1. Word Recognition Training Effects on Reading Comprehension
Dr. Lance Burrows - Kinki University - Osaka, Japan
Mr. Michael Holsworth - Kyoto Sangyo University - Kyoto, Japan

2. Outline Theoretical framework of the study
Design, participants & methodology
Treatments & groups
Results, implications & future research
Japan reading students had slow reading with low comprehension. We wanted to find out what was done to research this to improve and become better readers.

3. Verbal Efficiency Theory
Charles Perfetti - University of Pittsburgh
States that the result of reading
comprehension, is limited by the efficiency of lower level
processes which include word recognition. (Perfetti, 1985)
Fluent word recognition includes 3 efficient processes:
Orthographic
Phonologic
Semantic
Main Studies - Hulstijn, Tan, Akamatsu
Freeing up cognitive resources for higher level and to focus on other lower level processes.
Tan/Nicholson – Orthographic & Phono
Fukkink et al – Orth and lexical
Akamatsu – Orthographic only

4. Verbal Efficiency Theory
Orthographic
Processing written letters into words.
Phonologic
Accessing phonemic information associated with the orthography
Semantic
Accessing word meaning from the orthographic or phonological information
The Evolution of the VET lead to the LQH
Lexical Quality Hypothesis
(Perfetti & Hart, 2001)
Lexical Quality Hypothesis.
coherent, high-quality representations will be more efficiently retrieved than those of poor quality

5. Design Reason for this study?
L2 reading research is clearly under researched.
Studies to date focused on aspects of the VET, but not all three.
Research Questions:
Does word recognition training affect reading comprehension?
Is there a difference in the treatment effect in relation to the difficulty level of the reading passage?
Two reading passages were used.
Reading 1 - at the established level of the students.
Reading 2 - slightly above the students’ established level
Gaps
2 questions
two levels of readings.
From piloting with them we established the 2 reading levels.

6. Participants
st and 2nd year students from a university in Japan.
7 intact classes that were randomly assigned treatments.
TOEIC Bridge scores and Vocabulary Size Test (Nation) were used as covariates in the analysis.
It is possible that some students were above or below the established group norm.
Control-1, Semantic-1, Orth-2, SO-1, OSP-2
TOEIC and VST were given at the start of the school year as a covariate.
This allowed us to compensate for choice not to use a pre-test in the study design.
Only post test was used to avoid test-effects as each treatment was only 4 weeks.

7. Methodology Quasi-experimental study Quantitative
8 weeks total - divided into two 4 week treatments.
20 minutes per class for treatments.
N-130 total split into 5 treatment groups.
Larger n-sizes for a replication would help.

8. Treatment Groups Semantic ER Orthographic Sentence generation
SSR ER
Sentence generation
Semantic
Matching & slash exercises
Orthographic
Treatment Groups
Matching & slash exercises
Flashcards (not voiced)
Orthographic
Semantic
Matching & slash exercises
Flashcards (voiced)
Chorusing
Orthographic
Semantic
Phonological
S-focused on meaning only and created sentences. They were allowed to use a dictionary.
O-focused on the orthography. Matching/Slash reading
SO-Chorusing 3 times with instructor

9. Matching Exercise Example
Treatment Examples
Matching Exercise Example
active action 　achieve　 activate active
Slash Reading Example
dwindleconceivefiresaction = dwindle/conceive/fires/action
Orthographic was 1
Orth and Semantic was these with NO VOICE
O/Ph/Sem were these PLUS VOICE

10. Reading Comprehension Scores
Results
Reading Comprehension Scores
(logit scores from Rasch Analysis)
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Group 5
Reading 1
-.509
-.520
.024*
.041
-.008
Reading 2
-.412
-.395
.001
.454*
.459*
Reading 1
Group 3 (orth only) show gains over group 1 and 2 only.
Group 5 (all) outperformed the other groups
Group 3 - expected results since they probably knew many of the words as was at their level.
Reading 2
Group 3, 4 and 5 outperformed other groups with 5 as the biggest gains.
I double checked the figure and it is correct. So, even though seemingly this should also be statistically significant, it is not. the figure for group 3 is statistically significant in comparison to groups 1 and 2. The reason it seems to be different but isn't is the effect of the covariates. There is some adjustment that the covariates account for and that makes the seemingly high score for group 4, not significantly different from groups 1 and 2.

11. Implications Improve reading comprehension There may be a threshold
More effective with “i + 1” readings
All three elements of lower level processing are necessary
We found that with lower level passages, the orthographic alone was enough because, we think, they know many of the words already.
Our study treatments were much longer than other studies reviews (Akamatsu etc.).
Threshold - treatment times totalled 80 mins. Do they need more? Less? Akamatsu etc did not see significance, but they were shorter, so perhaps there is a threshold needed in order to see significant gains.

12. What’s next?
Pilot study this fall – 3 instruments (2 lexical and 1 word recognition).
Dissertation - Application to an ER program to investigate the effects of word recognition on: reading comprehension, total words read, reading rate.
Develop more tasks and instruments that target each component of word recognition.
Try address some of the limitations of this study:
Tasks that are specific to each component.
Instruments that measure each element specifically and independently of each other.
HARD – they are so interlinked, cognitive and inseparable.

13. Other Future Research
How much training is necessary to see significant changes?
Are there more effective or efficient methods available to give all three types of treatments.
We had 80 mins total training for each passage. Was this enough? Too much?

14. References
Akamatsu, N. (2007). The effects of training on automatization of word recognition in English as a foreign language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29(02). doi: /S
Fukkink, R. G., Hulstijn, J., & Simis, A. (2005). Does training in second‐language word recognition skills affect reading comprehension? An experimental study. The Modern Language Journal, 89(1), 54–75.
Perfetti, C. A. (1985). Reading ability. New York: Oxford Press.
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2002). The lexical quality hypothesis. In L. Vehoeven, C. Elbro & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional literacy (pp ).
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Tan, A., & Nicholson, T. (1997). Flashcards revisited: Training poor readers to read words faster improves their comprehension of text. Journal of Educational Psychology. 89(2),

15. Contact Information
Dr. Lance Burrows
&
Mr. Michael Holsworth

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