30.375, Review: Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Welie (2017)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-375. Wed Jan 23 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.375, Review: Applied Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Welie (2017)

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Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2019 15:21:51
From: Gerdine Ulysse [gulysse at andrew.cmu.edu]
Subject: Individual differences in reading comprehension

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/28/28-1821.html

AUTHOR: Camille  Welie
TITLE: Individual differences in reading comprehension
SUBTITLE: A componential approach to eighth graders' expository text comprehension
SERIES TITLE: LOT Dissertation Series
PUBLISHER: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
YEAR: 2017

REVIEWER: Gerdine M Ulysse, Carnegie Mellon University

SUMMARY

The book aims to investigate the role of four components: knowledge of
connectives, text reading fluency, text structure inference skills and reading
motivation in Dutch eighth graders’ expository text comprehension. In the
book, Camille Welie also examines whether these four components depend on
these readers’ cognitive resources and language backgrounds. Although all of
these components play an important role in reading comprehension, Welie found
that only knowledge of connectives and text structure inference skills
contribute to expository text comprehension. However, the effects of
motivation on text comprehension differed for monolingual and bilingual
students. The book contains 6 chapters, but Chapters 2 to 5 present studies
that were already published as journal articles.

In the first chapter of the book, the author, Camille Welie presents summary
of the results of the OTAW (“Opbrengst Taalonderwijs Amsterdam-West”, which
means ‘Results of Language Education Amsterdam-West’) project and explains the
nature of text comprehension and reading processes involved at each level of
the hierarchy of text comprehension. He stated that the purposes of the
project was to examine the students’ level and development of expository text
comprehension and vocabulary knowledge in the first three years of secondary
education (grades seven to nine, age range twelve to sixteen). The second
purpose of the project was to determine whether there is a relationship
between students’ language proficiency and language education characteristics.
 The results of the OTAW project showed that a large number of students from
12 schools (25 percent) were weak readers. In addition, expository text
comprehension was a big problem for many secondary school students who
participated in the OTAW project. Also, language background and SES fairly
relate to vocabulary knowledge. For instance, some monolingual students
outperformed their bilingual peers with language minority background in grades
seven and eight in vocabulary knowledge. Results from questionnaire and
interview of 55 language arts teachers revealed that there is room for
improvement in terms of embedding writing and reading education in meaningful
tasks with contextualized approach. Welie stated that word level reading and
sentence to text level reading require different types of mental processes,
and different people can have different successes at these levels, leading to
individual differences in text comprehension. Moreover, working memory
capacity, especially low working memory, can affect someone’s text
comprehension. Readers cannot hold and integrate sentence information in
working memory, leading to poorer sentence comprehension. Therefore, decoding
skills and listening comprehension are the two integral components of reading
comprehension.

In Chapter 2, Welie analyzes the relationship between knowledge of connectives
and expository text comprehension. He specifically investigated whether
knowledge of connectives contributes uniquely to expository text comprehension
above and beyond sentence reading fluency, general vocabulary knowledge and
metacognitive knowledge for 171 eighth graders. The author also examined
whether the contribution of connectives would vary based on backgrounds of the
readers. Based on different regression analyses, the findings revealed that
knowledge of connectives influenced individual difference in these eighth
graders’ text comprehension. In addition, the contribution of connectives to
text comprehension was contingent on the eighth grader’s level of
metacognitive knowledge. This relationship was stronger as the reader’s
metacognitive knowledge increased. Welie also found that knowledge of
connectives did not seem to have an association with these eighth graders’
sentence reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge and language background.

In Chapter 3, Welie scrutinizes the relationship between text reading fluency
and expository text comprehension. He examined the relationship between these
variables while accounting for sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge
and metacognitive knowledge by dividing the eighth graders into two groups: 54
monolinguals and 117 bilinguals. He also analyzed whether text reading fluency
for text comprehension would differ for monolingual and bilingual readers.
Based on students’ reading tests, which targeted their fluency skills,
linguistic knowledge and metacognitive knowledge and on  regression analyses,
the results showed that there is no connection between text reading fluency
and text comprehension for both groups. Moreover, text reading fluency was not
found to be associated with either linguistic knowledge or sentence reading
fluency levels of the eighth graders.

In Chapter 4, the author examines the connection between text structure
inference skill and expository text comprehension. Welie investigated whether
text structure inference skill contributed to expository text comprehension
for 151 eighth graders. Welie also wanted to see if this contribution would
vary for monolingual and bilingual Dutch students, or between students who had
different reading proficiency, reading fluency or linguistic knowledge levels.
Using reading tests and multiple regression analyzes, the researcher found
that text structure inference skill was associated with expository text
comprehension for the eighth graders.  However, text structure inference skill
was not found to be dependent on readers’ language backgrounds or on their
reading proficiency, reading fluency or vocabulary knowledge levels.

Chapter 5 presents the relation between motivation and expository text
comprehension. Welie particularly scrutinized the connection between types of
motivation and the effect of cognitive skills on 152 eighth graders’
expository text comprehension. The author also wanted to analyze whether the
contribution of motivation to expository text comprehension differed between
monolingual and bilingual students, and between poor and good readers. These
participants took reading tests, which assessed their expository text
comprehension, sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge, metacognitive
knowledge and motivations to read expository texts. The findings revealed that
motivation did not contribute to the effect of cognitive skills on expository
text comprehension for both monolingual and bilingual readers. These results
remained true for poor and good readers.

To the author, the different experiments in this book reveal the importance of
not only vocabulary knowledge, but also metacognitive knowledge, knowledge of
connectives, and text structure inference skill for expository text
comprehension. This means all of these components and skills should be
considered in instruction.  Moreover, reading fluency should not be the only
focus at the secondary school. At that level, a student can also benefit from
instruction in connectives and text inference, which are pivotal for reading
comprehension. 

EVALUATION 

This book presents a well-written and coherent study, which highlights the
importance of sub-reading skills and reading skills’ instruction for text
comprehension. In addition, Welie’s main goals, which were to analyze the
relationship between four components (knowledge of connectives, text reading
fluency, text structure inference skill, and reading motivation) and
expository text comprehension, are achieved with the book. His second aim,
which was to investigate whether these four components’ contribution to
comprehending expository text comprehension would vary for monolingual and
bilingual Dutch eighth graders, was also achieved. The use of regression
analyses and reading tests are appropriate to assess these skills or potential
factors. 

This book would benefit language researchers, especially those who are
interested in psycholinguistics, and language instructors. The implications of
these results for language instructions are numerous and valuable. This study
shows not only the importance of these components for (expository) reading
comprehension, but it also reveals the significance of teaching these skills
in the language classroom. The experiments in this book show that expository
text comprehension requires more than general knowledge of vocabulary.
Moreover, knowledge of connectives and metacognitive knowledge are found to be
beneficial to both bilinguals and monolinguals. These results suggest that
language instructors should try to find teaching strategies which help
students develop these abilities.

While the methods and analyses were appropriate, test administration was not
reproducible. It is not very clear how the tests were administered. Test
administration should be well controlled in order to regulate for other
indirect factors, such as time of day and administrators’ notes that could
influence reading test results. For instance, Welie stated that administrators
took notes as participants took different reading tests, which happened at
various times of the day. In addition,  inclusion and exclusion of a
participant in the study were sometimes based on these administrators’ notes.
This might make one wonder about the role of these administrators in the
outcomes of the study, and whether there was a systematic way of assessing
these participants’ behaviors. Another concern may be related to the different
test taking times. Cognition and academic performance may be impacted by time
of the day (Hines 2004). In other words, the time of the day of these test
administrations might affect student’s performance on the reading
comprehension tests. It is also important to point out that many chapters from
the book (Chapter 2 to 5) are already published, which creates some overlap in
background information and parts of the methodology sections. 

This book shows the importance of (linguistic) backgrounds and skills for
reading, especially second language (L2) reading comprehension. Welie’s study
also serves as support for Koda’s (2005) stance on the different skills at
play in L2 reading comprehension. Koda argues that factors such as decoding
ability, working memory in their L1, L2 proficiency, L1’s influence and as
well as learners’ culture can affect their reading performance (Koda 2005).
This means linguistic and social backgrounds are to be considered in language
learning and L2 reading instruction. The experiences of the eighth graders
dictate their proficiency and their reading competence. However, this does not
diminish the value of instruction. Reading skills can always be  cultivated
with appropriate instruction. This rather implies that these readers’ prior
experiences with a language and experiences with print will most likely affect
their reading performance. For future studies, it would not only be important
to compare the differences in the four central components (knowledge of
connectives, text reading fluency, text structure inference skill, and reading
motivation) between bilingual and monolingual Dutch eighth graders, but it
would also be interesting to consider the influence of L1-L2 distance on the
expository text comprehension. Welie’s book could tremendously help understand
the interdependence between reading skills and reading comprehension and would
undeniably help improve reading instruction.

REFERENCES

Hines, C. B. (2004). Time-of-Day Effects on Human Performance. Journal of
Catholic Education,7(3). 

Koda, K. (2005). Insights into Second Language Reading. Cambridge University
Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Gerdine Michel Ulysse is currently pursuing a PhD in Second Language
Acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University. She has a Master’s in French with
specialization in Teaching French as a Foreign Language. She has taught both
Haitian Creole and French using Communicative Language Teaching and
multiliteracies approaches. Her interests include multilingualism, language
pedagogy, and biliteracy. She is particularly interested in social and
psychological factors affecting Creole literacy development.





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