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Academic Language as a Predictor of Reading Comprehension in Monolingual Spanish-Speaking Readers: Evidence From Chilean Early Adolescents
Abstract
Although literacy achievement has improved in Chile, adolescents’ underperformance in reading comprehension is still a serious concern. In English, core academic-language skills (CALS) have been found to significantly predict reading comprehension, even controlling for academic vocabulary knowledge. CALS are high-utility language skills that support reading comprehension across school content areas. Guided by an operational definition of Spanish CALS (S-CALS), three goals drove this study: to develop two psychometrically reliable tests, the S-CALS Instrument and the Spanish Academic Vocabulary (S-AVoc) Test; to explore the dimensionality of core academic-language proficiencies, as measured by these two tests; and to examine the contribution of core academic-language proficiencies to reading comprehension. A cross-sectional sample of 810 Chilean students (grades 4–8) participated in four assessments that measured standardized reading comprehension, word-reading fluency, Spanish academic vocabulary, and S-CALS. Using classical test theory and item response theory analyses, results yielded robust reliability evidence for both instruments. Consistent with prior research, S-CALS and academic vocabulary scores displayed upward trends in higher grades yet considerable within-grade variability. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that S-CALS and S-AVoc were best conceptualized as part of a higher order construct, the Spanish core academic-language and vocabulary skills (S-CALVS). The aggregated S-CALVS scores predicted reading comprehension, beyond the contribution of grade, school factors, and word-reading fluency. This study advances our scientific understanding of CALS as relevant for adolescent literacy beyond the English language. The high-utility school-relevant language and vocabulary skills offer promising tools to inform and evaluate innovative reading comprehension interventions for Spanish-speaking adolescents.
... Recientemente, para el español se ha operacionalizado dicho constructo (Spanish Core Academic Language Skills S-CALS) y se ha diseñado el instrumento de evaluación de lenguaje académico (ELA o S-CALS-I). Este utilizó como modelo el instrumento CALS-I en inglés; no obstante, se desarrolló, refinó y validó independientemente con estudiantes chilenos (Meneses, Uccelli et al., 2018). ...
... Para el español, se definieron ocho habilidades de lenguaje académico receptivo, además del dominio del vocabulario académico transdisciplinar, y se crearon tareas para evaluarlas (Meneses, Uccelli et al., 2018). En la tabla 3.1 se presentan las habilidades medidas y las tareas del instrumento ELA validado psicométricamente con una muestra de 810 estudiantes chilenos entre 4º y 8º básico (α=.88) (Meneses, Uccelli et al., 2018). ...
... Para el español, se definieron ocho habilidades de lenguaje académico receptivo, además del dominio del vocabulario académico transdisciplinar, y se crearon tareas para evaluarlas (Meneses, Uccelli et al., 2018). En la tabla 3.1 se presentan las habilidades medidas y las tareas del instrumento ELA validado psicométricamente con una muestra de 810 estudiantes chilenos entre 4º y 8º básico (α=.88) (Meneses, Uccelli et al., 2018). En el primer set de ítems, el estudiante lee una nominalización ("refutación"), la que debe descomponer para obtener la forma adecuada para una oración dada ("El científico logró refutar la hipótesis"). ...
Actualmente, el aprendizaje de la escritura académica se considera un requisito fundamental para desenvolverse adecuadamente en contextos especializados de comunicación. Sin embargo, muchos estudiantes llegan a la universidad sin las habilidades de lenguaje necesarias para participar exitosamente en actividades de aprendizaje y evaluación. Las nuevas políticas educativas han promovido un acceso masivo a la educación superior, lo que ha aumentado la diversidad lingüística en el aula y con ello los desafíos de enseñanza del lenguaje académico. Si bien se cuenta con numerosos estudios sobre escritura académica en niveles universitarios, el desarrollo del lenguaje académico en edades escolares ha sido escasamente investigado. En este capítulo, se presenta el constructo de lenguaje académico transdisciplinar, así como evidencias empíricas sobre los desempeños de escolares chilenos. Además, se releva la contribución de estos desempeños en la comprensión lectora y en el aprendizaje de las disciplinas. El lenguaje académico es propuesto como catalizador de la equidad en contextos escolares.
https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/multilingual/chapter3.pdf
... Inspired by these hypotheses, we focus on the relations between Spanish and English ALs proficiencies and English reading comprehension in a sample of fourth and fifth graders attending DLI schools. We use a unique pair of Spanish and English instruments that capture ALs proficiencies as operationalized in the Core Academic Language Skills (CALS) construct (Meneses et al., 2018;. This pair of theoretically-grounded and psychometrically-valid assessments capture students' knowledge of the language used to achieve precision, concision, and stepwise text organization in English and Spanish academic written communication across disciplines, which in turn facilitates their comprehension and production of texts in middle-grade settings. ...
... In fact, studies consistently find that bi/multilingual and monolingual students educated in English-only settings with higher levels of English ALs proficiency demonstrate an advantage in English text comprehension (Barr, Uccelli, & Phillips Galloway, 2019;. Similarly, Spanish ALs proficiency significantly contributes to Spanish reading comprehension for students educated in Spanish (Meneses et al., 2018). ...
... Thus, in designing two independent CALS instruments (CALS-I)-one in Spanish and one English-to assess cross-disciplinary ALs knowledge, we found that parallel skillsets were relevant across languages. The English CALS-I was designed for English-speaking students in Grades 4 to 8. The Spanish CALS-I (or Evaluación de lenguaje académico, ELA) was subsequently modeled after the English CALS-I, but developed for Spanish-speaking students (Meneses et al., 2018). To select CALS to be assessed in each language, we engaged in independent language-specific literature syntheses, examination of English and Spanish academic corpora, and analysis of textbooks designed for U.S. English-speaking and for Chilean Spanishspeaking middle graders (for more details, see Meneses et al., 2018;. ...
In this study, we examine the unique and shared contributions of Spanish and English core academic language skills (CALS) to English reading comprehension in a population of Spanish-English dual language learners in Grades 4 and 5 (n = 165). We focus on cross-disciplinary CALS, operationalized as sets of high-utility lexical, syntactic and discourse resources prevalent in school texts. This study finds that Spanish and English CALS are positively and significantly related, and, further, that both sets of skills exert a unique positive influence on English reading comprehension. Aligned with an interpretation of linguistic interdependence between Spanish and English academic language skills, results document their cross-linguistic contribution to reading comprehension for students enrolled in educational programs that foster literacy and content learning regularly in two languages.
... In contrast, we focused on an understanding of conceptual anaphora or hypernyms ("this process", "this phenomenon") which are characteristic of expository texts . The knowledge of hypernyms develops between grade four and eight (Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli et al., 2015), but it has not been assessed before. Second, previous research demonstrates that sixth-grade students have some awareness of expository text structures (Richgels, McGee, Lomax, & Sheard, 1987) and this awareness improves between the ages of 8 to 12 years (Englert & Hiebert, 1984). ...
... Our second objective was to determine whether rhetorical competence makes a unique contribution to third through to sixth graders' comprehension of expository text, above and beyond variables known to be strongly related to this skill (namely word decoding, integration/ inference skills, prior knowledge, and working memory). Knowledge about each of the rhetorical devices that we studied is related to reading comprehension (Ehrlich et al., 1999;Engelen, Bouwmeester, de Bruin, & Zwaan, 2014;García, Bustos, & Sánchez, 2015;Megherbi & Ehrlich, 2005;Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli et al., 2015;Yuill & Oakhill, 1988. Teaching students about these devices improves the amount and quality of information remembered from a text (Hebert, Bohaty, Nelson, & Brown, 2016;Meyer & Poon, 2001;Wijekumar, Meyer, & Lei, 2013Williams et al., 2007;Williams, Stafford, Lauer, Hall, & Pollini, 2009). ...
... With respect to anaphors, our data add to the extant literature by showing that third graders not only have some knowledge of concrete anaphoric elements such as repeated nouns, general nouns, pronouns or adverbs (e.g., Borzone, 2005;Ehrlich et al., 1999;Oakhill & Yuill, 1986), but also knowledge about conceptual anaphora or hypernyms ("this process", "this phenomenon"). Uccelli et al. (2015) and Meneses et al. (2017) have demonstrated this knowledge in fourth grade. In contrast to our expectations, the youngest age group was also aware and able to Table 4 Summary of fixed-order hierarchical regression analyses on expository text comprehension to assess the impact of each measure of rhetorical competence **p < .01, ...
Readers' rhetorical competence is related to reading comprehension and moderates the impact of rhetorical devices in expository texts since upper elementary school years. In this cross-sectional study, we examine the differences in four measures of rhetorical competence (knowledge of anaphors, organizational signals, refutations, and a total score) in grades three through to six, we determine its contribution to expository text comprehension after controlling the effect of a wide set of linguistic and cognitive variables, and we study whether this contribution is moderated by grade or any of our control variables. First, although we found evidence for some level of rhetorical competence at early ages, data suggest that rhetorical competence development takes many years. Second, we found that knowledge of some rhetorical devices is acquired before knowledge of others. Finally, rhetorical competence was a unique predictor of expository text comprehension, and its influence was evident regardless of grade and all of the control variables.
... It is generally accepted in educational research and instructional practice that academic achievement is related to students' language skills (e.g., Francis & Stephens, 2018;Golinkoff et al., 2018;Guo et al., 2015;Kempert et al., 2019). In particular, mastery of the language register of schooling, the so-called academic language register, has been identified as an important precondition of school success (Bailey, 2007;Meneses et al., 2018;Schuth et al., 2017;Snow, 2010). Yet, gaining academic language proficiency is a challenging task and many students need targeted support to develop the language skills needed for school success (e.g., Eckhardt, 2008;Francis & Stephens, 2018). ...
... All these features are typical of the academic register (e.g., Bailey, 2007;Schleppegrell, 2001) and, specifically, of the language of science (e.g., Ardasheva et al., 2019;Francis & Stephens, 2018;Frändberg et al., 2013;Seah et al., 2014;Snow, 2010). The mastery of academic language substantially contributes to student achievement (Ardasheva et al., 2017;Meneses et al., 2018;Schuth et al., 2017), thus highlighting the interrelatedness of language and conceptual understanding (Francis & Stephens, 2018;Haug & Ødegaard, 2014;Snow, 2010). ...
Inquiry-based science instruction has been proposed as an optimal learning environment for language-integrated teaching. While its potential for developing both content knowledge and language skills has been shown for students with limited language proficiency, research focusing on mainstream classrooms has mainly considered domain-specific learning. Despite the effectiveness of inquiry-based science instruction for student outcomes, research on the role of specific aspects of instructional quality is limited. Addressing this research gap, the present study investigates the relationship between teachers’ instructional support during inquiry-based science classes and elementary school students’ learning gains in science content knowledge and academic language proficiency. Multilevel regression analyses are based on data from 459 German elementary school students from Grades 3 and 4 who participated in a longitudinal intervention study that took place over one school year. Our findings indicate a strong impact of students’ prior knowledge on learning outcomes and compositional effects for the language-related measures. Relations between teachers’ instructional support, as measured by the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta et al., 2008), and students’ learning outcomes did not emerge. In interpreting the results, the overall mediocre quality of teachers’ instructional support needs to be considered.
... En el contexto latinoamericano, y en particular en el mexicano, el desarrollo de las habilidades que configuran la competencia discursiva académica no es ni homogéneo ni suficiente para garantizar el éxito de las nuevas generaciones a la hora de ingresar a y permanecer en el nivel superior. Además de los resultados de exámenes de carácter nacional o regional aplicados al término del bachillerato 1 , la investigación sistemática de interés pedagógico en el campo de las habilidades académicas pone el foco sobre la necesidad de continuar contribuyendo a la identificación de barreras de aprendizaje y al diseño de propuestas de solución para afrontar las carencias que colocan a una gran proporción de los jóvenes preuniversitarios en situación de desventaja frente a quienes poseen las destrezas lingüístico-discursivas exigidas por la universidad (Carlino, 2012;Cisneros, 2006;Cisneros y Muñoz, 2014;Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli, Barr, Phillips Galloway y Meneses, 2015;Uccelli et al., 2015, entre otros). ...
... Podemos inferir que el léxico especializado parece ser accesible para estos escritores noveles quizá debido a que este tipo de palabras tiene referentes más precisos que, por ejemplo, los conceptos abstractos (Bello, 2016;Halliday y Martin, 1993). Aunque, por supuesto, la adopción de un vocabulario especializado no es la única habilidad favorecida por la escolarización, como queda claro gracias a investigaciones recientes de largo alcance en diversas lenguas y registros (Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli et al., 2015aUccelli et al., , 2015b, entre otros), sí abre una ventana a la exploración de posibilidades didácticas que la promuevan como parte no desdeñable de las competencias académicas. ...
El presente trabajo da sustento a la premisa de que el empleo de léxico espe- cializado en los textos ofrece información sobre la competencia discursiva académica de quienes los produjeron, por cuanto, entre las habilidades aca- démicas, se incluye el conocimiento y el uso de vocabulario relacionado con alguna disciplina particular para comunicarse e interactuar con otros sobre un tema específico. El propósito del estudio fue identificar el repertorio y el uso de términos especializados empleados por un grupo de estudiantes, mediante el examen de los sustantivos en sus textos, para luego relacionar estas características con las calificaciones otorgadas por jueces expertos; ello, con el objeto de analizar si el uso de léxico especializado es valorado como expresión de la competencia discursiva académica. Para este fin, se analizaron 120 ensayos producidos por estudiantes de un bachillerato privado del centro de México en su clase de español y literatura, y una muestra fue sometida a análisis de varianza para buscar diferencias en el repertorio y su uso, según su promedio de calificaciones. Los resultados permitieron observar que, en efecto, la materia curricular en que se llevó a cabo la tarea de escritura provee un input léxico especializado que es adoptado por los estudiantes en sus textos y que mientras mayor es ese repertorio y más se usa, estos son mejor valorados por los jueces calificadores. Estos hallazgos abren una ventana a la exploración de posibilidades didácticas que promue- van la adquisición de vocabulario disciplinar como parte importante de las competencias académicas.
Palabras clave: competencia discursiva, discurso académico, escritura académica, léxico especializado, evaluación de textos
... En el contexto latinoamericano, y en particular en el mexicano, el desarrollo de las habilidades que configuran la competencia discursiva académica no es ni homogéneo ni suficiente para garantizar el éxito de las nuevas generaciones a la hora de ingresar a y permanecer en el nivel superior. Además de los resultados de exámenes de carácter nacional o regional aplicados al término del bachillerato 1 , la investigación sistemática de interés pedagógico en el campo de las habilidades académicas pone el foco sobre la necesidad de continuar contribuyendo a la identificación de barreras de aprendizaje y al diseño de propuestas de solución para afrontar las carencias que colocan a una gran proporción de los jóvenes preuniversitarios en situación de desventaja frente a quienes poseen las destrezas lingüístico-discursivas exigidas por la universidad (Carlino, 2012;Cisneros, 2006;Cisneros y Muñoz, 2014;Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli, Barr, Phillips Galloway y Meneses, 2015;Uccelli et al., 2015, entre otros). ...
... Podemos inferir que el léxico especializado parece ser accesible para estos escritores noveles quizá debido a que este tipo de palabras tiene referentes más precisos que, por ejemplo, los conceptos abstractos (Bello, 2016;Halliday y Martin, 1993). Aunque, por supuesto, la adopción de un vocabulario especializado no es la única habilidad favorecida por la escolarización, como queda claro gracias a investigaciones recientes de largo alcance en diversas lenguas y registros (Meneses et al., 2017;Uccelli et al., 2015aUccelli et al., , 2015b, entre otros), sí abre una ventana a la exploración de posibilidades didácticas que la promuevan como parte no desdeñable de las competencias académicas. ...
El léxico especializado como expresión de la competencia discursiva académica en ensayos producidos por jóvenes escolarizados en una clase de literatura
El presente trabajo da sustento a la premisa de que el empleo de léxico espe- cializado en los textos ofrece información sobre la competencia discursiva académica de quienes los produjeron, por cuanto, entre las habilidades aca- démicas, se incluye el conocimiento y el uso de vocabulario relacionado con alguna disciplina particular para comunicarse e interactuar con otros sobre un tema específico. El propósito del estudio fue identificar el repertorio y el uso de términos especializados empleados por un grupo de estudiantes, mediante el examen de los sustantivos en sus textos, para luego relacionarestas características con las calificaciones otorgadas por jueces expertos; ello, con el objeto de analizar si el uso de léxico especializado es valorado como expresión de la competencia discursiva académica. Para este fin, se analizaron 120 ensayos producidos por estudiantes de un bachillerato pri- vado del centro de México en su clase de español y literatura, y una muestra fue sometida a análisis de varianza para buscar diferencias en el repertorio y su uso, según su promedio de calificaciones. Los resultados permitieron observar que, en efecto, la materia curricular en que se llevó a cabo la tarea de escritura provee un input léxico especializado que es adoptado por los estudiantes en sus textos y que mientras mayor es ese repertorio y más se usa, estos son mejor valorados por los jueces calificadores. Estos hallazgos abren una ventana a la exploración de posibilidades didácticas que promue- van la adquisición de vocabulario disciplinar como parte importante de las competencias académicas.
Palabras clave: competencia discursiva, discurso académico, escritura académica, léxico especializado, evaluación de textos
... It includes "vocabulary, complex structures, logical connectives, and stance markers." (Meneses et al., 2018) Meneses et al., 2018Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Schleppegrell, 2004b;Truckenmiller & Petscher, 2019 Academic vocabulary Variously defined in the literature (e.g., Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Scarcella, 2003), but definitions have a common thread of meaning: Academic vocabulary references words used more frequently in academic domain discussion, essays, articles, and books than in fiction or informal conversations/ texts. Baker et al., 2014;Baumann & Graves, 2010;Coxhead, 2000;Logan & Kieffer, 2018;Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Scarcella, 2003 Domain (sometimes used interchangeably with discipline) ...
... It includes "vocabulary, complex structures, logical connectives, and stance markers." (Meneses et al., 2018) Meneses et al., 2018Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Schleppegrell, 2004b;Truckenmiller & Petscher, 2019 Academic vocabulary Variously defined in the literature (e.g., Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Scarcella, 2003), but definitions have a common thread of meaning: Academic vocabulary references words used more frequently in academic domain discussion, essays, articles, and books than in fiction or informal conversations/ texts. Baker et al., 2014;Baumann & Graves, 2010;Coxhead, 2000;Logan & Kieffer, 2018;Nagy & Townsend, 2012b;Scarcella, 2003 Domain (sometimes used interchangeably with discipline) ...
Academic vocabulary networks were examined in three elementary grades textbook programs (first through fifth grade) in three domains—science, mathematics, and social studies. Within each program, a given network consisted of a focal domain-specific academic word and the collection of words from all grades that overlapped in meaning with the focal word. Academic words and the networks for each domain-specific academic word were computationally determined. For each network, the time at which the first network word appeared represented the inception of the network. The network’s expansion across the grades was tracked as additional words appeared. The main research questions were: Did network growth patterns across grades vary according to domain; and within domain, did network patterns vary according to two focal domain-specific academic word characteristics. The two focal word characteristics were the age at which the focal word’s meaning was typically known and the timing of the introduction of the focal word. Multilevel growth model analyses were conducted. The dependent variable was number of words, called nodes, in a network at each time point across the grades. Main conclusions were the following. 1. Network patterns varied across domains, with social studies networks most different from those in the other two domains. 2. Network growth pattern varied according to selected focal word characteristics, and the focal word characteristic effect varied by domain.
... However, academic language proficiency is not only linked with reading comprehension, but also with other school subjects such as math or science, where academic texts are plentiful (Snow & Uccelli, 2009). Moreover, having difficulties for mastering academic language entails barriers for accessing higher education and a wide range of opportunities outside school, such as health, political and civic information, as society increasingly demands complex communication skills (Fang et al., 2006;Meneses et al., 2017). As Fang, Schleppegrell & Cox (2006) point out, although acquiring academic language and literacy skills does not automatically provide students with future professional success, a lack of such skills does limit their opportunities and access to future professional and social success. ...
... Indeed, 58 out of the 167 student interactions analyzed in this study either contain a judgement, value, or argument. Observations of the DLGs show the emergence of the following school-relevant language Uccelli et al., 2015Snow & Uccelli, 2009Fang et al., 2006Meneses et al., 2017 Nominlization X X X X Connectives X X X Derived words X X Referential links X X ...
Research in the field of educational linguistics has found that low levels of academic language development negatively affect children’s language, reading and writing skills and, therefore, academic achievements. This is more noticeable in students from low SES backgrounds, who traditionally have a lower exposure to academic language. Nevertheless, dialogic learning environments such as Dialogic Literary Gatherings (DLGs), a worldwide educational practice where participants read and debate literary classics in an egalitarian dialogue, contribute to the appearance of school-relevant language and literacy skills. Although multiple studies on DLGs have shown their impact in different levels, including improving vocabulary and reading skills, the emergence of such skills has not been studied in depth yet. This exploratory study aims to analyze the emergence of academic language and literacy skills in 19 students between the ages of 11 and 13 studying in a school in Spain with over 90% immigrant students. Results show that the egalitarian dialogue in which DLGs are based favors the emergence of school-relevant language and literacy skills, such as judgements and arguments, referential links, or connectives.
... However, not all students will learn this expected skill (Biancarosa & Snow, 2006;RAND, 2002). Although more research has focused on understanding the challenges related to decoding skills across languages (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005;Ziegler et al., 2010), recent years have seen the emergence of studies exploring predictors of reading comprehension beyond decoding and vocabulary (LaRusso et al., 2016;Language and Reading Research Consortium, 2015;Meneses et al., 2017;. This research illuminates the point that not all texts pose the same reading comprehension challenges to students. ...
... As such, the texts and their characteristicsdin particular, those that students read in various subject areasdhave become a relevant focus of study in recent decades (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008). Academic texts are very different from everyday conversations (Schleppegrell, 2001(Schleppegrell, , 2004Snow & Uccelli, 2009;Meneses et al., 2017;. They are frequently described as complex and abstract, because their language often contains a lot of conjunctions, discourse markers, extended noun groups with modifiers, nominalizations, extended and embedded clauses, high lexical density, cross-discipline, and discipline-specific vocabulary. ...
This study explores Chilean pre-service teachers’ specialized knowledge that facilitates text-based discussions in the context of an institutional plan to improve a practice-based teacher education. The specialized knowledge’s performances for this core practice were examined across courses after carrying out a practice-based pedagogical approach. Seventy-nine pre-service teachers performed four scenario-based tasks: text analysis, making decisions, evidences and errors, and observing productive discussions. The results show significant differences within and across courses on making decisions and noticing a text-based discussion. This paper highlights the relevance of decomposing a complex practice in specialized knowledge to promote the learning in teacher education.
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... General academic vocabulary had no additional effect. On the one hand, the effect of academic science vocabulary on students' knowledge of floating and sinking adds to the growing number of studies that provide evidence for the prominent role of academic language skills over and above everyday language skills for the acquisition of domain-specific competencies across grade levels and domains (e.g., Meneses et al., 2018;Schuth et al., 2017;Snow et al., 2009;Taboada, 2012;Ufer & Bochnik, 2020;Volodina et al., 2021). On the other hand, although substantially correlated with students' science content knowledge in the structural analyses (see Table 4), proficiency in general academic vocabulary had no additional effect on content-related learning gains. ...
... Also, there is a strong positive association between students' vocabulary knowledge in general and reading comprehension (e.g., Verhoeven et al., 2011). That association has recently also been documented for academic vocabulary in particular in a few studies (e.g., Connor et al., 2015;Meneses et al., 2018). Historically, at least in United States schooling, there has been a strong tendency to delay learning of challenging disciplinary topics and introduction of academic vocabulary until later years. ...
The purpose of the study was to explore the extent of first-grade children’s academic vocabulary usage in writing. We additionally investigated the extent to which children who used more academic words tended to write compositions that reflected more phonologically and orthographically unique words and/or words with greater semantic challenge. The sample consisted of 191 first-grade control group children involved in a prior study. In the spring of first grade, after hearing a passage about a science topic, students were prompted to write an argumentative composition. Academic words were counted in compositions. Four predictor variables represented characteristics of words in the compositions—(a) phonological uniqueness (how similar a word sounds in comparison to other words); (b) orthographic uniqueness (how similar a word’s spelling is compared to other words); (c) semantic challenge (the age at which a word is commonly known) and (d) semantic concreteness (how tangible or imageable a word’s meaning is). The main conclusions were: Slightly more than half of the children included one or two academic words in their compositions, and greater inclusion of academic words in a composition was weakly associated with composition words that were more phonologically unique and more semantically challenging.
... Además, el desarrollo de CALP en la escuela es clave para la inclusión desde una mirada intercultural que reconoce que todo el grupo, y no solo los inmigrantes no hispanohablantes, se beneficiaría de esta enseñanza. En efecto, la distinción entre BICS y CALP no es exclusiva de los/as estudiantes bilingües (Meneses et al., 2018;Uccelli y Galloway;, pues los/as estudiantes monolingües también requieren desarrollar habilidades lingüísticas que son propias de la escuela y que no utilizan en sus contextos cotidianos (Unamuno, 2003;Uccelli y Arévalo, 2015). Así, el desarrollo de CALP también contribuye al encuentro de un punto en común entre las necesidades educativas de los/as estudiantes que componen un aula cultural y lingüísticamente diversa, ya que la necesidad de alcanzar un dominio del lenguaje para aprender en la escuela no distingue la cultura y lengua de origen. ...
The International Civic and Citizenship Education Study is part of the stable repertoire of international tests applied in Chile since 1999. To date, a growing body of researchers and educational policies for the teaching of citizenship declares to maintain a relationship of use and reference with the dimensions of the citizen civic phenomenon that this study measures. However, theoretical knowledge about the conceptual regime of the CIVED/ICCS and its normative implications for the teaching of young citizens is still unknown. The work presented in this chapter presents part of the results of a master’s thesis entitled “Educating for citizenship in the global era. Critical analysis of the relations between the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study and curricular and evaluative policy in Chile (1999-2016)”. Specifically, the concept of citizenship and the contexts in which it takes place according to the study are analyzed. Methodologically, a qualitative approach and a documentary design are proposed on which tools of Critical Discourse Analysis were applied. It is concluded that the CIVED/ICCS projects a synthetic and general visions of the civic-citizen phenomenon, in which the role of social conflict and history disappear as constitutive elements of citizenship.
... These cross-disciplinary resources have a receptive dimension (understanding how the resources work) and a productive dimension (using resources in constructing texts). Studies shown the significant contribution of receptive cross-disciplinary language skills to reading comprehension in both English (Uccelli et al., 2015) and Spanish among middle school students (Meneses, Uccelli, et al., 2018;Romero-Contreras et al., 2021) as well as the quality of school genre writing (e.g., Figueroa et al., 2018). ...
Upper elementary students face conceptual and linguistic challenges when writing in science. One way to scaffold science writing is the explicit teaching of cross-disciplinary language. Limited research has explored the dynamics of these language changes in instructional contexts. This study examines the micro-developmental changes in cross-disciplinary language skills and their contributions to the quality of 191 science explanations written by 65 fourth graders that participated in language and literacy-based instruction. The instruction's pedagogical design was focused on writing-to-learn and learning-to-write the scientific explanation genre. Each student wrote an initial, a scaffolded draft, and a final explanation that was scored for scientific quality and productive cross-disciplinary language skills. Students' prior and final scientific knowledge was also measured. The results showed large instruction size effects on the scientific quality (0.71), productive cross-disciplinary language skills (0.46), and explanation length (0.64). Stepwise regression analysis showed that prior and final science knowledge and productive cross-disciplinary language skills significantly predict the quality of the final explanation (R 2 = .704, F(11,38) = 9.03, p < .000). This research offers evidence of the dynamic relationships between language, literacy, and science in contexts of explicit cross-disciplinary language instruction for disciplinary literacy and learning.
... Además, el desarrollo de CALP en la escuela es clave para la inclusión desde una mirada intercultural que reconoce que todo el grupo, y no solo los inmigrantes no hispanohablantes, se beneficiaría de esta enseñanza. En efecto, la distinción entre BICS y CALP no es exclusiva de los/as estudiantes bilingües (Meneses et al., 2018;Uccelli y Galloway;, pues los/as estudiantes monolingües también requieren desarrollar habilidades lingüísticas que son propias de la escuela y que no utilizan en sus contextos cotidianos (Unamuno, 2003;Uccelli y Arévalo, 2015). Así, el desarrollo de CALP también contribuye al encuentro de un punto en común entre las necesidades educativas de los/as estudiantes que componen un aula cultural y lingüísticamente diversa, ya que la necesidad de alcanzar un dominio del lenguaje para aprender en la escuela no distingue la cultura y lengua de origen. ...
A la luz de la creciente ola migratoria que Chile ha experimentado en las últimas décadas, el Ministerio de Educación ha desarrollado una Política Nacional de Estudiantes Extranjeros (2018-2022) que busca atender las necesidades educativas de este grupo. Este capítulo presenta un análisis de los alcances y limitaciones de tres documentos asociados a esta política. Se indagó en los fundamentos y tipo de orientaciones ofrecidas para atender las necesidades de aprendizaje de estos/as estudiantes, con especial foco en la población no hispanohablante. Los resultados indican que, si bien se ha avanzado hacia una política que fomenta el reconocimiento de estos/as estudiantes en el aula, aún persisten desafíos relacionados con la promoción de una interculturalidad crítica en las escuelas y la visibilización de las culturas y lenguas de los/as estudiantes inmigrantes, así como la necesidad de proponer bajadas pedagógicas concretas y teóricamente informadas para favorecer el aprendizaje del lenguaje escolar. Este último aspecto
resulta clave para la inclusión educativa de los/as estudiantes, especialmente de aquellos/as que están aprendiendo el idioma oficial de la escuela.
Given the growing migratory wave that Chile has experienced in recent decades, the Ministry of Education has developed a National Policy for Foreign Students (2018-2022) that seeks to address the educational needs of this group. This chapter analyzes the scope and limitations of three documents associated with this policy. The foundations and type of guidance offered to meet the learning needs of these students were investigated, with a special focus on the non-Spanish-speaking population. The results indicate that, although progress has been made towards a policy that encourages the recognition of these students in the classroom, there are still challenges related to the promotion of critical interculturality in schools and the visibility of the cultures and languages of the immigrant students, as well as the need to propose concrete and theoretically informed pedagogical steps to favor the learning of the school language. This last aspect is key to the educational inclusion of students, especially those who are learning the official language of the school.
... El corpus empleado para caracterizar el discurso académico es pequeño y su falta de representatividad puede debilitar la validez de los resultados si es comparado con los miles de datos que herramientas digitales pueden analizar de forma más robusta en el campo de la lingüística de corpus (Berber Sardinha 2021). Sin embargo, en esta sección del libro no concitan tanto interés los resultados cuantitativos ni las categorías analizadas, que ya han sido estudiados en el ámbito del lenguaje académico (Meneses et al. 2018), coincidiendo en el predominio de la construcción discursiva objetiva, la densidad conceptual, la precisión léxica, la sintaxis oracional coordinada y subordinada, y la organización textual prototípica IMRAD (introducción, metodología, resultados, discusión, conclusión). Más bien, destaca el análisis cualitativo -close reading (lectura detallada)-que le permite al autor postular que la demanda por la claridad está en tensión con la densidad y precisión conceptual. ...
Reseña del libro Writing and Thinking in Contemporary Academia:The Poetics of Clarity, de Martin Grünfeld
... Over the past few years, several studies have shown that students' general academic language proficiency is more closely related to academic achievement than more basic language skills and that academic language predicts student performance, even when controlling for general vocabulary or sentence comprehension (e.g., Schuth et al., 2017;Volodina et al., 2021b). These relational patterns have been shown across countries and for different age groups and domains (e.g., Meneses et al., 2018;Volodina et al., 2021b). The findings thus confirm academic language proficiency as a crucial precondition for school success and therefore emphasize its importance as an outcome variable when examining social inequalities in student achievement. ...
The present study investigates the incremental validity of the traditional books-at-home measure and selected extensions (i.e., number of children’s books and number of ebooks) for explaining students’ academic achievement as measured by their academic language comprehension. Using multiple linear regressions, we additionally explore the role of the source of information (i.e., whether information is given by parents or children). Based on cross-sectional data of a German sample of 2353 elementary school children from Grades 2 through 4, we found that parents’ information on the number of books and children’s books contributed to students’ academic language comprehension over and above parental occupation and education. Children’s information on the number of books did not further increase the amount of explained variance, and the effects were smaller than those for parents’ information. Yet, when investigated separately, both parents’ and children’s information on the number of books and children’s books at home predicted students’ academic language comprehension and mediated the relationship between more distal structural features of socioeconomic status (i.e., parents’ occupational status and education) and the outcome variable. No effect emerged for the number of ebooks. Our findings point to the robustness of the traditional books-at-home measure when used in parent questionnaires.
... En este sentido, desarrollar habilidades lingüísticas y discursivas implica atender a cuestiones más complejas de la lengua. Por otro lado, el tipo de palabras en las que los estudiantes demuestran tener más confusión corresponde a léxico propio del lenguaje académico, que se diferencia sustantivamente del lenguaje coloquial (Figueroa, Meneses & Chandía, 2019;Meneses, Uccelli, Santelices, Ruiz, Acevedo & Figueroa, 2018). Este resultado suma evidencia a la afirmación de varios autores (Cummins, 2000;Proctor, Silverman, Harring, Jones & Hartranft, 2019) de que las habilidades básicas de lenguaje (BICS: basic interpersonal communicative skills) no bastan para desarrollar las habilidades de lenguaje académico (CALP cognitive academic language proficiency), necesarias para garantizar el aprendizaje y éxito escolar. ...
Many immigrants have joined the Chilean school system. An important group, of Haitian origin, has Spanish as a second language (L2). This study aims to characterize the written performance of students of Haitian origin in 5th grade, in order to provide evidence to inform pedagogical practices and policies for teaching writing, from a
perspective of justice and inclusion. Forty-two students participated and produced brochures on environmental issues present in the science curriculum. The texts were double-coded according to a code book of emerging linguistic phenomena. Mainly transcription problems, syntax phenomena and lexical phenomena were identified. In addition, the texts were rated along with the full sample of each course, through a holistic rubric focusing on higher order skills. The results show an array of performances. Correlations suggest that those who perform better in the communicative aspects are those who manage to overcome the difficulty of transcription. This highlights the need to intervene with explicit teaching so that
students can automate the transcription processes and grammatical elements of Spanish. The article concludes with teaching guidelines that address the phenomena described with a linguistically sensitive perspective and with a socio-cultural approach, moving away from the deficit perspective. Challenges are pointed out to value the use of the L1 and bilingual resources and identities in the classroom.
... Las investigaciones educativas sobre el aprendizaje a partir de la lectura de textos escolares documentan que los alumnos no reciben las ayudas necesarias para enfrentar con éxito este tipo de desafío (Aisenberg, 2007;Bortoni-Ricardo, 2008;Moss, 2006Moss, , 2009Moss, et al., 2013;Natale, 2009;Pereira, 2007). A lo largo de la escolaridad, la falta de comprensión y apropiación del discurso expositivo, informativo y científico propio del lenguaje académico crea barreras para acceder al conocimiento disciplinar (Halliday, 1998) y se ha revelado como un factor asociado con los niveles de desempeño en tareas de comprensión de lectura y producción escrita (Meneses et al., 2018;Phillips Galloway & Uccelli, 2019a, 2019bUccelli, Galloway, Barr, Meneses & Dobbs, 2015). ...
Learning to Study Texts is an innovative program that seeks to improve teaching and learning of disciplinary content by using teaching proposals based on analyzing and commenting on the language used in texts. This paper presents the bases of the program and a pilot study conducted with two teachers working in the fourth grade of elementary school who implemented the program proposals in History classes for four months. This analysis included the comparison of teaching practices involved in reading History texts before and after following the Learning to Study Texts program. It also included the description of how they changed their practices throughout the intervention. The results indicate that, with the incorporation of the program proposals, the teachers began to provide more opportunities to the students to listen, retrieve, comment on and analyze the information content of the texts. The main contribution of this study is to offer inputs for the design of a continuous teacher training program.
... B. Hypotenuse, kondensieren). Während die Bedeutung des allgemeinen bildungssprachlichen Wortschatzes zur Erklärung schulischer Leistungen mittlerweile in einer Reihe von nationalen (Schuth, Köhne & Weinert, 2017) und internationalen Studien (Meneses et al., 2017;Townsend, Filippini, Collins & Biancarosa, 2012) nachgewiesen werden konnte, liegen für die Rolle des Fachwortschatzes vergleichsweise wenige Befunde vor (z. B. Paetsch, Felbrich & Stanat, 2015). ...
Das Ziel des Forschungs- und Entwicklungsvorhabens „Professionalisierung zur bedeutungs-fokussierten Sprachförderung im Sachunterricht der Grundschule“ (ProSach) bestand darin, einen Sprachförderansatz, der für Kinder mit nicht-deutscher Herkunftssprache im additiven Fachunterricht entwickelt und erprobt wurde (Darsow et al., 2012a; Rösch & Stanat, 2011), für eine integrierte Anwendung im Sachunterricht der dritten Klassenstufe weiterzuentwi-ckeln und auf seine Wirksamkeit im Rahmen einer längsschnittlich angelegten feldexperimen-tellen Studie zu überprüfen. Um dieses Ziel zu erreichen, wurden in dem interdisziplinären Projekt erziehungswissenschaftliche, linguistische, psychologisch-diagnostische und fachdi-daktische Perspektiven in zwei Teilprojekten miteinander verschränkt.
Im Folgenden werden zunächst die Zielsetzungen des Projekts und die organisatorischen Rahmenbedingungen beschrieben sowie ein Überblick über das Fortbildungskonzept gegeben. Anschließend werden zentrale Ergebnisse dargestellt.
... Las investigaciones educativas sobre el aprendizaje a partir de la lectura de textos escolares documentan que los alumnos no reciben las ayudas necesarias para enfrentar con éxito este tipo de desafío (Aisenberg, 2007;Bortoni-Ricardo, 2008;Moss, 2006Moss, , 2009Moss, et al., 2013;Natale, 2009;Pereira, 2007). A lo largo de la escolaridad, la falta de comprensión y apropiación del discurso expositivo, informativo y científico propio del lenguaje académico crea barreras para acceder al conocimiento disciplinar (Halliday, 1998) y se ha revelado como un factor asociado con los niveles de desempeño en tareas de comprensión de lectura y producción escrita (Meneses et al., 2018;Phillips Galloway & Uccelli, 2019a, 2019bUccelli, Galloway, Barr, Meneses & Dobbs, 2015). ...
Aprender a estudiar textos es un programa de innovación educativa que busca mejorar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de contenidos disciplinares a partir de propuestas didácticas basadas en el análisis y el comentario del lenguaje de los textos. Este artículo presenta las bases del programa y un estudio piloto realizado con dos profesoras de 4º año de primaria que implementaron durante cuatro meses las propuestas del programa en clases de Historia. Los análisis incluyeron la comparación de las prácticas docentes en torno de la lectura de textos escolares de historia antes y después de conocer Aprender a estudiar textos y también la descripción del modo en que fueron cambiando las prácticas a lo largo de la intervención. Los resultados indican que, con la incorporación de las propuestas del programa, las profesoras pasaron a ofrecer más oportunidades a los alumnos para atender, recuperar, comentar y analizar el contenido informativo de los textos. La principal contribución del estudio consistió en ofrecer insumos para el diseño de un programa de formación permanente de docentes.
... Although the English CALS construct and instrument guided the design of these measures, each assessment was developed and validated in partnership with local teams in Latin America. To date, these studies have shown that CALS are also predictive of midadolescents' text comprehension in Spanish (Meneses et al., 2018) and Portuguese (Uccelli, Barrera-Osorio, et al., 2020). ...
Merging evidence from psychological models of reading comprehension, ethnographic research on language and literacy, and textual linguistics lines of research, the authors take the position that psychological models of reading comprehension often overlook written language comprehension and production as context‐embedded, sociocultural processes. Using the example of academic language comprehension by middle grade learners, the authors present a series of studies that have informed the science of reading by making visible a precise set of high‐utility academic language skills that support informational text comprehension during middle childhood (ages 9–14). Studies have suggested that these skills develop gradually throughout adolescence and significantly contribute to reading comprehension. Drawing on this research with the goal of informing the science of reading, the authors suggest that academic language comprehension involves for the reader (a) familiarity with a set of academic language forms commonly found in school texts, (b) experience with the sociocultural practices of understanding and using the academic language of text within a particular sociocultural community, and (c) aligning with or resisting the reader identities implied by the language of a text. The authors suggest that innovative research and pedagogical approaches are needed to broaden the conceptualization of language and reading comprehension relations from purely cognitive into one that embraces the reader’s interaction with a text as a sociocultural phenomenon.
... Por estos motivos, enseñar de manera explícita a leer y escribir en cada área del conocimiento es útil no sólo para democratizar el acceso al conocimiento y mejorar el rendimiento académico, sino también para ejercitar las diversas formas con las que cada disciplina crea ese conocimiento (Navarro y Revel, 2013). Meneses et al. (2017) han identificado las características que diferentes autores han definido como usos académicos del lenguaje y las han operacionalizado como conjunto de habilidades claves de lenguaje académico (HCLA) en español con niños chilenos de entre 4o. y 6o. ...
El texto escolar es objeto de promoción en políticas públicas educativas porque operacionaliza el currículum escolar. Sin embargo, predominan actividades expositivas y reproductivas con escasa atención al potencial epistémico de la lectura y la escritura para promover aprendizajes en las disciplinas. Siguiendo la perspectiva de Escribir para aprender y Aprender a escribir, el propósito de este artículo es presentar una propuesta didáctica fundamentada, sistemática y replicable de enseñanza de la lectura y la escritura en Matemáticas, Ciencias Naturales y Ciencias Sociales de educación básica, materializada en 107 cápsulas didácticas que se incluyeron en 24 libros de texto chilenos entre 2015 y 2017. Se identifica la riqueza y diversidad de géneros discursivos a través del currículum, se seleccionan actividades situadas de libros de texto que incluyan leer o escribir esos géneros, y se construyen secuencias didácticas con socialización de expectativas, modelamiento de proceso y facilitación de recursos y procedimientos lingüísticos.
... The third gap is work on academic language proficiency for primary grade children. Academic language proficiency has been widely examined for preadolescents or adolescents, which is reasonable given the increased language demands in texts in upper elementary and secondary school grades (Meneses et al., 2018;Schleppegrell, 2001Schleppegrell, , 2004Snow & Uccelli, 2009;. If academic language proficiency is considered an important skill that can be measured and that contributes to reading skills for adolescents, a crucial corollary is its measurement and relation to reading comprehension for younger children. ...
... They also reported that in general, students in lower grade levels, from lower SES environments, or with an English Learner (EL) designation scored significantly lower than students in higher grade levels, from higher SES environments, or without an EL designation, respectively. Similar findings were replicated with monolingual Spanish-speaking students (e.g., Meneses et al., 2017). ...
Academic language is a kind of social language for the purpose of schooling. It is central to disciplinary learning, thinking, and communication. This study examined adolescents’ use of academic language in informational writing, a genre highly valued in school, workplace, and society. Ninety-three seventh and ninth grade students from a U.S. public school were asked to write a science report based on a “wordless” picture book about a familiar class of animals called crocodylia. The student writing corpus was coded for presence of a constellation of academic language features. Statistical analyses of these data showed that (a) the adolescents made limited use of academic language features in their writing, (b) there were no significant differences between the two grade levels in academic language use, (c) there was a significant relationship between reading ability and academic language use, and (d) academic language use was a significant predictor of writing quality. These findings highlight both the importance of and the need for more explicit attention to academic language in secondary literacy instruction.
... These results differs from the findings of Olinghouse and Wilson (2013), who did not found any variability in the use of academic vocabulary, although this may be explained by the age of the participants, as the instrument was administered to 5th graders. With regard to S-CALS's domain, the results are similar to those found by Meneses et al. (2017), if we compare the performance of the students of 8th grade. ...
Writing is a task that entails high cognitive and linguistic efforts, especially when producing academic texts. Academic language might be one of the factors influencing the quality of written texts, given that prior research has shown its impact on reading comprehension. The purpose of this study is to examine the contribution of Spanish Core Academic Language Skills (S-CALS) and academic vocabulary to the quality of written argumentation and explanation. For this study, 126 Chilean 8th grade students produced an argumentative text and an explanatory text about the same topic. In addition, their academic vocabulary was assessed with the S-AVoc-T test and their CALS with the S-CALS-I test. Results show that both CALS and academic vocabulary are significantly and positively correlated with both writing tasks. Even though these instruments make different contributions to the predictive models in each discursive genre, a Principal Component Analysis revealed that the model that best explains writing quality are those which combine both language variables, namely Spanish Core Academic Language and Vocabulary Skills (S-CALVS). In argumentation, the S-CALVS model explains 29% of the variance, after controlling by gender. In contrast, in explanation, S-CALVS explains 35% of the variance. It is concluded that it is relevant to develop situated writing in each discursive genre and, upon that basis, to work with both CALS and academic vocabulary, because they have a specific impact on academic texts writing.
This study focuses on connectives, linguistic devices that signal relations between ideas. Connective knowledge varies widely across grades and is known to support reading comprehension and school writing. Despite the important role that connective knowledge plays in reading and writing, few resources exist to support teachers in understanding which connectives to prioritize in Spanish literacy instruction. In this study we combined a secondary analysis of midadolescents’ connective assessment data (810 students in grades 4–8) with a corpus linguistics frequency analysis of connectives in Chilean national science and social studies textbooks (1,079,593 total words), with the goal of generating a pedagogically relevant tool to support the instruction of connectives in Spanish literacy across content areas. To generate the Connective Frequency Bands Tool, we first examined the role of grade and connective type in midadolescents’ connective knowledge. Secondly, we examined associations between students’ knowledge and textual frequencies across content areas for each connective included in the assessment. Finally, informed by midadolescents’ connective knowledge and by the corpus linguistics analysis of science and social studies textbooks from grades 1–8, we generated the Connective Frequency Bands Tool listing connectives frequencies by grade, connective type, and content area.
While research unequivocally points to the need to teach the language that supports participation in reading and writing activities in middle‐grade classrooms, many educators grapple with how to create the instructional conditions that promote equitable and just opportunities for students to learn the Language of School Literacy (LSL). In this article, I operationalize the Access–Voice–Choice (AVC) framework and illustrate its application through teaching vignettes. The AVC framework engages educators in considering how to in which language serves as a medium: (1) for giving learners access to concepts and content contained in school texts and to the communities where this knowledge is produced; (2) for amplifying student voice ; and (3) for providing learners with choice in the language they use in the classroom and in the linguistic communities in which they choose to participate. This critical framework offers a useful heuristic model to think about how and why we teach LSL to our students. I argue that if the goal of our instruction is to develop in students the ability to use language critically and flexibly, we must create the sorts of classrooms that position them as critical and flexible language users from the start.
Analytical writing poses particularly challenging, yet often overlooked, language demands that need attention in educational research and practice. In this article, I discuss the Core Analytical Language Skills (CALS) construct and its relevance for school reading and writing. CALS refer to the set of learners’ school-relevant language resources that are of high utility to understanding analytical texts across content areas. After a brief review of the relations between mid-adolescents’ language and their school reading and writing proficiencies, I offer illustrative examples of individual differences in middle-schoolers’ analytical writing and CALS. I argue, on the basis of recent but extensive empirical evidence, that without understanding and addressing the immense variability in the language resources that students bring to school and the language demands of reading- and writing-to-learn tasks and texts, schools run the risk of maintaining and even exacerbating the inequalities that exist in the larger society.
Which theoretical and empirical insights can inform language‐in‐education research that advances equitable and high‐quality learning at school? In this three‐part article, I first draw from various sources to foreground the urgent need to counteract linguicism and epistemic injustices and to commit to more just and rigorous scientific practices in research and education. Based on findings from my own research, I then argue that more just and rigorous practices need to attend to midadolescents’ individual differences in language learning. In response, I present insights from recent innovative evidence‐based pedagogical frameworks and tools that reveal promising paths forward. I close by calling for research with a dual focus on equity and rigor that supports moving away from “pedagogies of silence,” which silence marginalized students’ voices, damaging their identities and obstructing their learning, towards “pedagogies of voices,” which affirm all learners’ voices while amplifying their language repertoires and their critical learning. A one‐page Accessible Summary of this article in non‐technical language is freely available in the Supporting Information online and at https://oasis‐database.org
Las prácticas docentes de lectura en Chile son, según la evidencia disponible, predominantemente reproductivas y presentan un limitado desafío cognitivo. En este contexto, el objetivo de la investigación fue analizar las percepciones de docentes destacados de educación básica respecto de sus prácticas de mediación lectora en distintas disciplinas. Respecto de la metodología, el diseño fue un estudio de casos múltiples descriptivo y cualitativo y los participantes fueron 11 docentes de 6 escuelas públicas de La Araucanía, Chile, a quienes se aplicaron entrevistas semiestructuradas en profundidad y cuya codificación se efectuó en tres fases con un paradigma fenomenológico. Los resultados muestran que los docentes se centran más en acompañar y motivar la lectura que en enseñar estrategias específicas y que ofrecen espacios de diálogo para mediarla, aunque, en general, aún predomina en ellos un enfoque generalista y no disciplinar de la lectura. La identificación de las buenas prácticas de los profesores de excelencia puede contribuir al desarrollo de las prácticas pedagógicas de otros docentes
The purpose of the study was to assess the volume of academic vocabulary in elementary grades disciplinary textbooks. Academic vocabulary was examined in a corpus of best-selling elementary grades textbooks in three disciplinary areas-science, mathematics, and social studies. Academic words in texts were determined through automated procedures involving statistical modeling. Four academic vocabulary variables were created: Total Academic Words; Discipline-Match Academic Words (science domain-specific academic words in science textbooks, and so on); High Challenge Total Academic Words; and High Challenge Discipline-Match Academic Words. Longitudinal multi-level Poisson regression was conducted for selected research issues. Main conclusions were: (a) The estimated overall elementary grades volume of academic vocabulary in disciplinary textbooks was relatively high. Summed across all grades and disciplines, 31% of all of the estimated unique word types in the textbooks were academic word types. By the end of elementary school, children who read or listened to disciplinary textbooks like the ones in the present study corpus would have been exposed to approximately one academic word type for every three unique word types encountered. (b) Moreover, approximately one or two of every four or five academic word types was estimated to be a word that would present challenge to typically developing and struggling students. (c) For all three disciplines, with minor exception, the estimated volume of newly-appearing academic words in a grade increased through the earliest grades, tended to peak in third or fourth grade, and then decelerated slightly thereafter.
Classrooms are not always linguistically permeable, and instruction focused on bolstering English reading comprehension too often neglects students’ additional linguistic resources in languages other than English. However, to the task of comprehending English text, multilingual readers bring a host of communicative resources across multiple languages. Indeed, recent studies have found that students educated concurrently in Spanish and English within bilingual schools possess positively correlated Spanish and English academic register resources, with academic register knowledge in each language making unique contributions toward explaining variability in these dual-language learners’ English reading comprehension. This recent research offers the tantalizing insight that teaching students to notice overlaps in communicative expectations and linguistic patterns—or register overlaps—across Spanish and English academic registers should receive greater focus. Here, to speak to classroom application, we offer suggestions for how educators might use equivalent Spanish and English metalanguages—or language to talk about language—to highlight register overlaps in Spanish and English academic text. We contend that this purposeful noticing of register overlaps can deepen students’ awareness of the linguistic resources available to them for comprehending academic texts and support them in developing critical metalinguistic awareness, or the skills and habits of mind needed to critically consider how registers have been naturalized and are subject to change. This article supports educators to enact one aspect of translingual pedagogy that builds on students’ observations about the language of school in order to increase linguistic flexibility, awareness, and criticality.
eer textos académicos es una experiencia altamente demandante, ya que exige no solo comprender lo que se lee, sino también aprender de ello. Esta exigencia se vuelve cada vez más común desde los cursos intermedios de la enseñanza primaria. Consecuentemente, los estudiantes deben adquirir nuevos recursos estratégicos, que consisten en llevar a cabo acciones mentales guiadas por una meta explícita (por ejemplo, seleccionar solo la información que cumpla con un criterio determinado) ante la presencia de ciertas claves (por ejemplo, una expresión textual como “la primera causa es…”). La adquisición de estos recursos representa un reto que debemos entender bien para proporcionar el apoyo instruccional necesario. Por esa razón, este artículo busca identificar algunas de las necesidades que experimentan los estudiantes en el uso de estas estrategias de lectura, con base en algunos de nuestros estudios previos. Básicamente, mostramos que los estudiantes presentan más dificultades para procesar las claves textuales que guían sus acciones estratégicas que para llevarlas a cabo: es decir, hay una disociación entre la sensibilidad a las claves y la capacidad para ejecutar el curso de acción ligado a ellas. Además, presentan dificultades para recordar las metas de lectura cuando deben seleccionar la información de acuerdo con ellas. Estas evidencias nos llevarán a diferenciar dos planteamientos instruccionales: el primero pretende ayudar a los estudiantes, durante la lectura, a comprender el texto que están leyendo; el segundo está destinado a enseñarles cómo comprender cualquier texto. Finalmente, clarificamos cuándo y por qué ayudar a comprender podría ser especialmente útil.
Investigaciones previas han encontrado que las habilidades del lenguaje académico predicen positivamente los resultados de comprensión de lectura en español de los adolescentes hispanohablantes más allá del conocimiento del vocabulario académico. Este estudio examina la contribución específica del vocabulario académico y de las habilidades de lenguaje académico a la comprensión lectora de estudiantes de primaria y secundaria en el noreste de México. Participaron en el estudio un total de 1103 estudiantes de escuelas públicas de 5º y 6º de primaria (n=671) y de 1º y 2º de secundaria (n=432). Los participantes fueron evaluados en vocabulario académico, otras habilidades de lenguaje académico y comprensión lectora. Asimismo, se obtuvieron datos demográficos y de nivel socioeconómico. En convergencia con investigaciones anteriores realizadas con hablantes del inglés en EE.UU. y hablantes de español en Chile, los hallazgos revelaron que tanto el conocimiento del vocabulario académico como las habilidades del lenguaje académico son cruciales para la comprensión lectora. Nuestro estudio se suma a la creciente evidencia de las habilidades del lenguaje académico y de vocabulario académico como predictores clave de la comprensión lectora de los adolescentes hispanohablantes en América Latina y amplía la muestra a estudiantes mexicanos.
Oral and written language are constantly interrelated in literate communities. In this paper, we examined the repercussions of teaching argumentative oral discourse on the development of argumentative writing and vice versa. The participants were seventh-grade students, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: the Oral-1 group, which received an oral language intervention first, followed by a written language intervention; the Esc-1 group, which received the written language intervention first, followed by the oral intervention, and the control group, who attended regular Spanish Language and Literature classes. We assessed measures of both oral and written argumentative discourse at pretest, posttest-1, and posttest-2 to determine the development of both intramodality and intermodality skills. The results showed that intramodality effects were larger for the written than for the oral language intervention. Both interventions produced intermodality effects. We concluded that the teaching of argumentative discourse should incorporate the bidirectional influences between the oral and written modalities.
El propósito de esta investigación es explorar cuáles son los perfiles de escritores respecto a la calidad de las producciones argumentativas, así como establecer relaciones de estos perfiles con los recursos de lenguaje académico (RLA) que los estudiantes despliegan. 126 estudiantes chilenos de 8º básico de tres establecimientos educacionales escribieron un ensayo sobre el uso del tablet en la sala de clases. Para evaluar la calidad se validó una rúbrica y se utilizó el programa CHILDES para codificar diversos RLA. Para determinar los perfiles se realizó un análisis de clases latentes. Un 69% de los estudiantes se clasificaron en el perfil denominado emergente. El resto de los estudiantes pertenece al segundo perfil, denominado en desarrollo. En estos dos perfiles se analizó el uso de RLA. En el perfil emergente se observan dos clases de estudiantes que se diferencian sustancialmente en el uso (por presencia y/o ausencia) de nominalizaciones y vocabulario transdisciplinar. El perfil en desarrollo también presenta dos clases: una tiene mayor frecuencia, para quienes el uso de recursos es homogéneo. En cambio, el segundo grupo se caracteriza por el despliegue de vocabulario transdisciplinar, nominalizaciones y marcadores deónticos. Se concluye que los estudiantes necesitan más oportunidades para aprender a construir argumentaciones y desplegar recursos de lenguaje académico con el objetivo de potenciar sus puntos de vistas.
The comprehension of connectives, which still develops across primary school age, is an important facet of academic language proficiency. We investigated relations between the comprehension of connectives and school performance in primary school. Drawing on two cohorts with a total of 294 students and two measurement points either in Grades 2 and 3 (Cohort 1; n = 139) or in Grades 3 and 4 (Cohort 2; n = 155), we found positive effects of children's performance on a newly developed test on the comprehension of connectives on reading comprehension and mathematics one year later while considering, amongst others, the families' socioeconomic status, children's nonverbal cognitive abilities, and receptive grammar. Overall, data showed even more pronounced effects of the comprehension of connectives on test scores compared to school grades. Results are discussed with respect to the specific importance of the comprehension of connectives for school performance in primary school.
This book examines educational semiotics and the representation of knowledge in school science. It discusses the strategic integration of animation in science education. It explores how learning through the creation of science animations takes place, as well as how animation can be used in assessing student’s science learning.
Science education animations are ubiquitous in a variety of different online sites, including perhaps the most popularly accessed YouTube site, and are also routinely included as digital augmentations to science textbooks. They are popular with students and teachers and are a prominent feature of contemporary science teaching. The proliferation of various kinds of science animations and the ready accessibility of sophisticated resources for creating them have emphasized the importance of research into various areas: the nature of the semiotic construction of knowledge in the animation design, the development of critical interpretation of available animations, the strategic selection and use of animations to optimize student learning, student creation of science animations, and using animation in assessing student science learning. This book brings together new developments in these research agendas to further multidisciplinary perspectives on research to enhance the design and pedagogic use of animation in school science education.
Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Science is intrinsically multimodal due to the limitations of verbal language and the need for different ways of explaining scientific processes. Images, mathematical formulas, and academic discourse work interdependently in science explanatory texts making them more challenging to understand than narrative texts for elementary students. Previous research has shown that readers’ prior knowledge and language proficiency mediate reading comprehension, but it is unclear how to include facilitating mechanisms for comprehending science text that involve students’ prior knowledge and academic language skills. This chapter explores how animated multimodal science texts with different types of mediations can scaffold scientific understanding for Chilean fifth graders. Eighty-four students with low comprehension skills were selected from an initial sample of 326 attending medium-low SES Chilean schools. They were divided into three groups, and each group was assigned to a different version of the science text: one without animation, a second with animations that scaffolded scientific concepts, and a third with animations that scaffolded academic language. Academic vocabulary, reading comprehension and science learning were assessed. The group assigned to the non-animated version underperformed significantly compared to both animated versions, but there was no statistically significant difference between the groups with animated versions. Evidence of how the different types of scaffolding helped the student and suggestions on how improve them is presented. Finally, the pedagogical implications of this work for text designers and teachers are discussed, and new lines of research are suggested.
The purpose of the present study was to examine possible shifts in the presence of academic vocabulary across the past six decades for a continually best-selling first-grade core reading program. Seven program years dating from 1962 to 2013 were examined. Four categories of academic vocabulary (science, mathematics, social studies, and general academic) were computationally determined in each program. The primary research question was: Did the volume of academic words in a program year rise with advancing years? A secondary supplementary question was: Did the propensity toward academic affinity of a program considered as a whole rise with advancing years? Two types of academic word measures were employed: (a) a word was deemed to be academic or not, and if it was academic, it was assigned to one of the four academic categories, and then academic words were counted; and (b) a novel measure, academic affinity, was a continuous measure of the probability that a word was academic (in each of the four academic vocabulary categories). Poisson regression modeling and Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling were conducted. The main conclusions were: Later first-grade core reading program years included a moderately higher volume of science, social studies, and total academic words as compared to earlier years. The science, social studies, and general academic affinity of the program as a whole was statistically higher in later years, but in practical terms the change was not remarkable.
Academic language has been shown to significantly contribute to success across school subjects. However, to date, there are no empirical studies addressing its development across primary school age. The present study investigated the growth of academic vocabulary and influential conditions from Grades 2 to 4 based on a newly developed and validated test instrument. Drawing on a German sample of 472 children (N = 281 language minority learners) we found evidence of a Matthew effect with the group of language minority learners showing both lower initial level and lower growth rates compared to their monolingual peers. In addition, results of simple and full conditional growth curve models underline the significant impact of family background (parental education, books at home) and of children's nonverbal cognitive abilities on the intercept as well as the growth of academic vocabulary, thereby supporting the assumption of an additional Matthew effect according to family background, particularly in monolingual majority language children. Our results indicate the need for an early promotion of the register of academic language in monolingual as well as language minority students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Academic language skills support mid‐adolescents’ comprehension of the language of school texts. To date, scarce research has explored associations between dual academic language skills and reading comprehension among mid‐adolescent dual language immersion (DLI) students. This study examined individual differences in Spanish and English academic language skills and their contribution to English reading comprehension in a cross‐sectional sample of DLI students in Grades 4–6 (N = 101). Taking advantage of a recently proposed construct, the core academic language skills (CALS), and the CALS instruments available in Spanish and English, dual academic language skills were examined as predictors of English reading comprehension. Results revealed that Spanish and English CALS were both significant predictors of English reading comprehension even after accounting for students’ sociodemographic background, English proficiency designation, and English word reading fluency. Findings underscore the cross‐linguistic contribution of Spanish academic language skills to English reading comprehension and highlight the importance of promoting these skills in both languages to support mid‐adolescent DLI students’ biliteracy development.
Recent literacy research calls for pedagogical approaches that multiply students’ opportunities to discuss texts and ideas that matter. We argue that understanding mid-adolescents’ language needs can further inform discussion-based approaches. Our assessment research reveals that substantial differences in Core Academic Language Skills (CALS)– high-utility school-relevant language skills– help explain why comprehending school texts can be challenging for many adolescents. Our research with Latinx dual language learners’ and their teachers documents how leveraging heritage languages and identities contributes to academic success. Integrating insights from our teacher-researcher collaborations, we call for practices and dispositions that amplify language resources and awareness and affirm students’ voices by engaging teachers and students in reflecting about language, context, and power while scaffolding CALS across content areas and grades. Affirming while amplifying students’ voices entails expanding students’ and teachers’ critical rhetorical flexibility, the ability to use language critically and flexibly for particular contexts and purposes.
Resumen. Este estudio explora el efecto de dos propuestas de enseñanza explícita del lenguaje académico para la producción de explicaciones. Participaron 179 estudiantes chilenos de 4º grado y cuatro profesoras. La diferencia entre ambas propuestas de enseñanza radica en la integración o no de los recursos léxico-gramaticales característicos del registro académico en las fases discursivas configuradoras de la explicación científica. Cada estudiante produjo una explicación inicial y una final para cada unidad. Los resultados muestran que existen más recursos con diferencias significativas al realizar las comparaciones entre las explicaciones en la unidad integrada que en la no integrada así como un mayor número de correlaciones positivas. Esta investigación destaca la relevancia de una enseñanza a través de la cual se enseñan explícitamente y de manera integrada recursos de lenguaje académico relevantes para la producción de géneros escolares.
Abstract.This study explores the explicit academic language teaching effect on written scientific explanation. Two proposals for science unit intervention focusing on written scientific explanation was applied to four different fourth grade Chilean classrooms, one of them including explicit teaching of academic language resources integration at lexico-grammatical level in the different organizational phases of the written scientific explanation. 179 students wrote a scientific explanation at the beginning and at the end of each unit. A significant larger number of academic language resources as well as of significant correlations in the students' productions after the explicit teaching of embedded resources intervention was found. This study gives preliminary evidence of the relevance of the explicit teaching of academic language to help student master written academic genres.
This study examines whether children's decontextualized talk—talk about nonpresent events, explanations, or pretend—at 30 months predicts seventh-grade academic language proficiency (age 12). Academic language (AL) refers to the language of school texts. AL proficiency has been identified as an important predictor of adolescent text comprehension. Yet research on precursors to AL proficiency is scarce. Child decontextualized talk is known to be a predictor of early discourse development, but its relation to later language outcomes remains unclear. Forty-two children and their caregivers participated in this study. The proportion of child talk that was decontextualized emerged as a significant predictor of seventh-grade AL proficiency, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, parent decontextualized talk, child total words, child vocabulary, and child syntactic comprehension.
Reading comprehension is a complex skill, which involves different cognitive processes such as monitoring, working memory, interference suppression and resolution inferences. The aim of this work is to evaluate the discriminative ability of these processes, to differentiate levels of reading comprehension, in children between 8 and 9 years of age (N = 89) of public, and private, schools, in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. For this, specific tests were administered to each of these processes. The results distinguished two discriminant functions; the first one was the only that distinguished between individuals with good or bad comprehension abilities. A good level of reading comprehension implied to be efficient in the use of language skills (monitoring, inference, vocabulary), and, also, having abilities of processing (working memory). In contrast, the failure in general processing skills, such as phonological working memory or deficit in the ability to relate concepts (vocabulary), appeared to be characteristic of individuals with bad comprehension skills.
Many studies have demonstrated the facilitating role of rhetorical devices in text comprehension, but there are also studies where rhetorical devices have not shown such effect. The present study sets out to explore whether readers’ knowledge of rhetorical devices (that is, rhetorical competence) moderates their effectiveness beyond general comprehension skills and, consequently, whether rhetorical competence may be considered a component skill of reading comprehension. 192 sixth- to seventh-grade students were assessed on rhetorical competence and were required to read a difficult marked text with specific rhetorical devices (a refutation, an objective, and four organizational signals) or the same text without them. After reading, students produced a summary in order to obtain three dependent variables: main ideas (as a measure of participants’ ability to select relevant information from the text), causal links between them (as an indicator of participants’ ability to grasp the logical structure of the text and to organize its ideas), and the combination of main ideas plus causal links (as an indicator of participants’ global comprehension of the text). Analyses controlling for general comprehension skills and other important variables (working memory, prior knowledge, decoding) demonstrated that: (a) readers of the marked text scored higher in terms of all dependent variables, and (b) rhetorical competence level moderated the effect of rhetorical devices on the composite measure (main ideas plus causal links) and on the organization of the summary by means of causal links.
This special issue of JREE features studies from three of the teams (Barnes, Stuebing, Fletcher, Barth, & Francis; Language and Reading Research Consortium, Arthur, & Davis; LaRusso et al.) supported by the Institute of Education Sciences—Reading for Understanding Research (RFU) Initiative. Each study examined the importance of comprehension-related variables (i.e., academic language, perspective taking, complex reasoning skill, suppression, and response to instructional dosage) in developing readers. In this commentary we apply Perfetti and Adlof's (2012)17.
Perfetti, C. A., & Adlof, S. M. (2012). Reading comprehension: A conceptual framework from word meaning to text meaning. In J. Sabatini & E. Albro (Eds.), Assessing reading in the 21st century: Aligning and applying advances in the reading and measurement sciences. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.View all references concept of comprehension-related pressure points to help us assess whether the size of relation between the comprehension-related variables and reading comprehension skill are large enough to be of practical significance for assessment and intervention. In general, we conclude that none of the comprehension-related variables investigated in the special issue meet the criteria for inclusion as a pressure point. However, we caution that decontextualized assessments of potentially important comprehension-related skills applied as predictors to generic passage variance without concern for important reader-by-text interactions may result in underestimates of the importance of reader characteristics in certain texts.
This special issue is devoted to the study of reading and writing in Spanish focusing on their particularities from the perspective of its orthographic depth. Research has exposed the role characteristics from different orthographic systems play, explaining how reading and writing are learned and the cognitive processes involved in those learning processes. Through their research and reflection the various Latin American authors — and a special contribution by a Finnish author — describe the differences in reading processes in transparent orthographic systems as well as the future direction the study of reading may take from the perspective of their orthographic qualities.ResumenEste número monográfico está dedicado al estudio de la lecto-escritura en español matizando sus particularidades desde la perspectiva de su profundidad ortográfica. Investigaciones han demostrado el papel de las características de los distintos sistemas ortográficos para explicar su aprendizaje y los procesos cognitivos envueltos en ella. Se presentan diversos autores Iberoamericanos y un aporte especial finlandes, los cuales a través de sus investigaciones y reflexiones, dan cuenta de las diferencias en los procesos lectores en sistemas ortográficos transparentes, así como de las direcciones que en un futuro pudiera tomar el estudio de la lectura desde la perspectiva de sus cualidades ortográficas.
This article explores the difficulties for understanding expository texts in a non-probability convenience sample of Spanish-speaking primary school children (N = 317) attending grades 2 (aged 7.77 on average), 3 (9.01), and 4 (10.03) at 2 primary schools in Córdoba, Argentina (154 females and 163 males). Its aim was to identify difficulties for understanding texts, considering the cognitive processes and the textual factors involved. Five texts with different characteristics (structure and vocabulary familiarity) were selected, about which literal and inferential questions were asked. Students were required to read each text and answer the questionnaire orally. The results were analyzed quantitatively (ANOVA and Students t test) and qualitatively (categorical analysis). Differences were observed among groups in literal and inferential questions as well as in total scores. Grade 4 students scored higher than those in grades 2 and 3. Nevertheless, in general, difficulties related with inferential processes were observed, specifically with inferential questions requiring students to explain causes or consequences and link textual information with prior knowledge. Even though students performed better in literal questions, they had difficulties extracting textually explicit concepts.
El presente articulo presenta dos aspectos de entre los principales resultados del proyecto de investigacion “Competencia definicional del escolar costarricense”, inscrito en el Instituto de Investigaciones Linguisticas; se estudian 2.160 definiciones infantiles, producidas por ninos de primero a sexto grado escolar, a partir de los parametros de analisis: a) contenido idiosincrasico frente a contenido convencional y b) autonomia contextual y situacional del significado.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between letter naming, isolated word recognition, word reading in text, and reading comprehension, which are all considered critical variables for reading fluency. The analysis of the variation of this relationship in the earliest years of primary school was undertaken. It may be assumed that, if comprehension is evaluated with a complex text, the accurate and rapid word reading might not be enough for comprehension because this process requires other kinds of operation and knowledge that children could not possess. In order to explore the relationships between text features and decoding abilities, Spanish speaking children in second, third, and fourth grades were tested. They were assessed in letter naming, isolated word reading, word reading in texts and comprehension of narrative and expository texts. The results of this study show a difference among groups in all the variables: children´s performance increased throughout the school years. In fourth grade, children reached the highest scores in word reading in texts. The performance of 2nd and 3rd grade groups in decoding task was lower, between 40% and 60% of the total score. Although there were no differences in the number of words read in one minute between narrative and expository texts, there were differences in comprehension: even though the performance is generally low, it was higher in narrative texts than it was in expository texts. These findings could indicate that both accurate and rapid word recognition skills could only explain part of the variation in reading comprehension which might be affected by text variables.
En el presente artículo abordamos el estudio de la metáfora gramatical en español, específicamente en textos escolares de Ciencias Sociales empleados en Colombia. Nuestro interés se centra en analizar, desde la perspectiva de la Gramática Sistémico-Funcional (Halliday, 1994, 2004b), las particularidades de la metáfora gramatical ideacional en español y sus implicaciones para la formación ciudadana y el aprendizaje. El corpus lo conforman tres capítulos de textos para octavo grado que aluden a la Revolución Industrial.
El proceso seguido para realizar nuestros análisis nos ha permitido identificar la presencia de metáforas gramaticales en los términos hallidayanos: nominalizaciones de procesos y cualidades, y el uso de verbos causales en lugar de conjunciones. Asimismo, hemos identificado otros tipos de metáforas: cláusulas no ergativas, presente histórico, participantes no animados. En el artículo resaltamos la importancia del desempaque de las metáforas en los procesos de análisis y también de enseñanza y aprendizaje, ya que a través de él se visibiliza la información escondida en la metáfora. (This paper addresses the study of grammatical metaphor in Spanish, specifically in Social Science textbooks in use in Colombian secondary schools. Our main interest is to analyze, from a Systemic Functional Grammar perspective (Halliday, 1994, 2004b), the particular characteristics of ideational grammatical metaphors in Spanish and their implications for citizenship education and for learning processes. The corpus is made up of chapters about the Industrial Revolution from three eighth-grade texts. Our analysis has identified the presence of grammatical
metaphors in Hallidayan terms: nominalizations of processes and qualities and the use of causal verbs in place of conjunctions. We have also identified other types of metaphor: nonergative clauses, historical present tense, and inanimate participants. The paper also stresses the importance of unpacking metaphors during the process of analysis and also during teaching and learning processes, since unpacking sheds light on information hidden in the metaphor.)
Teachers involved in the teaching of written composition are aware of the fact that this is one of the most important challenges in present day educa-tion. Current didactic models in this area propose the creation of contexts in which text composition has a double objective: facing rhetorical prob-lems in a specific writing task, and learning contents which facilitate solv-ing these problems. Teaching and learning sequences -didactic units or sequences, (DS) -designed for this purpose, also try to enhance interactive situations among students as well as among students and teachers. These interactive situations make language become a learning object and a learn-ing tool at the same time. In studies that analyse learners' oral production during written composition tasks, the importance of this metalinguistic activity has been observed (Camps, 1994b; Bouchard, 1996 ;David & Jaffré, 1997; Camps & Ribas, 1996a; Schneuwly, 1995). This metalinguistic activity comes up in different ways and is also produced at different levels of con-sciousness. In this chapter we try to show how rich and complex students metalinguistic activity is, as well as how it relates to the features that char-acterise composition contexts in school, where texts are produced.
Beyond academic vocabulary, the constellation of skills that comprise academic language proficiency
has remained imprecisely defined. This study proposes an expanded operationalization of this construct
referred to as core academic language skills (CALS).CALSrefers to the knowledge and deployment of a
repertoire of language forms and functions that co-occur with school learning tasks across disciplines.
Using an innovative instrument, we explored CALS in a cross-sectional sample of 235 students
in Grades 4–8. The results revealed between- and within-grade variability in CALS. Psychometric
analyses yielded strong reliability and supported the presence of a single CALS factor, which was found to be predictive of reading comprehension. Our findings suggest that the CALS construct and
instrument appear promising for exploring students’ school-relevant language skills.
We reintroduce a wide-angle view of reading comprehension, the Reading Systems Framework, which places word knowledge in the center of the picture, taking into account the progress made in comprehension research and theory. Within this framework, word-to-text integration processes can serve as a model for the study of local comprehension processes, that is, those that make sense out of short stretches of text. These processes require linkage between the word identification system and the comprehension system, with the lexicon in the linking role. Studies of these processes examine the influence of one sentence on the reading of a single word in a second sentence, which enables the integration of the word meaning into the reader's mental model of the text. Skilled comprehenders, more than less skilled, show immediate use of word meanings in the integration process. Other evidence is also consistent with the assumption that word meaning processes are causal components in comprehension skill.
The purpose of this study was to understand the reading performance of subgroups of language minority students and examine whether a research-based academic vocabulary intervention, Word Generation, has differential effects on these students’ academic vocabulary knowledge. Thirteen middle schools, propensity-score matched based on their achievement and demographic data, were randomly assigned to either treatment (n = 3,539) or control (n = 2,630) conditions. Students in both conditions were classified as either English-only (EO) or language minority students. The language minority students were further grouped as either being initially fluent English proficient (IFEP), redesignated fluent English proficient (RFEP), or limited English proficient (LEP). Multivariate analysis of variance and hierarchical linear models revealed three important findings. First, while LEP students’ scores on reading measures were significantly below those of the EO students, RFEP students’ scores were comparable to EO students’ scores. In addition, IFEP students’ scores were higher than those of the EO students. Second, there were variations within the RFEP students when they were disaggregated by time since redesignation; RFEP students’ reading scores were positively correlated with time since redesignation. Third, the treatment effect emerged only as an interaction with RFEP status. This study suggests that the benefits of a research-based intervention may vary according to students’ level of English proficiency.
In this study, we present one task to assess syntactic awareness. This task consists in rearranging the word order in a set of sentences. The sentences vary in length (short-long), syntactic complexity (active-passive, simple-compound, coordinated-subordinated) and plausibility (half of the sentences are semantically plausible and the other half are semantically implausible). We analyzed the information provided by this task in its application to a group of 97 primary students, and we compared the results based on each of the conditions and depending on the level of understanding. The results show greater difficulty when the content is semantically implausible, making essential the implementation of syntactic processing skills. The data also show that while some elements of length and syntactic complexity show significant effects on the results, the introduction of semantically implausible sentences overwhelmingly affects task performance, modulating the effect of the aforementioned conditions. The data reveal no differences in comprehension among students who had a syntactic reader profile and those with a semantic reader profile. Finally, we found that those items in the task that allow for semantic processing relate better to the measure of reading comprehension than the items that support only syntactic processing. The results suggest that the designed task allowed to obtain differentiated information about the syntactic and semantic components of written language in the process of reading assessment.
This research deals with the writing problems currently faced by higher education students starting from the analysis of the use they make in their texts of the discourse markers. The selected corpus is a set of 80 essays written by students of the Catholic Pontifical University (Pontificia Universidad Católica,) of Chile. This article entails a descriptive and correlational study that can be considered exploratory. The author analyzes the structure of the argument texts in which those markers are operating and describes and illustrates the different functions carried out by the markers within the essays, proving their prevailing role for the processing of inferences. She also verifies the correspondence between the markers appropriateness and the logical progression of the essays in which they are working. This allows to demonstrate that the use of those particles in arguments is essential in order to produce coherent texts.
This paper presents an analysis of the teacher-textbook- student interaction that takes place during the development of the topics ‘Water’ and ‘Air’ in eighth grade. The purpose is to analyze to what extent the discourse features of a Natural Science school textbook, mediated by the teacher´s discourse, facilitate the students´ understanding of natural events and contribute to the development of citizenship competences. The methodology of the study combined classroom ethnography and discourse analysis. The language of the textbook is analyzed from the perspective of the experiential metafunction within Functional Systemic Linguistics; namely, grammatical metaphor, transitivity and ergativity. At the clause level, classroom discourse was analyzed in terms of the speech functions that realize the interpersonal metafunction. At the level of discourse segments, patterns of interaction including Interrogation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequences were examined. Results suggest that the language of the textbook contains a large number of non-ergative material processes and a large number of nominalizations. The teacher repeatedly resorts to IRF sequences, in which she gives orders and asks for specific information. The language of the students tends to imitate many of the features of the language of the text and of the teacher, without evidence of elaboration and criticism. These findings suggest that some linguistic features of the text, as well as the language used by the teacher, do not (neither) facilitate the understanding of the concepts under study, nor do they (nor) foster competences among students that would enable them to exercise informed and conscious citizenship.
Given, on the one hand, the poor results obtained by Peruvian children in the national and international reading assessments. And on the other hand, the increased investment in technology for schools in the country, this study aimed to develop and test an online tool to improve reading comprehension. In order to do this, the reading comprehension strategies and vocabulary activities from the research-based digital environment ICON were adapted to design the platform LEO. A total of 88 fifth graders from urban middle-to-low-income private schools from Lima participated in this quasi-experimental study, which involved a control group and a treatment group that participated in a 12-week teacher-mediated digital intervention. All participants were administered reading and vocabulary assessments pre and post intervention. Results revealed that students who participated in the intervention achieved higher comprehension scores for narrative texts and higher vocabulary scores than those of the control group.
With a sample of 7,752 fourth- to seventh-grade students in 25 schools which were randomized at the school level to condition, this article reports experimental impacts of an enhanced version of Word Generation on student outcomes at the end of Year 1 and of Year 2. Word Generation employs analysis, synthesis, critique, and problem-solving activities to build students’ academic language, perspective taking, and ultimately their reading comprehension. Results indicate that the program improves the proximate outcome of academic vocabulary included in the curriculum after the first and second year of implementation for all students (Y1 effect size (ES) = .22, Y2 = .28 for fourth and fifth graders; Y1 ES = .13, Y2 = .16 for sixth and seventh graders). For those in the fourth and fifth grades, their perspective positioning skills also improved at the end of the first year (ES = .14), and their academic language skills (ES = .06), perspective articulation and positioning skills (ES = .12, .19), and reading comprehension (ES = .15) improved at the end of the second year. Among sixth and seventh graders, there were improvements in perspective positioning skills (ES = .19) and reading comprehension (ES = .10) at the end of Year 2. Effects after both Years 1 and 2 were stronger in high-exposure classrooms.
The distinction between basic interpersonal conversational skills (BICS) and cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP) drew attention to the very different time periods typically required by immigrant children to acquire conversational fluency in the school language as compared to grade-appropriate academic proficiency in that language. The distinction also highlighted the problematic educational consequences of conflating social and academic language. The BICS/CALP distinction was embedded within a broader framework that specified the role of societal power relations in framing both the organization of schooling and teacher-student identity negotiation. It is argued that the distinction is consistent with a wide range of research and has also proven effective in generating positive changes in educational practice and policy in relation to culturally and linguistically diverse students.
In this article, I present a developmental model of how children learn to comprehend what they read, which builds on current models of reading comprehension and integrates findings from instructional research and evidence-based models of development in early and middle childhood. The lattice model holds that children's developing reading comprehension is a function of the interacting, reciprocal, and bootstrapping effects of developing text-specific, linguistic, and social-cognitive processes, which interact with instruction as Child Characteristic × Instruction (C × I) interaction effects. The processes develop over time and in the context of classroom, home, peer, community, and other influences to affect children's development of proficient reading comprehension. First, I describe models of reading comprehension; then, I review the basic processes in the model, the role of instruction, and C × I interactions in the context of the lattice model. Finally, I discuss implications for instruction and research.
Introduction: Simple Ideas about Reading Comprehension. A Framework for Comprehension. Higher-Level Factors in Comprehension. The Linguistic-Conceptual Machinery for Comprehension. Word Identification, Decoding, and Phonological Awareness .Comprehension Instruction. Conclusion: A More General View of Comprehension Development
Comprehension depends on multiple sources of knowledge and the processes that use such knowledge. In addressing reading comprehension problems, research has naturally focused on the higher-level processes that are the object of text comprehension research—making inferences, monitoring comprehension, etc. In this chapter, we suggest that this approach is incomplete and draw attention to the importance of word-by-word text comprehension processes
that integrate a word with the reader’s representation of the text.
1. Registers, genres, and styles: fundamental varieties of language Part I. Analytical Framework: 2. Describing the situational characteristics of registers and genres 3. Analysing linguistic features and their functions Part II. Detailed Descriptions of Register, Genre and Style: 4. Interpersonal spoken registers 5. Written registers, genres and styles 6. Historical evolution of registers, genres and styles 7. Registers and genres in electronic communication Part III. Larger Theoretical Issues: 8. Multidimensional patterns of register variation 9. Register studies in context Appendix A. Annotation of major register/genre studies Appendix B. Activity texts References.
Childhood and family life have changed significantly in recent decades. What is the nature of these changes? How have they affected the use of time, space, work and play? In what ways have they influenced face-to-face talk and the uses of technology within families and communities? Eminent anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath sets out to find answers to these and similar questions, tracking the lives of 300 black and white working-class families as they reshaped their lives in new locations, occupations and interpersonal alignments over a period of thirty years. From the 1981 recession through the economic instabilities and technological developments of the opening decade of the twenty-first century, Shirley Brice Heath shows how families constantly rearrange their patterns of work, language, play and learning in response to economic pressures. This outstanding study is a must-read for anyone interested in family life, language development and social change.
Deep reading comprehension refers to the process required to succeed at tasks defined by the Common Core State Literacy Standards, as well as to achieve proficiency on the more challenging reading tasks in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) framework. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that three skill domains not frequently attended to in instruction or in theories of reading comprehension – academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning – predict outcomes on an assessment of deep reading comprehension. The Global Integrated Scenario-based Assessment (GISA; O'Reilly, Weeks, Sabatini, Steinberg & Halderman, 2014) is designed to reflect students' abilities to evaluate texts, integrate information from an array of texts, and use textual evidence to formulate a position, all features of deep reading comprehension. We tested the role of academic language, perspective taking, and complex reasoning in explaining variance in end-of-year GISA scores, controlling for beginning-of-year scores and student demographics. All three predictors explained small, but significant, amounts of additional variance. We suggest that these three skill domains deserve greater attention in theories of reading comprehension and in instruction.
Decades of research have shown that women's school attainment is correlated with reduced child mortality and fertility in developing countries - without clarifying the processes involved. This book proposes that literate communication skills acquired in Western-type schools constitute a causal link between schooling and maternal behavior in bureaucratic health care settings, contributing to the decline in birth and death rates. The book reviews the history of mass schooling and its diffusion, the evidence on women's schooling in demographic transition, and the re-conceptualization of literacy in educational research. Then it presents data on the literacy skills and maternal behavior of mothers in four countries - Mexico, Nepal, Venezuela and Zambia - finding that literacy and language skills acquired in school were retained into a woman's child-bearing years, that literacy mediates the effect of schooling on a mother's comprehension of health messages in print and broadcast media and on her health navigation skill - with other socioeconomic factors (urban or rural residence, income, husband's education, parents' education) controlled. Literacy also influences mothers' tendencies to talk and read to their young children. The theory of communicative socialization emerging from this research indicates that girls acquire from teacher-pupil interaction the tendencies to act like pupils in health care settings and like teachers with their own children, thus using their literacy skills in ways standardized by classroom experience. This new account of maternal health literacy and health navigation skills is empirically supported by the evidence presented in the book but needs further validation from longitudinal research.
The simple view of reading describes reading comprehension as the product of decoding and listening comprehension and the relative contribution of each to reading comprehension across development. We present a cross-sectional analysis of first, second, and third graders (N = 123–125 in each grade) to assess the adequacy of the basic model. Participants completed multiple measures to inform latent constructs of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and vocabulary. In line with previous research, structural equation models confirmed that the influence of decoding skill decreased with increasing grade and that the influence of listening comprehension increased. However, several additional findings indicate that reading development is not that simple and support an elaboration of the basic model: A strong influence of listening comprehension on reading comprehension was apparent by grade 2, decoding skill was best measured by word and nonword reading accuracy in the early grades and word reading fluency in grade 3, and vocabulary skills indirectly affected reading comprehension through both decoding skill and listening comprehension. This new elaborated model, which provides a more comprehensive view of critical influences on reading in the early grades, has diagnostic and instructional ramifications for improving reading pedagogy. 阅读的简单观念描述阅读理解为单词解码和聆听理解这两个成分的相乘组合,而每个成分对阅读理解的相对贡献跨越发展阶段。为评估这基本模型的适当性,本文作者提供一个对小学一、二和三年级学生(各级人数为123-125名)的横向研究分析报告。研究参与者完成了多项测验,以厘定单词朗读准确性、单词朗读流畅度、聆听理解、阅读理解和词汇等五个潜在构念的变数。结果与先前研究相一致,结构方程式模型证实字词解码的影响力随年级晋升而减少,聆听理解的影响力则随之而增加。但本研究的另外几个结果亦显示,阅读发展并不是这样简单,因而支持一个较详细阐述的基本模型:就二年级学生而言,聆听理解对阅读理解的强烈影响是明显的;就低年级学生而言,有意义和无意义单词阅读准确性是测定单词解码的最佳方法;就三年级学生而言,单词朗读流畅度却是测定单词解码的最佳方法;词汇是通过单词解码和聆听理解而间接影响阅读理解。这个新的而经详细阐述的基本模型,对研究低年级阅读能力的关键影响提供一个较全面的观点,并在改进阅读教学方面具有诊断方法和教学方法的影响力。 La perspectiva simple de la lectura describe la comprensión lectora como producto del desciframiento y la comprensión auditiva y la contribución relativa de cada uno a la comprensión lectora a través de su evolución. Primero presentamos un análisis representativo de primer, segundo y tercer grados (N = 123-125 en cada grupo) para evaluar lo apropiado del modelo básico. Los participantes completaron múltiples medidas para informar constructos latentes de la precisión lectora de las palabras, la fluidez de la lectura de la palabra, la comprensión oral, la comprensión lectora, y el vocabulario. Al igual que en investigaciones previas, los modelos de ecuaciones estructurales confirmaron que la influencia de la habilidad de descifrar se reducía a medida que subían de grado y que la influencia de la comprensión oral incrementaba. Sin embargo, varios resultados adicionales indican que el desarrollo de la lectura no es tan simple y apoyan una elaboración del modelo básico: Una influencia grande por parte de la comprensión oral en la comprensión lectora era aparente ya en el segundo grado, la habilidad de descifrar se podía medir mejor por medio de la precisión lectora de palabras y hápax en los grados menores y la fluidez lectora en el tercer grado, y la habilidad de aprender vocabulario afectaba indirectamente la comprensión lectora tanto por medio de la habilidad de descifrar como de la comprensión oral. Este nuevo modelo elaborado, el cual provee una perspectiva más amplia de influencias importantes en la lectura en los primeros grados, tiene ramificaciones diagnósticas y didácticas para el mejoramiento de la pedagogía de la lectura. إن النظرة البسيطة للقراءة تصف استيعاب القراة منتجاً لحل الرموز واستيعاب الاستماع والمساهمة النسبية لكليهما في استيعاب القراءة عبر التنمية. ونقدم ها هنا تحليلاً مقطعياً للطلاب في الصف الأول والثاني والثالث (عددهم = 123-125 في كل صف) كي نقيم صلاحية النموذج الأساسي. لقد أخذ المشتركون عدة امتحانات للإفادة بتراكيب باطنة في دقة قراءة الكلام وطلاقة قراءة الكلام واستيعاب الاستماع واستيعاب القراءة والمفردات. وتماشياً مع أبحاث سابقة، أكدت نماذج معادلة هيكلية أن تأثير مهارة حل الرمول تناقص مع التقدم في الصفوف وأن تأثير استيعاب الاستماع ازداد. بيد أن بضع نتائج إضافية تشير إلى أن تنمية القراءة ليست سهلة إلى هذه الدرجة وتدعو لتوسيع النموذج الأساسي: اتضح تأثير قوي لاستيعاب الاستماع على استيعاب القراءة عند الصف الثاني، ويتم أفضل تقييم لحل الرموز في دقة قراءة الكلام الحقيقي والكلام الوهمي في الصفوف المبكرة وطلاقة قراءة الكلام في الصف الثالث، ومهارات المفردات أثرت على استيعاب القراءة تأثيراً غير مباشر في مهارة حل الرموز واستيعاب الاستماع. وهذا النموذج الموسع الذي يوفر نظرة أكثر شمولاً لتأثيرات نقدية على القراءة في الصفوف المبكرة له نتائج تشخيصية وتعليمية من أجل تحسين تعليم القراءة. Пpocтoe пpeдcтaвлeниe o чтeнии oпиcывaeт пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo кaк пpoдyкт yмeния дeкoдиpoвaть и вocпpинимaть тeкcт нa cлyx. Cчитaeтcя, чтo имeннo coвoкyпнocть этиx yмeний и cocтaвляeт ocнoвy для пoнимaния пpoчитaннoгo. Для oцeнки aдeквaтнocти тaкoгo пoдxoдa в cтaтьe пpeдcтaвлeны peзyльтaты пepeкpecтнoгo aнaлизa чтeния cpeди yчaщиxcя пepвыx, втopыx и тpeтьиx клaccoв (N = 123-125 в кaждoй вoзpacтнoй гpyппe). Учacтники тecтиpoвaния выпoлнили мнoгoчиcлeнныe зaдaния нa тoчнocть и бeглocть чтeния cлoв, вocпpиятиe нa cлyx, пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo и oцeнкy cлoвapнoгo зaпaca. Пoдтвepдилиcь вывoды paнee пpoвeдeнныx иccлeдoвaний: влияниe нaвыкoв дeкoдиpoвaния нa пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo c вoзpacтoм yмeньшaeтcя, a влияниe нaвыкoв вocпpиятия нa cлyx pacтeт. Oднaкo дoпoлнитeльныe peзyльтaты, пoлyчeнныe в xoдe иccлeдoвaния, пoдcкaзывaют, чтo нe вce тaк oднoзнaчнo и пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo тpeбyeт дaльнeйшeгo изyчeния, пocкoлькy cильнoe влияниe пoнимaния нa cлyx выявляeтcя кo втopoмy клaccy, нaвык дeкoдиpoвaния лyчшe вceгo зaмepяeтcя тoчнocтью чтeния cлoв и нe-cлoв y пepвoклaccникoв, бeглocть чтeния cлoв – в тpeтьeм клacce, a cлoвapный зaпac кocвeннo влияeт нa пoнимaниe пpoчитaннoгo чepeз дeкoдиpoвaниe и пoнимaниe нa cлyx. Этa нeдaвнo paзpaбoтaннaя мoдeль oбecпeчивaeт бoлee вcecтopoннee пpeдcтaвлeниe o фaктopax, кoтopыe влияют нa чтeниe млaдшиx шкoльникoв, и имeeт диaгнocтичecкoe и мeтoдичecкoe знaчeниe для coвepшeнcтвoвaния oбyчeния чтeнию. La conception simple de la lecture comme produit du décodage et de la compréhension orale, avec une contribution variable de chacune d'elles selon le moment du développement. Nous présentons ici une analyse transversale d’élèves de première, seconde, et troisième année de scolarité (N = 123-125 à chaque niveau) afin d’évaluer la pertinence de ce modèle de base. Les participants ont répondu à plusieurs évaluations afin de savoir ce que sont les constructs sous-jacents de la lecture exacte de mots, de la lecture courante de mots, de la compréhension orale, de la compréhension en lecture, et du vocabulaire. Dans le prolongement des recherche antérieures, les modèles d’équation structurale confirment que l'influence da la compétence à decoder diminue quand le niveau scolaire augmente et que l'influence de la compréhension en lecture augmente. Cependant plusieurs résultats supplémentaires indiquent que le développement de la lecture n'est pas si simple et plaident en faveur d'une révision du modèle de base: en 2e année, on observe un important effet de la compréhension orale sur la comprehension de la lecture; on évalue mieux la compétence à décoder par l'exactitude dans la lecture de mots et de non-mots dans les premières classes et par la lecture courante en 3e année, et les compétences en vocabulaire jouent indirectement un rôle dans la compréhension de la lecture par le biais à la fois de la compétence en décodage et de la comprehension orale. Le nouveau modèle élaboré, qui fournit une conception plus intelligente de ce qui influe sur la lecture pendant les premières années, a des ramifications pour l’évaluation et l'enseignement en vue de développer la pédagogie de la lecture.
There is strong empirical evidence on the universal development of phonological awareness from large to small units. However, comparatively little research has been conducted to determine whether the predictive weight of these units differs according to the language in which the child is learning to read. While rhyme is a unit that carries significant predictive power in English, there is little evidence of its relevance in Spanish. The purpose of the present study is to determine the predictive weight of consonant rhyme on reading accuracy, reading speed and reading comprehension from kindergarten to first grade. Ninety-four Chilean Spanish-speaking non-reader kindergarten children (49 girls and 45 boys) from low SES were tested. The results indicated that consonant rhyme has no predictive power on any of the reading skills measured. The transparency of Spanish and the main reading strategies used by children in this language are analysed as explanatory elements of the results found.ResumenExiste contundente evidencia empírica sobre patrón de desarrollo universal de la conciencia fonológica desde unidades grandes a las pequeñas. Sin embargo, comparativamente menos investigación se ha realizado para determinar si el peso predictivo de estas unidades difiere según la lengua en la cual el niño está aprendiendo a leer. Mientras la rima es una unidad con un significativo poder predictivo en inglés, existe poca evidencia de su relevancia en español. El presente estudio tuvo como objetivo determinar el peso predictivo de la rima consonante en la lectura de palabras, no palabras, velocidad y comprensión lectora desde kinder a primer año básico. Noventa y cuatro niños de kinder no lectores Hispanoparlantes Chilenos de NSE bajo fueron testeados (49 niñas y 45 niños). Los resultados indican que no existe poder predictivo de la rima consonante sobre ninguna de las habilidades lectoras medidas. La transparencia del español y las principales estrategias de lectura utilizadas por los niños en esta lengua son analizadas como elementos explicativos de los resultados encontrados.
This paper will present a theoretical analysis of research on metalinguistic understanding, illustrating how current research does not yet adequately address metalinguistic development in writing. Existing research on metalinguistic understanding has focused more on language acquisition, oral development and bilingual learners. Research on metalinguistic understanding in writing has tended to look more closely at young learners developing writing skills in spelling, transcription and orthography. Thus, theoretical accounts of metalinguistic understanding are currently insufficient to explain developing metalinguistic mastery of composing text and the relationships between declarative and procedural metalinguistic knowledge in writing. If we are to understand better the nature of metalinguistic understanding in relation to writing in learners in the later phases of compulsory education, it is important to develop theoretical clarity about the key concepts involved in order to frame empirical studies which are both conceptually and methodologically rigorous and educationally relevant.