Relation between digital tool practices in the language arts classroom and reading comprehension scores

Print and digital reading habits and comprehension in children with and without special education needs

BACKGROUND

Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs (SEN). Reading episodes bring students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge, potentially boosting their development of text comprehension skills.

AIMS

Our study seeks to understand how reading frequency (leisure and academic) and reading medium (print and digital) contribute to the development of text comprehension during Primary school in students with and without SEN.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

We tested 2289 Spanish students from fourth to sixth grade, from which 212 had an official decision of SEN. Students self-reported their reading frequency (as a measure of their reading habits) and completed a standardized text comprehension test. We employed multiple regression models with a robust maximum likelihood estimator to test associations between reading frequency and comprehension.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Students' comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading. Those associations were independent of SEN status.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students, regardless of SEN status. In addition, caution is advised when encouraging Primary school children to use digital texts when the emphasis is on comprehending texts for acquiring knowledge.

The effect of reading strategy use on online reading comprehension

In the current age, digital technology is rapidly changing daily routines, and young people today spend most of their time using various digital tools. Therefore, traditional reading of the printed page is being transformed into digital reading of online texts among students. Thus, online reading strategies have become crucial for their development in online reading performance. This study aimed to investigate the effects of online reading strategies used by lower secondary students on reading comprehension achievement. It conducted an online survey of reading strategies, involving three types of reading strategies, global, problem-solving, and support. The study recruited 4527 students at the lower secondary school level in Hungary. The study examined the students' attitudes toward literature and grammar in their native language (L1), use of online reading strategies, reading comprehension skills, and language arts achievement as well as examining the relations between them with various methods of analysis (descriptive/inferential, Rasch and path analyses). The findings demonstrated that the students' problem-solving strategies (from among the three reading strategies) exerted significant and positive impacts on reading comprehension. Additionally, the students' attitudes toward L1 had a positively significant effect on their use of online reading strategies and language arts achievement and an indirect effect on reading comprehension skills. The study also found a significant relationship between language arts achievement and reading comprehension achievement. Therefore, this study is beneficial for language teachers in helping students improve reading comprehension skills.

Reading Format Attitudes in the Time of COVID

The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of the COVID-19-related changes to educational delivery on students' academic reading format preferences and behaviors. Pre-pandemic studies showed that students preferred print when needing to engage in academic texts for their coursework, and that under certain circumstances, students learned better when using print texts. During the pandemic however, many institutions implemented a sudden shift to remote learning and electronic readings. We questioned whether students would adjust their learning strategies to accommodate the abrupt change, and whether the increased experience with e-formats would boost their favorable attitudes towards digital reading. This study's data from students at a North American university does not support this hypothesis. While some respondents did report improved attitudes towards e-reading during COVID, most attitudes were less favorable or reflected no change. Nearly half the respondents stated that they highlighted and annotated their readings less than they did before, and over a third said they completed their assigned readings less frequently. Negative feelings may reflect a new trend in attitudes or they may be a temporary outcome of general screen fatigue. The findings reinforce the importance of providing print format options for students during this time.