Flashcards revisited: Training poor readers to read words faster improves their comprehension of text.

Abstract

Forty-two below-average readers, between 7 and 10 years of age, were given single-word training, phrase training, or no training. Trained children learned to decode target words quickly and accurately, using flashcards; untrained children only discussed the target words and read them once. Trained and untrained children read aloud passages containing target words and were tested on their comprehension. Trained children had better comprehension than did the untrained children when questioned about passages and asked to retell them. Results suggest that an emphasis on rapid word recognition benefits poor readers. Reading is a multicomponent skill whereby the reader has to use a number of different cognitive processes involving word recognition, access of word meanings, parsing of sentences, semantic analysis of sentences, and interpretation of the overall text. Many of these linguistic processes are already automatic in that they demand little or no cognitive effort for the native speaker, inasmuch as they are part of general language comprehension. One process that is not automatic, and that has to be taught to beginning readers, is word recognition. This skill takes several years to learn, and even then most pupils will not have the speed and fluency of skilled adult readers (Gough & Hiilinger, 1980). The automatization of word recognition usually comes after a long period of extensive reading practice. In designing the present study, we reasoned that a focus on the development of automatic word recognition skills would be most likely to have a positive effect on poor readers' comprehension, as word recognition is one aspect of the reading process that is very difficult for them (

Remediation of Fluency: Word Specific or Generalised Training Effects?

“…Research has been published in which transfer effects of training words in isolation to reading in context were not automatic at all (e.g., Fleisher, Jenkins, & Pany, 1979-1980Levy, Abello, & Lysynchuk, 1997). However, Tan and Nicholson (1997) found that poor readers significantly benefit from single-word training by demonstrating better comprehension of passages containing these trained words than untrained children. Maybe, these incongruous findings are related to the level of severity of the reading deficit.…”

Efficient Learning for the Poor: Insights from the Frontier of Cognitive Neuroscience

“…The comparative merits of teaching fluency versus discussion of word meanings were tested with struggling primary-school readers; it was found students who had learned to recognize the words to the point of automaticity answered more comprehension questions than students who merely were instructed on individual word meanings (Tan and Nicholson 1997). This is why fluency is now considered a prerequisite for comprehension (Snow et al 1998;Pikulski and Chard 2005 (Goswami 1999).…”

Social Workers and Rescue Forces in Disaster

“…A reversal design would show the effectiveness of the intervention strategy and show a clear correlation between the participants' intervention scores and the implementation of the strategy. DI flashcards have been showed to be effective in various settings and content areas, but little research has been conducted on the effectiveness of increasing the accuracy of spelling (Hayter, Scott, McLaughlin, & Weber, 2007;Tan & Nicholson, 1997). If a study was replicated the strategy, it would be recommended to study the effects on a larger group of participants.…”

“…A successful method for teaching academic skills to children with special needs has the use of direct instruction (DI) flashcards (Hayter, Scott, McLaughlin, & Weber, 2007;Tan & Nicholson, 1997). Typically, DI flashcards are employed to teach and improve the fluency of various academic skills such as sight words (Higgins, McLaughlin, Derby, & Long, 2012;Hopewell, McLaughlin, & Derby, 2011;Ruwe, McLaughlin, Derby, & Johnson, 2011) basic math facts (Brasch, Williams, & McLaughlin, 2008;Erbey, McLaughlin, Derby, & Everson, 2011;Lund, McLaughlin, Neyman, & Everson, 2012;Walker, McLaughlin, & Weber, 2012), colors or shapes, (K. Herberg, McLaughlin, Derby, & Gilbert, 2011) or letter sounds (Travis, McLaughlin, Derby, Dolliver, & Carosella, 2011), and spelling (Skarr, McLaughlin, Derby, Meade, & Williams, 2012).…”