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How to deal with reading comprehension in the case of low oral vocabulary?

Reading comprehension is a complex process influenced by many factors. However, the abilities which are known to influence reading comprehension may not contribute equally in children with developmental language disorders, compared to typically developing children.

We carried out a study (Rodríguez, Moreno, Valdés, Simpson, & Saldaña, 2017) that compared children with low levels of oral vocabulary to children with average levels of oral vocabulary, and examine the relationship of factors known to influence reading comprehension in each of the groups.

The sample was composed of 273 4th Grade students (131 girls, 142 boys) with a mean age of 9 years, 4 months (SD = 4 months, range: 7 years, 11 months – 10 years, 11 months) that were recruited from 17 schools located in and around the southern Spanish city of Seville.

The sample was divided into two groups based on their receptive vocabulary. Children with receptive vocabulary scores < 1 SD below the mean (n = 30) were classified as low oral vocabulary. The remaining children were classified as having typical oral vocabulary (n = 243). The descriptive statistics for all variables for the two groups are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.- Means, standard deviations (SD) and ranges for all measures  

 

Low Oral Vocabulary Children (n = 30)

Typical Vocabulary Children

(n = 243)

t-test

p

 

Mean

(SD)

Range

Mean

(SD)

Range

 

Non-verbal intelligence (Max. 60)

34.9

(5.27)

27 – 49

37.7

(6.17)

12 – 052

.005

Word Reading Fluency

99.0

(38.58)

33 – 217

108.9

(30.50)

27 – 222

.344

Nonword Reading Fluency

56.6

(16.71)

30 – 90

60.7

(15.85)

21 – 136

.169

Receptive Vocabulary  (Max. 192)

89.0

(9.17)

60 – 100

119.5

(11.89)

101 – 169

.001

Morphological Awareness (Max. 32)

20.7

(4.27)

8 – 28

23.0

(4.29)

11 – 032

.007

Syntactic Awareness (Max. 80)

66.6

(5.68)

52 – 77

70.5

(4.81)

57 – 079

.002

Text Comprehension (Max. 48)

34.9

(6.60)

17 – 46

39.5

(5.52)

13 – 048

.001

As tools to assess the variables we used:

  • Non-verbal intelligence: Raven’s Progressive Matrices (Raven, Court, & Raven, 1995).

  • Reading Aloud: The word and pseudoword reading subtests of the Batería de Evaluación de los Procesos Lectores, Revisada (PROLEC-R; Cuetos, Rodríguez, Ruano & Arribas, 2007).

  • Receptive vocabulary: The Spanish version of the standardized Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III; Dunn, Dunn & Arribas, 2006).

  • Morphological Awareness. The Morphology subtest of the Batería de Lenguaje Objetiva y Criterial Screening (BLOC-SR; Puyuelo, Renom, Solanas & Wiig; 2007).

  • Syntactic Awareness. The Test de Comprensión de Estructuras Gramaticales (CEG; Mendoza, Carballo, Muñoz & Fresneda; 2005).

  • Text Comprehension. The text comprehension subtest of the Test LEE (Defior et al., 2006).

Evaluations took place within schools during children’s normal class time and children were evaluated individually in three separate sessions. In the first session non-verbal intelligence (Raven) was evaluated. In the second session, children were evaluated on word reading (PROLEC-R), followed by text comprehension (Test LEE). Receptive vocabulary (PPVT), syntactic knowledge (CEG), morphological knowledge (BLOC) were evaluated in the final session. Testing order was the same for all children, except for session 3, in which the testing order was randomized.

We were interested in seeing whether the contribution of word reading, syntactic knowledge and morphological knowledge to text comprehension differed as a function of oral vocabulary knowledge, after controlling for non-verbal IQ and oral vocabulary. We evaluated the model shown in the figure. These analyses were conducted as structural equation models in Mplus (Version 6.1; Muthén & Muthén, 2010). Receptive vocabulary was treated as two separate groups and the parameters in each group were estimated simultaneously. 

As it can be observed in Table 2, while the relationship between oral vocabulary and reading comprehension was positive and significant in the typical oral-vocabulary group, no such relationship was found in the low oral-vocabulary group. However, there was a significant relationship between syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension for both groups. Interestingly, this relationship was 4.3 times stronger for the low oral vocabulary group. 

Table 2

Relationship

Low Oral Vocabulary (n=30)

Typical Vocabulary (n=243)

Group comparison

(path constraint between groups)

 

β

p

β

P

 

Receptive Vocabulary - Word reading

0.214

.054

0.123

.065

 

Non-verbal IQ - Word reading

-0.213

.086

0.065

.337

 

Receptive Vocabulary - Morphol. Awareness

0.259

.297

0.061

 .332

 

Non-verbal IQ - Morphological Awareness

0.409

.008

0.304

< .001

χ2(1) = 0.37, p > .05

Receptive Vocabulary - Syntactic Awareness

0.553

< .001

0.285

< .001

χ2(1) = 3.46, p < .10

Non-verbal IQ - Syntactic Awareness

0.275

.019

0.242

< .001

χ2(1) = 0.56, p > .05

Receptive Vocabulary - Text Comprehension

-0.282

.143

0.195

< .001

 

Non-verbal IQ - Text Comprehension

0.023

.866

0.116

.072

 

Word Reading - Text Comprehension

-0.088

.516

0.212

.001

 

Morphol. Awareness - Text Comprehension

0.025

.889

0.042

.469

 

Syntactic Awareness - Text Comprehension

0.797

.002

0.186

.002

χ2(1) = 6.46, p < .05

In conclusion, in children with low oral vocabulary, syntactic knowledge plays a much more important role in text comprehension. It could be that they may need to compensate their disadvantage by “over-relying” on their syntactic knowledge.

Given the strong relationship found between syntactic knowledge and text comprehension in children with low oral vocabulary, this result suggests that a syntax-based intervention designed to improve text comprehension is likely to be effective in children with low oral vocabulary.

References 

  • Cuetos, F., Rodríguez, B., Ruano, E., y Arribas, D. (2007). Prolec-R. Batería de Evaluación de los procesos lectores revisada. Madrid, Spain: TEA.

  • Defior, S., Fonseca, L., Gottheil, B., Aldrey, A., Rosa, G., Pujals, M., et al. (2006). LEE. Test de Lectura y Escritura en Español [LEE. Test of Reading and Writing in Spanish]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós

  • Dunn, L. L., Dunn, L. M., & Arribas, D. (2006). Test de Vocabulario en imágenes PEABODY-III [Picture Vocabulary test PEABODY-III]. Madrid, Spain: TEA.

  • Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Muñoz, J. & Fresneda, M.D. (2005). CEG. Test de Comprensión de Estructuras Gramaticales [CEG. Grammatical Structure Comprehension Test], Madrid, Spain: TEA.

  • Muthén L.K & Muthén B.O. (2010). Mplus User’s Guide (sixth edition), Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén.

Last modified: Wed, 25 Jul 2018 11:34:37 BST