about the orthography in reading development. We hope that this framework will both unify and guide theoretical conceptualizing and empirical research.

This study evaluates the extent to which syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension in English-French bilinguals, considering both the potential for a direct relation, as well as an indirect one, through word reading. Participants were 146 first-grade students enrolled in early French immersion programs in Canada. While the children received all school instruction in French, English was their stronger language and the language of the broader community. Given this dual language context, we examined relations from syntactic awareness in each of English and French to children's French reading comprehension. Path analyses showed that within French, the language of school instruction, syntactic awareness contributed to reading comprehension indirectly through word reading. The findings suggest that novice readers rely more heavily on basic reading skills, such as word reading, to comprehend texts and syntactic awareness facilitates reading comprehension through word reading. Across the two languages, English syntactic awareness contributed both directly to French reading comprehension and indirectly through French word reading. The cross-language findings suggest that English syntactic awareness is related to French to support French reading comprehension. These findings help fill in a developmental picture in early bilinguals, particularly given studies of older, more skilled monolingual readers showing evidence for solely a direct relation between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension.

Skilled reading requires fast and accurate access to previously encountered words stored in memory. Yet, little research addresses skills that support such lexical access. Based on theoretical predictions, one skill that may support lexical access is orthographic knowledge. Thus, our goal was to investigate the relation between lexical access and orthographic knowledge. We addressed this research question in a sample of 104 English-speaking fourth grade children. We assessed lexical access with an experimenter-created measure of timed word recognition; word reading efficiency with the TOWRE Sight Word Efficiency subtest; and lexical and sublexical orthographic knowledge with real and nonword orthographic choice tasks, respectively. We controlled for other reading related skills, including nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that lexical access and word reading efficiency are separate constructs. A subsequent linear regression revealed a concurrent relation between sublexical orthographic knowledge and lexical access beyond controls. Results highlight a unique place for lexical access in reading development theory and help us better understand the specific skills required to read quickly and accurately.

Syntax, or sentence structure, plays a role in reading comprehension, but how students draw on their awareness of syntax in their reading remains unclear; the mechanism is even more ambiguous in bilingual students. In this study, we evaluated the direct and indirect contributions of syntactic awareness on first-language Chinese and second-language English reading comprehension among 227 Hong Kong Chinese-English bilingual fourth graders. We designed language-shared and language-unique tasks of syntactic awareness, assessed reading comprehension in both Chinese and English, and took other reading-related cognitive and metalinguistic measures. We found a statistically significant direct effect of syntactic awareness on reading comprehension within both first-language Chinese and second-language English, along with indirect effects via word reading. Moreover, in their reading comprehension within both English and Chinese, students drew on awareness of syntactic features that are shared between English and Chinese more than those unique to either language. Students were also generally more accurate with language-shared than language-unique items, further pointing to the possibility of transfer. Our findings clarify dual roles for syntactic awareness in reading comprehension in Chinese and English, as well as transfer of awareness of syntactic structures in the two typologically distinct languages. We discuss these results in relation to theories of both reading comprehension and transfer.

Educators and researchers agree that oral language is fundamental to students' reading acquisition. It is not clear how best to conceptualise oral language within models of reading -- as one's overall understanding of spoken language, or as individual skills, each with unique contributions to children's reading comprehension. In our longitudinal study of children in Grades 2 and 3, we examined the unique contributions of three oral language skills -- vocabulary, syntactic awareness, and morphological awareness -- to gains in reading comprehension assessed later that academic year (N = 116) and in the spring of the following academic year (N = 87). In our most conservative analyses, we controlled for children's listening comprehension in addition to prior reading achievement. Each language skill predicted variance in later reading comprehension beyond that accounted for by initial word reading and reading comprehension. In analyses with listening comprehension also controlled, each of syntactic awareness and morphological awareness retained their predictive power. Morphological awareness emerged as the most robust predictor and was associated with greater increases in reading comprehension for students in third versus second grade. Results support theoretical models that identify and differentiate contributions from individual oral language skills to reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that increasing each of these oral language skills within the elementary classroom may lead to advances in children's reading comprehension.

The reading wars were fought over the importance of sentence- versus word-level information to students' reading. As the field considers new debates on the science of reading, we argue here that sustained empirical inquiry into the role of sentence-level information in students' reading skill is needed. These investigations could be particularly useful in identifying ways to support reading comprehension. In this article, we review theories pointing to this possibility, as well as key pieces of available empirical evidence. We also identify crucial gaps in knowledge, as the field must assess the mechanisms by which this relation functions, which will inform instruction, and potential changes in this relation across development and across aspects of this skill. Advancement in each of these areas will lead to a comprehensive understanding of the relation between sentence-level skills and reading comprehension, which can inform effective instruction in the classroom.

Reading difficulties have been associated with problems in psychological functioning, including challenges in both anxiety and self-efficacy. This study was designed to determine whether such psychological functioning problems are specific to the academic sphere or more global. First-year undergraduate students with and without a history of reading difficulties (n = 40 and 46, respectively) completed standardized questionnaires on general and academic anxiety, and social and academic self-efficacy. Students with a history of reading difficulties reported higher academic anxiety, but comparable general anxiety, relative to those with no such history. Students with a history of reading difficulties also reported lower academic self-efficacy, but comparable social self-efficacy, relative to those with no such history. These findings suggest that students with a history of reading difficulties, as compared to those without such history, experience academic-specific mental health symptoms involving heightened anxiety and low self-efficacy as they enter university. These results point to the need for focused and targeted assessments to be able to capture difficulties they experience with anxiety and self-efficacy and interventions to help them cope with these difficulties. More broadly, the findings have implications for how universities assess academic vulnerabilities and provide access to specific course accommodations.

Purpose: The value of shared reading as an opportunity for learning word meanings, or semantics, is well established; it is less clear whether children learn about the orthography, or word spellings, in this context. We tested whether children can learn the spellings and meanings of new words at the same time during a tightly controlled shared reading session. We also examined whether individual differences in either or both of orthographic and semantic learning during shared reading in English were related to word reading in English and French concurrently and 6 months longitudinally in emergent English-French bilinguals. Method: Sixty-two Grade 1 children (35 girls; M[subscript age] = 75.89 months) listened to 12 short stories, each containing four instances of a novel word, while the examiner pointed to the text. Choice measures of the spellings and meanings of the novel words were completed immediately after reading each set of three stories and again 1 week later. Standardized measures of word reading as well as controls for nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary, and phonological awareness were also administered. Results: Children scored above chance on both immediate and delayed measures of orthographic and semantic learning. Orthographic learning was related to both English and French word reading at the same time point and 6 months later. In contrast, the relations between semantic learning and word reading were nonsignificant for both languages after including controls. Conclusion: Shared reading is a valuable context for learning both word meanings and spellings, and the learning of orthographic representations in particular is related to word reading abilities.

The sentences in texts are far more complex and diverse than those that children commonly encounter in oral language. This raises interesting questions as to whether the understanding of some sentence types might be more important than others in children's reading comprehension. Accordingly, we examined the relation between children's reading comprehension and their understanding of two types of sentences: one we label as basic sentences, which are common in both oral and written language, and the other we label as difficult sentences, which are more restricted to written language. One hundred and four English-speaking students (mean age = 10.8 years) completed an experimental measure of oral sentence comprehension capturing these two sentence types, a standardized measure of reading comprehension, as well as control measures for word reading, phonological awareness, vocabulary and working memory. After accounting for the variance explained by the control measures, hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that comprehension of basic sentences, but not of difficult sentences, was significantly related to children's reading comprehension. These results demonstrate that, at least in the 5th grade, English-speaking children use their understanding of those sentences for which they have gained a strong foundation through oral language (i.e. basic sentences) to springboard into reading for understanding.

A defining feature of language lies in its capacity to represent meaning across oral and written forms. Morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a language, are the fundamental building blocks that encode meaning, and morphological skills enable their effective use in oral and written language. Increasing evidence indicates that morphological skills are linked to literacy outcomes, including word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. Despite this evidence, the precise ways in which morphology influences the development of children's literacy skills remain largely underspecified in theoretical models of reading and spelling development. In this paper, we draw on the extensive empirical evidence base in English to explicitly detail how morphology might be integrated into models of reading and spelling development. In doing so, we build on the perspective that morphology is multidimensional in its support of literacy development. The culmination of our efforts is the "Morphological Pathways Framework" -- an adapted framework that illuminates precise mechanisms by which morphology impacts word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. Through this framework, we bring greater clarity and specificity on how the use of morphemes in oral and written language supports the development of children's literacy skills. We also highlight gaps in the literature, revealing important areas to focus future research to improve theoretical understanding. Furthermore, this paper provides valuable theoretical insight that will guide future empirical inquiries in identifying more precise morphological targets for intervention, which may have widespread implications for informing literacy practices in the classroom and educational policies more broadly.

Background: Efficient word identification is directly tied to strong mental representations of words, which include spellings, meanings and pronunciations. Orthographic learning is the process by which spellings for individual words are acquired. Methods: In the present study, we combined the classic self-teaching paradigm with eye tracking to detail the process by which complex pseudowords are learned. With this methodology, we explored the visual processing and learning of complex pseudowords, as well as the transfer of that learning. We explore visual processing across exposures during the initial reading task and then measure learning and transfer in orthographic choice and spelling tasks. Results: Online eye movement monitoring during the repeated reading of complex pseudowords revealed that visual processing varied across exposures with key differences based on word type Further, data from both dictation and eye movements recorded during the orthographic choice task suggested stronger learning of morphologically than orthographically complex pseudowords after four encounters. Finally, results suggested that learning transfer occurred, with similar levels of accurate recognition of new pseudowords that were morphologically or orthographically related to pseudowords learned during the reading phase than of new pseudowords never read. Conclusions: The present study provides new insights into theory and methodological discussions of orthographic learning.

Prosodic sensitivity--the rhythmic patterning of speech--is theorized to influence reading and spelling via vocabulary knowledge, phonological, and morphological awareness. Previously this conceptual model has been evidenced with children who can already read, however as orthographic knowledge can be used to complete phonological awareness tasks it cannot be said definitively that it is prosodic sensitivity influencing reading and spelling and not the reverse. Therefore, the present study sought to test the model in a longitudinal study conducted at the outset of reading development. A sample of 4- to 5-year-old English-speaking children (N = 101) were assessed for their prosodic sensitivity, vocabulary knowledge, phonological and morphological awareness, and 1 year later (N = 93) for their word reading and spelling. A path analysis revealed that the conceptual model provides an adequate fit to our sample data: prosodic sensitivity in pre-reading children predicts reading and spelling indirectly through other emergent literacy skills. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to models of literacy development and literacy instruction.

Models of reading development point to a role for knowledge about the orthography quite late in children's reading development; here we explore the contributions of early orthographic knowledge -- of the features of print -- to word reading development between kindergarten and Grade 1. We did so in a longitudinal study of 93 emergent bilingual children whose formal instruction was in French, a different language than they spoke at home, followed from senior kindergarten to Grade 1. Linear regression analyses showed that early print knowledge in both English and French significantly predicted French word reading in Grade 1; no such relations emerged to English word reading. Analyses included control measures of parental education and English vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and autoregressive controls of earlier word reading. These results suggest that print knowledge can be used to predict progress in second language word reading in emergent bilingual children.

Background: Reading comprehension is a complex skill, drawing on a range of resources. One is morphological awareness, or the awareness of the smallest meaningful units in language. Testing the predictions of the Simple View of Reading, we evaluate how morphological awareness relates to reading comprehension in a relatively transparent orthography. Method: There were 70 Portuguese-speaking children in Grade 2 in our study. The children completed measures of morphological awareness and reading comprehension, along with two potential mediators: word reading and listening comprehension. Children also completed control measures of phonological awareness and nonverbal ability. Results: Path analysis showed that there were indirect effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension through each of word reading and listening comprehension. There was no significant direct effect of morphological awareness on reading comprehension beyond these mediators and controls. Conclusions: Our results provide a novel empirical confirmation of the predictions of current models of reading comprehension. We do so for readers of a relatively transparent orthography.

Understanding text in a second language can be particularly challenging. The authors explored the contribution of morphological awareness in children's first and second languages to development in second-language reading comprehension. Critically, the authors examined the role of a skill that might be at the heart of these cross-linguistic connections: awareness of cross-language suffix correspondences. This is the awareness, for instance, that the French suffix -eux and the English suffix -ous have the same meaning in the two languages, despite the fact that they look and sound different. The authors tested the contributions of each of these morphological skills to French reading comprehension in a study of students with diverse first languages enrolled in a Canadian early French immersion program with instruction entirely in French. Seventy-five students were tested in grade 2 and again in grade 3. In grade 2, students completed measures of English and French morphological awareness and awareness of cross-language suffix correspondences, along with control measures of nonverbal ability, French vocabulary, and French phonological awareness. In grades 2 and 3, students completed measures of French reading comprehension. The authors found that both English and French morphological awareness were related to grade 3 reading comprehension. Neither relation was significant after the autoregressor. In contrast, awareness of cross-language suffix correspondences predicted individual differences in French reading comprehension, including after autoregressive controls. These findings show the importance of awareness of commonalities between suffixes across languages in enabling the development of French reading comprehension.

Objective: Our objective was to examine the role of semantics in the relation between syntactic awareness and contextual facilitation in word reading. Methods: Grade 3 children (N = 77) completed a syntactic awareness task in which we manipulated the possible reliance on semantic information. They also completed a task of word reading in isolation and in context from which we calculated a score of contextual facilitation. Results: We found an association between children's performance in the syntactic awareness task and contextual facilitation in word reading. Importantly, however, we found an association only when children could rely on semantic information in the syntactic awareness task and not when the semantic information was limited. Conclusions: These findings suggest that syntactic awareness acts together with semantics to foster the use of context in word reading, which has important implications for theories of reading development.

Our understanding of spelling development has largely been gleaned from analysis of children's accuracy at spelling words under varying conditions and the nature of their errors. Here, we consider whether handwriting durations can inform us about the time course with which children use morphological information to produce accurate spellings of root morphemes. Six- to 7-year-old (n = 23) and 8- to 11-year-old (n = 25) children produced 28 target spellings in a spelling-to-dictation task. Target words were matched quadruplets of base, control, inflected, and derived words beginning with the same letters (e.g., "rock", "rocket", "rocking", "rocky"). Both groups of children showed evidence of morphological processing as they prepared their spelling; writing onset latencies were shorter for two-morpheme words than control words. The findings are consistent with statistical learning theories of spelling development and theories of lexical quality that include a role of morphology.

Skilled reading comprehension is an important goal of educational instruction and models of reading development. In this study, the authors investigated how core skills surrounding morphemes, that is, the minimal units of meaning in language, support the development of reading comprehension. The authors specifically contrast the roles of morphological awareness and morphological analysis; the first refers to the awareness of and ability to manipulate morphemes in language, and the second refers to the use of morphemes in inferring the meaning of unfamiliar morphologically complex (multimorphemic) words. The authors evaluated these morphological skills in 197 English-speaking students who were followed from grade 3 to grade 4; the analyses used stringent autoregressor controls to home in on predictors of gains over time. In addition to morphological awareness and morphological analysis, the authors assessed students' reading comprehension and controls for word reading, vocabulary, phonological awareness, nonverbal ability, and age. Multivariate autoregressive path analysis revealed that morphological analysis, but not morphological awareness, predicted gains in reading comprehension. Morphological awareness, for its part, predicted gains in morphological analysis. Taken together, the findings allude to a developmental trajectory whereby students' use of morphemes to infer the meanings of unfamiliar complex words supports the development of reading comprehension over time. The development of this skill, in turn, appears to be supported by a more general awareness of morphemes in language. These findings contribute to theory and reading instruction by clarifying the ways in which morphological skills support the development of students' reading comprehension.

It is well established that children's reading comprehension is driven, at least in part, by their awareness of morphemes, or the smallest units of meaning in language. The question of how it does so is largely open; this mechanistic knowledge would specify theories of reading comprehension and guide effective classroom instruction. We report here on a longitudinal study designed to test two candidate mechanisms by which morphological awareness might support the development of reading comprehension: use of morphemes to read words and to understand words, known as morphological decoding and analysis, respectively. We tracked the development of 221 children on key measures from Grades 3 to 5. These three-wave longitudinal data enabled us to test morphological decoding and analysis as mediators connecting morphological awareness to gains in reading comprehension over time. Structural equation modeling showed that morphological awareness contributed to gains in both morphological decoding and analysis. Critically, only morphological analysis mediated the contribution of morphological awareness to gains in reading comprehension between Grades 3 and 5. These findings elaborate predictions of the morphological pathways framework. Specifically, longitudinal modeling shows how morphological awareness supports children's developing reading comprehension: by enabling the use of morphemes to read and understand words, with effects on the understanding of words supporting children's growing skill in understanding texts. Evidence supporting these two specific mechanisms inspires the design of targeted teaching on morphemes toward the development of strong reading comprehension. Educational Impact and Implications Statement: Prior research has established that children's awareness of roots and suffixes in words helps them to understand texts. Here we work out how it does so in a study in which we follow children over time to look at long-term effects. We uncover that children's awareness of roots and suffixes supports them in understanding challenging words, which in turns enables stronger progress in understanding texts. These findings identify two targets for instruction that are likely to support children's reading comprehension: awareness of roots and suffixes and using them to understand words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study examined how children's ability to understand what they read on screens is impacted by two specific digital features: hovering hyperlinks and scrolling. Methods: The participants were 75 English‐speaking children (M = 9.90 years, SD = 0.90 years) in Grades 3 to 5 who participated in an online research study. Using a within‐participants design, children read standardised passages from the Gates–MacGinitie Reading Tests (MacGinitie et al., 2000) and answered multiple‐choice comprehension questions. In one condition, passages were presented without digital features referred to as the clicking condition; in another, children had to scroll to navigate through the passages, in a third, there were hyperlinks that provided a word definition when a participant hovered their cursor over a blue and underlined word, and a final condition included both scrolling and hyperlinks. Results: As expected, there was a significant main effect of grade on children's ability to understand what they read, with better performance for children in Grade 5 than 3. Critically, there was a significant main effect of condition on children's performance on the reading comprehension questions, with higher scores for the condition with no digital features compared with the conditions with hovering hyperlinks and both scrolling and hovering hyperlinks. Performance was similar between the clicking and scrolling conditions. There was no significant interaction between grade and condition, showing consistency in effects across the upper elementary school years. Conclusions: These findings could inform the optimal design of digital texts by identifying digital features that do and do not interfere with reading comprehension, with hyperlinks providing word level information interfering and scrolling having no negative impacts. Highlights: What is already known about this topic Several meta‐analyses now show that reading comprehension on paper tends to be higher, particularly for informative texts, than when reading on a screen (e.g., Clinton, 2019; Delgado et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2018; Mangen et al., 2013; Singer & Alexander, 2017). What this paper adds We examine the effect of two specific features – scrolling and hovering hyperlinks providing definitions – on children's level of reading comprehension on screens.In a within‐participant experimental design using standardised measures, we find that hyperlinks providing word level information interfere with comprehension, with no negative impacts of scrolling. Implications for theory, policy or practice The results from this study offer new practical insights as to how digital features impact reading comprehension in a generation that is increasingly learning to read in a digital environment.On a methodological level, this study validates a simple way to modify standardised measures of reading comprehension to explore the impacts of digital features, an innovation readily adaptable to the exploration of many other digital features and age groups.On a theory level, these findings encourage the development of models of reading that consider features of digital texts along with the shallowing hypothesis, encouraging an integration of previously disparate theories of reading comprehension in order to fully understand children's reading of digital texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Shared reading is an important opportunity for parents and children to connect and learn, which can support later independent reading skills. Much of the research to date has examined shared reading as parents read physical print books with their children. This research has demonstrated that parents tend to engage in more activities that emphasise the meaning of the stories over the code (i.e., print). Here, we examine the focus of shared reading when parents are reading with their children on paper versus on a digital device and whether this differs across the preschool years. Methods: A total of 253 parents of children aged 0–5 years completed an online self‐report questionnaire. Parents reported on the frequency of engaging in meaning‐ versus code‐related activities during shared book reading on paper and on screen with their youngest child. We conducted a linear regression analysis contrasting code‐ versus meaning‐related activities on paper versus screen modality with age as a continuous variable. Results: Key to our objectives, parents reported engaging in meaning‐related activities more frequently during shared reading on paper versus on screens and in code‐related activities more frequently during shared reading on screens than on paper. These effects did not differ across age, although overall, parents reported engaging slightly more frequently in shared reading activities in general when their child was older. Conclusions: The findings show that parents are engaging with their children differently as they read together on paper versus screens. Consistent with prior research, we found that activities emphasising the meaning of stories dominate shared paper book reading experiences in the preschool years. Critically shared reading on screens tips this balance, with parents reporting more code‐related activities. These patterns identify the learning opportunities enabled by the affordances of shared reading on screens. Highlights: What is already known about this topicResearch to date on shared reading has shown that parents tend to focus on the meaning of the story (meaning‐related activities) over the features of the print (code‐related activities).This research has largely described how parents read on paper.Parents and children are increasingly reading on screens. What this paper addsWe found that parents report engaging in more meaning‐related activities when reading with their children on paper than on screens.Parents engage in more code‐related activities when reading with their children on screens than on paper.While we found that the frequency of shared reading activities in general increased slightly with the age of the children, the frequency of parental engagement in both types of shared reading activities is similar across the preschool years. Implications for theory, policy or practiceThe findings show that parents report engaging with their children differently as they read together on paper versus screens.Consistent with prior research, we found that when reading on paper, parents emphasise the meaning of stories during shared book reading experiences in the preschool years.In contrast, parents report more code‐related activities when doing shared reading on a screen than on paper. These findings suggest that the affordances offered by reading on screens shift the learning opportunities offered by shared reading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the role of phonological awareness and morphological awareness in concurrent and subsequent oral vocabulary among Chinese-English bilingual children who learned Chinese as their heritage language and English as their societal language. Ninety-one Chinese-English bilingual children in kindergarten and Grade 1 who were recruited from Chinese heritage language classes in Canada, participated in the study. They were tested twice, 1 year apart, on a battery of cognitive and literacy measures in Chinese and English. The results indicated that for oral vocabulary, morphological awareness was the only concurrent predictor in both languages. English morphological awareness made a direct contribution to English vocabulary measured a year later. By contrast, the contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary in Chinese at Time 2 was indirect and mediated by vocabulary at Time 1. Phonological awareness did not make a significant contribution to vocabulary at Times 1 or 2 in either language. Our results highlight the importance of morphological awareness in oral vocabulary for children learning Chinese and English.

The way children organize words in their memory has intrigued many researchers in the past 20 years. Given the large number of morphologically complex words in many languages, the influence of morphemes on this organization is being increasingly examined. The aim of this study was to understand how morphemic information influences English-speaking children's word recognition. Children in grades 3 and 5 were asked to complete a lexical decision priming task. Prime-target pairs varied in semantic similarity, with low (e.g., "belly-bell"), moderate (e.g., "lately-late"), and high similarity relations (e.g., "boldly-bold"). There were also word pairs similar in form only (e.g., "spinach-spin") and in semantics only (e.g., "garbage-trash"). Primes were auditory and targets were presented visually. Analyses of children's lexical decision times revealed graded priming effects as a function of the convergence of form and meaning. These results indicate that developing readers do not necessarily need to lexicalize morphological units to facilitate word recognition. Their ability to process the morphological structure of words depends on their ability to develop connections between form and meaning.

This study investigates the within- and cross-language relations between orthographic processing and spelling for children learning to read in languages that share the same Roman script: namely, English and French. We examined these relations in a group of 152 children attending grade 1 in a French immersion program. Measures of English and French lexical orthographic processing (e.g., "dream-dreem"; "jaune-jeaune") as well as English and French spelling were administered. Control measures included nonverbal ability, English phonological awareness, as well as rapid automatised naming, vocabulary, and word reading in English and French. We found a within-language relation between orthographic processing and spelling in each of English and French. Cross-language transfer from French orthographic processing to English spelling was also observed; there were no relations in the other direction. Our results suggest that orthographic processing is important for spelling development among bilingual children learning English and French.

We tested the theoretically driven hypotheses that children's orthographic and semantic learning are associated with their word reading and reading comprehension skills, even when orthographic and semantic knowledge are taken into account. A sample of 139 English-speaking Grade 3 children completed a learning task in which they read stories about new inventions. Then they were tested on their learning of the spelling and meaning of the inventions (i.e., orthographic and semantic learning, respectively). Word reading and reading comprehension were assessed with standardised tasks, and orthographic and semantic knowledge were assessed with choice tasks targeting the spelling and meaning of existing words. The results of our structural equation modeling indicated that orthographic learning predicted word reading directly and reading comprehension indirectly via word reading. We also found that semantic learning predicted reading comprehension directly. These findings support integration of the self-teaching hypothesis and the lexical quality hypothesis.

The authors tested theoretically driven predictions as to the ways in which syntactic awareness, or awareness of word order within sentences, might contribute to reading comprehension, the end goal of reading development and instruction. They conducted a longitudinal study of 100 English-speaking children followed from Grade 3 to 4. Children completed measures of syntactic awareness, word reading, reading comprehension, and reading-related control variables. Path analyses at each of Grades 3 and 4 show a unique concurrent relation of syntactic awareness with reading comprehension, but not to word reading skills. Longitudinal analyses reveal that syntactic awareness at Grade 3 predicts gains in reading comprehension between Grades 3 and 4. Together, findings suggest a robust role for syntactic awareness in the development of reading comprehension.

Poor comprehenders have reading comprehension difficulties but normal word recognition ability. Here, we report the first study, which investigated (i) the dissociation and (ii) the prevalence of L1-L2 reading comprehension difficulties, and (iii) the levels of key metalinguistic skills in poor comprehenders among Chinese-English bilingual children. From a sample of 124 Chinese-English second graders, we identified 18 poor comprehenders (six Chinese, six English, and six in both Chinese and English). We matched these with six average comprehenders of comparable age and word reading abilities. Multivariate analysis of covariance and univariate "F" tests revealed that poor Chinese comprehenders and poor English comprehenders had significantly lower levels of Chinese lexical tone awareness than average readers even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. No significant differences emerged on scores for segmental phonological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, either in Chinese and English or on English lexical stress sensitivity. These findings were discussed in relation to the universal view of reading, cross language prosodic transfer and the simple view of reading.

Poor comprehenders have age-appropriate word reading skills but struggle with understanding what they read. The purpose of this study was to investigate how poor comprehenders perform on multiple aspects of morphological awareness, a skill implicated in reading comprehension. In keeping with current research and theory, we look at three aspects of morphological awareness: morphological structure awareness, morphological analysis and morphological decoding. Using a regression-based approach, we identified 64 poor and average comprehenders out of a large sample of children in grade 3. Our results show that poor comprehenders and average comprehenders performed remarkably similar on morphological structure awareness, analysis, and decoding. Poor comprehenders performed more poorly than average comprehenders only on word analogy, a specific measure of morphological awareness. These results identify an area with which poor comprehenders are likely to struggle, while simultaneously providing evidence for areas of relative strength within this population.

We examined whether identification of and personalized outreach to a group of students with a history of reading difficulties would impact their use of support services and academic outcomes. Using a brief self-report questionnaire, we identified students with a history of reading difficulties (n = 175) and a comparison group of university students without a history of reading difficulties (n = 100). One half of the students with a history of reading difficulties were individually invited to visit the Academic Advising Centre; the other students received standard university communications about and access to university support services. Students with a history of reading difficulties who received personalized outreach in the first semester of their studies were more likely to use the Academic Advising Centre both in the weeks directly following outreach and in their second year of study. Outreach also increased use of the Study Skills Centre, but not the Writing Centre. Further, there was evidence of a positive effect of personalized outreach on the number of credits earned. Finally, the effect of first-semester personalized outreach on use of Academic Advising Centre in the second year was especially prominent for students who experienced serious academic difficulties in their first year. Overall, our results show promising outcomes for a simple, proactive, cost-effective approach to identify and provide personalized outreach to academically at-risk students.

The ultimate goal of children's reading development is the full and fluid understanding of texts. Morphological structure awareness, or children's awareness of the minimal units of meaning in language, has been identified as a key skill influencing reading comprehension. Here, we evaluate the roles of morphological structure awareness and two related skills, morphological analysis and morphological decoding, in Grade 3 and Grade 5 children's reading comprehension. Respectively, morphological decoding and analysis refer to the use of morphemes in reading and in understanding words. Critically, our analyses show that, together, morphological structure awareness, morphological decoding and morphological analysis account for 8% of the variance in reading comprehension, after controlling for children's age, phonological awareness, nonverbal reasoning and word reading skill. Further, of these dimensions, each of morphological decoding and morphological analysis makes a unique contribution to reading comprehension. We discuss these findings in terms of current theories of reading development and educational curricula.

We examined the self-reported use of reading, study, and learning strategies in university students with a history of reading difficulties (HRD; n = 77) and with no history of reading difficulties (NRD; n = 295). We examined both between-groups differences in strategy use and strategy use as a predictive measure of academic success. Participants completed online questionnaires regarding reading history and strategy use. GPA and frequency of use of academic support services were also obtained for all students. University students with HRD reported a different profile of strategy use than their NRD peers, and self-reported strategy use was differentially predictive of GPA for students with HRD and NRD. For students with HRD, the use of metacognitive reading strategies and the use of study aids predicted academic success. Implications for university student services providers are discussed.

University students who report a history of reading difficulties have been demonstrated to have poorer word reading and reading comprehension skills than their peers; yet, without a diagnosed learning disability, these students do not have access to the same support services, potentially placing them at academic risk. This study provides a comprehensive investigation of first-year academic achievement for students with a history of reading difficulties (n = 244) compared to students with no such history (n = 603). We also examine reported use of metacognitive reading and study strategies and their relations with GPA. Results indicate that students with a history of reading difficulties earn lower GPA and successfully complete fewer credits compared to students with no history of reading difficulty. These patterns varied somewhat by faculty of study. Students with a history of reading difficulties also reported lower scores across multiple metacognitive reading and study strategy scales, yet these scores were not associated with their academic performance. Together, these results demonstrate the importance of identifying students with a history of reading difficulties and that commonly used study strategy inventories have limited value in predicting their academic success.

This longitudinal study investigated the predictors of word reading in English and French for 69 children in early total French immersion from first through third grade. The influence of phonological awareness, orthographic processing, and vocabulary in English and French on the achievement and growth of word reading in the 2 languages were evaluated with growth curve analyses. Findings revealed that predictors in Grade 1 were similar for English and French word reading in Grade 3. Specifically, English phonological awareness and orthographic processing predicted English word reading achievement; English orthographic processing also predicted growth in English word reading. French phonological awareness and orthographic processing in Grade 1 predicted French word reading achievement in Grade 3. Furthermore, at-risk readers identified in Grade 1 (n = 6) generally fell behind their typically developing peers across all measures, although evidence of improvement emerged over time.