Impacts of Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Community Outreach Project Intervention on Students’ Oral Reading Fluency, Reading Comprehension, and Academic Achievements

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of Reading for Ethiopia’s Achievement Developed Community Outreach (READ CO) project intervention on students’ oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, academic achievements, and listening comprehension. It also aimed at identifying the students and teachers’ awareness and practices about the READ CO project interventions. Experimental research—Posttest-only control group—design was employed for the study, which is mainly quantitative, but also uses qualitative techniques (latent content analysis). The results were analyzed using t tests and econometrics analysis mainly. Questionnaires and observations were also developed and employed as other tools among the experimental group principals and language teachers in the school to investigate the overall practice. The results from quantitative data analysis indicated that there were no statistically significant differences between the posttest performance of the study group and the control group for reading comprehension, academic achievements, and listening comprehension, yet oral reading fluency is significant. The result from questionnaire and observation also showed that the project has not been found to have a positive impact on students reading performance or improvement. Finally, it was mainly recommended that practical training and real service should be given for the targeted schools on how to improve and implement reading practices via the project.

Picture description in the assessment of connected speech intelligibility in Parkinson's disease: A pilot study

Introduction: Assessment of intelligibility in dysarthria tends to rely on oral reading of sentences or words. However, self-generated utterances are closer to a clients’ natural speech. This study investigated how transcription of utterances elicited by picture description can be used in the assessment of intelligibility in speakers with Parkinson’s disease. Methods: Speech samples from eleven speakers with Parkinson’s disease and six neurologically healthy persons were audio-recorded. Forty-two naive listeners completed transcriptions of self-generated sentences from a picture description task and orally read sentences from the Swedish Test of Intelligibility, as well as scaled ratings of narrative speech samples. Results: Intelligibility was higher in orally read than self-generated sentences and higher for content words than for the whole sentence in self-generated sentences for most of the speakers, although these within-group differences were not statistically significant at group level. Adding contextual leads for the listeners increased intelligibility in self-generated utterances significantly, but with individual variation. Although correlations between the intelligibility measures were at least moderate or strong, there was a considerable inter- and intra-speaker variability in intelligibility scores between tasks for the speakers with Parkinson’s disease, indicating individual variation of factors that impact intelligibility. Intelligibility scores from neurologically healthy speakers were generally high across tasks with no significant differences between the conditions. Discussion/Conclusion: Within-speaker variability support literature recommendations to use multiple methods and tasks when assessing intelligibility. The inclusion of transcription of self-generated utterances elicited by picture description to the intelligibility assessment has the potential to provide additional information to assessment methods based on oral reading of pre-scripted sentences, and to inform the planning of interventions.

Durian Locule (Endocarp) Water Immersion Drinking Effect to Reduce Heaty Sensation after Flesh Consumption: A Preliminary Study

Durian is said to have a “heaty” effect on the people who have eaten it that can raise their body temperature and blood pressure. The locule water immersion is the water that is drunk using the durian’s inner skin (endocarp) that contains the durian flesh and it is said (mainly via local hearsay) that it can lower the body temperature right after consuming the flesh. The aim of this research is to investigate a myth about the effect of D24 durian locule water immersion that can possibly reduce body temperature after eating durian via oral temperature assessment. In order to explore the reliability of this myth, an experimental research was carried out with five different respondents to undergo with 3 different set of condition which are: a) consumed the same amount of durian, but they did not have to drink the immersed-locule water; b) consumed the durian and they had to drink the immersed-locule water and c) consumed the durian and they had to drink a cup of water. The changes in their body temperature (oral reading) were recorded and analysed for significant changes (n = 3). Overall, the immersed-locule water exhibited a mild affect in the changes of body temperature (p<0.05) on a short period of time (<30 mins after consumption). For that reason, the availability of pectin in the locule water-immersion might have help facilitates the natural homeostasis mechanism faster as to suppress of any sudden body heating after eating durian.

Paired Reading Strategy and Comprehension Level Among Grade 10 Students

This study aimed to determine the effectiveness of paired – reading strategy in improving the reading comprehension of Grade ten learners. In this study, the subjects were profiled first about their age, sex, parents’ highest educational attainment, family income and availability of reading materials. Then, the subjects reading comprehension level was also determined before and after the exposure in paired – reading strategy.The subjects of this study are the Grade 10 – Ruby learners which are assigned as control group and Grade 10 – Jade learners which were assigned as experimental group. Both groups are enrolled in Palina East National High School, Urdaneta City, Pangasinan, where the study was conducted, during the school year 2019 – 2020.In this study, the researcher utilized descriptive research design in addressing the problems about the profile of the subjects and their reading comprehension level. Then, a quasi - experimental research design was also used to determine the effectiveness of paired reading strategy in improving the reading comprehension of the learners. And in gathering the data needed in this study, a test which is the Oral Reading Comprehension assessment was utilized.Findings of the study revealed that both groups, the control and the experimental group, are at the literal level of reading comprehension before exposing to paired – reading strategy, then after the experimentation, the control group reached the interpretive level of reading comprehension while the experimental group reached the applied level of reading comprehension. Results were further supported by the findings of test of difference between the post-test of both groups which revealed that the experimental group had statistically better performance compared to the control group. Thus, paired reading strategy is more effective than traditional teaching in facilitating reading comprehension among learners.

Acoustic Features of Oral Reading Prosody and the Relation With Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Taiwanese Children

Purpose: The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody—the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud—predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities. Method: We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades 3 and 4), and oral reading prosody in Taiwanese third-grade children ( N = 109). In the oral reading prosody task, children were asked to read aloud a passage designed for third graders and then to answer forced-choice questions. Their oral reading prosody was measured through acoustic analyses including the number of pause intrusions, intersentential pause duration, phrase-final comma pause duration, child–adult pitch match, and sentence-final pitch change. Results: Analyses of variance revealed that children's number of pause intrusions differed as a function of word reading. After controlling for age, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, and word reading, we found that different dimensions of oral reading prosody contributed to reading rate. In contrast, the number of pause intrusions, phrase-final comma pause duration, and child–adult pitch match predicted reading accuracy and comprehension. Conclusions: Oral reading prosody plays an important role in children's reading fluency and reading comprehension in tone languages like Mandarin. Specifically, children need to read texts prosodically as evidenced by fewer pause intrusions, shorter phrase-final comma pause duration, and closer child–adult pitch match, which are early predictive makers of reading fluency and comprehension.

The Fluency of Oral Reading with Natural Reader Software

This recent investigation aims to find out whether natural reader software improves oral reading fluency for English language learners. In this recent study, the natural reader software was considered as independent variable and the oral reading fluency score was regarded as dependent one. The subjects of this investigation were students of English education study program. The number of the students of group (1) were 32 students who are taught using natural reader software and this group was considered to be an experimental group and The number of the students of group (2) were35 students who are taught without using natural reader software this group was considered to be control group. This study has proven that this software can significantly prove that most of students have more accurate and more precise reading skills. This study has revealed that oral reading fluency instruction does improve global reading proficiency at all grade levels

The contributions of phonological awareness and decoding on spelling in third grade isiXhosa readers

Through the use of an initial study and a pre-registered conceptual replication study we examined the relations between decoding, phonological awareness (PA), and spelling for third grade readers of isiXhosa, which uses a consistent alphabetic orthography. The initial exploratory study sought to describe the relationships between decoding and spelling, and PA and spelling in a sample of 49 third grade isiXhosa readers. We then conceptually replicated this study to confirm the hypotheses generated from the initial study with a larger sample of 149 third grade isiXhosa readers. We expected that both decoding and PA would be related to spelling and that the strength of the relationship between decoding and spelling, and PA and spelling would vary with spelling ability, due to the changes that occur in the development of spelling. Cross-sectional, quantitative secondary data was used from two different projects to answer the research questions. Tasks of PA, oral reading fluency (as a measure of decoding) and spelling were developed and administered to the participants. The analysis revealed that decoding was a robust predictor of spelling for third grade isiXhosa readers, whereas PA was not a robust predictor of spelling in isiXhosa, after controlling for decoding. Our study thus confirms the association found between decoding and spelling ability in consistent orthographies using cross-sectional data.