Word Recognition Processes in College-Age Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement

Exploring Thresholds in the Foundational Skills for Reading and Comprehension Outcomes in the Context of Postsecondary Readers

“…Poor foundational reading skills are still a limiting factor for some college students’ reading comprehension (RQ1a). These results clearly illustrate the importance of proficiency in processing at the word, sentence, and discourse (the only evidence at this level pertains to GISA) levels of language in college literacy tasks (Ari, 2016; Feller et al, 2020). The results are consistent with the assumption of the RSF that proficiencies in foundational skills of reading have important implications on discourse comprehension outcomes (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014).…”

“…This study was motivated by research suggesting that many students come to college with inadequate reading skills (NAEP, 2015; Perin, 2020), with some proportion of students lacking proficiencies in the foundational skills that support reading (Ari, 2016). In addition, research questions were motivated by the RSF (Perfetti & Stafura, 2014) and recent research that suggests inadequate foundational skills can be revealed by a threshold relationship to reading comprehension (Wang, Sabatini, & O’Reilly, 2019; Wang, Sabatini, O’Reilly, & Weeks, 2019).…”

“…There is evidence that college students also demonstrate low proficiencies in foundational reading skills (Ari, 2016; Halldórsdóttir et al, 2016; Macaruso & Shankweiler, 2010; Perin, 2020). For example, Macaruso and Shankweiler (2010) assessed proficiency in many of the components of reading skills from word processing to auditory language comprehension of students enrolled in general education courses at a community college.…”

“…We have distinguished between the foundational skills that support the act of reading (word recognition, morphological knowledge, vocabulary, and sentence processing) and higher-level inferences skills (bridging between texts constituents, elaborating based on relevant prior knowledge). Although both lower- and higher-level skills account for variance in performance on literacy tasks, it is arguably surprising how much variance in performance is accounted for by lower-level foundational skills (Ari, 2016; Halldórsdóttir et al, 2016). Ideally, by the time students reach college they should be proficient readers, which would provide the requisite skills to support the development of discipline-specific literacy skills (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008).…”

Leveraging a multidimensional linguistic analysis of constructed responses produced by college readers

“…Foundational skills of reading support processing the printed word, which provides input for the higher order processes that support the construction of a coherent mental model. Some college readers struggle with the foundational skills associated with word reading ( Ari, 2016 ; Halldórsdóttir et al, 2016 ; Magliano et al, in press ; Kopatich et al, 2022 ), others may be proficient readers, but do not engage in higher order comprehension strategies that support comprehension ( Magliano and Millis, 2003 ; Kopatich et al, 2022 ), some struggle with both ( Magliano et al, in press ; Kopatich et al, 2022 ). These findings suggest that providing support for these different types of struggling college students requires a deeper understanding of the relations between foundational reading skills and comprehension outcomes and better means of evaluating students’ different strengths and weaknesses ( Magliano and Millis, 2003 ; Magliano et al, 2011 ; Perin, 2020 ).…”