Date of Graduation
5-2022
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Curriculum and Instruction (PhD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Curriculum and Instruction
Advisor
Vicki S. Collet
Committee Member
Allison A. Boykin
Second Committee Member
Christian Z. Goering
Keywords
adolescent, comprehension, fluency, fluency development lesson, prosody, reading instruction
Abstract
Research has established a strong relationship between silent reading comprehension and prosodic reading fluency among young readers, but much remains unknown about this relationship among older readers (Breen, Kaswer, Van Dyke, Krivokapic, & Landi, 2016; Cypert & Petro, 2019). The goal of this study was to determine the impact of prosodic reading instruction on adolescents’ silent reading comprehension. Conducted in a classroom setting in two different school districts, this study included three certified English teachers and a total of 52 students in grades 8, 9, and 10 for a period of nine to twelve weeks with a total of 810 instructional minutes. The Fluency Development Lesson (FDL) (Kuhn, Rasinski, & Zimmerman, 2014; Morrison & Wilcox, 2020) structure provided the format of instruction for the treatment variable, prosodic reading instruction. District-selected digital standardized assessments provided pre- and post-treatment silent reading comprehension scores to assess the impact of the treatment on silent reading. Using SAS software, the researcher used a repeated measure analysis of variance (RMANOVA) to test the impact of the treatment. Regarding silent reading comprehension, analysis revealed an effect size of 2.3%, indicating that the treatment produced no significant impact. To assess students’ prosodic reading, the EARS rubric (Rasinski & Cheesman-Smith, 2018), a multidimensional fluency scale, provided pre- and post-scores for which analysis showed an effect size of 36%, a significant impact. The results of this study are inconsistent with recent research which shows that as prosodic reading scores increase, silent reading scores increase (Wolters, Kim, & Szura, 2020). This inconsistency may be attributed to the lack of clarity involved in measuring specific aspects of prosody (Morrison & Wilcox, 2020; Wolters, Kim, & Szura, 2020).
Citation
Fields, J. L. (2022). The Impact of Prosodic Reading Instruction on Adolescents’ Silent Reading Comprehension. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/4477
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Commons, Educational Methods Commons, Language and Literacy Education Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons