1. Paula Clarke, Charles Hulme, Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling
The York READing for Meaning Project
Examining the Long Term Effects of Three Interventions to Support Reading Comprehension in Poor Comprehenders     
Paula Clarke, Charles Hulme,
Emma Truelove, Maggie Snowling

2. Poor Comprehenders
Average word readers but poor at reading comprehension
Difficulties with wider oral language skills
Vocabulary
Narrative
Figurative Language
Inferencing
Verbal reasoning
Interventions to date have generated impressive immediate
gains in reading comprehension
But studies have been small in scale and have focused on
text level and metacognitive skills

3. Project aims Text level training in written language domain
Improvements in text comprehension
Oral language training in spoken language domain
Text level training in written language domain
Oral language training in spoken language domain 3

4. Project aims
To compare these approaches to existing classroom practice by monitoring the performance of an untreated waiting control group.
To explore the effectiveness of the three approaches in the immediate and long term.
To examine mediating and moderating factors that influence response to intervention.

5. Randomised Controlled Trial Design
TC block 1
OL block
COM block 1
Control
COM block 2
Control
TC block 2
OL block TC OL
COM
Control
Maintenance test
Mid test
Post test
Screening
Pre test
Control block 1
Control block 2
Oct - April
2006
8-9
years
July
2007 9
years
Dec-Jan
2007
9-10
years
Dec
2008
10-11
years
July
2009

6. Participant profile
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Whole sample
TOWRE Real words
110.48
108.88
108.30
108.70
109.09
NARA II Reading accuracy
102.93
104.33
101.55
NARA II Reading comprehension
92.95
93.36
92.82
92.99
WIAT II Reading comprehension
94.31
95.43
96.38
97.77
95.96
CELF Listening comprehension
78.75*
80.42
87.36*
83.06
82.40
WASI Vocabulary (t score)
38.31
40.32
39.44
38.26
39.07
WASI Similarities (t score)
47.40
49.05
49.97
49.49
48.97
WASI VIQ
89.41
92.03
91.89
91.00
91.07
Ravens Matrices NVIQ
99.26
100.23
100.66
100.78
*Statistically significant between groups difference (p<0.05)

7. Programme contents and features
Text Comprehension
Written Language Context
Reading Comprehension
Metacognitive Strategies
Inferencing from Text
Narrative
Oral Language
Spoken Language Context
Listening Comprehension
Vocabulary
Figurative Language
Narrative
Combined
All eight components
Sessions contained both reading and listening comprehension
Opportunities for children to encounter new vocabulary/idioms/inferences in both written and spoken language.

8. Primary outcome - Text comprehension
pale = immediate post test
bright = maintenance post test
Children read (aloud or silently) a range of passages and sentences. (narrative, adverts, non-fiction information etc.)
Includes literal, inference and vocabulary dependent question types.
Also involves summarisation (finding key themes and ideas), prediction, and question generation.

9. Secondary outcome - Vocabulary
Children orally define a series of tier 2 words (AoA 13 years +, unfamiliar but applicable to a number of contexts)
Half of the words are those targeted in the OL and COM interventions and half are non targeted.
Definition quality is quantified using a 0,1,2 scoring system, developed from pilot study responses.

10. Mediation model Time 1 Time 3 Time 4 Chi-Square Test 0.494 df 1 n.s
WIAT II
Text Comprehension
p = .000
p= .000 TC
WIAT II
Text Comprehension
p= .04
N.S.
p= .004 OL
N.S.
p= .000
p= .001
COM
p= .000
Vocabulary
Chi-Square Test df 1 n.s

11. VIQ as a moderator Standard score points
Low VIQ (n=75)
High VIQ
(n=79)
TOWRE Real words
107.83
110.89
NARA II Reading accuracy
102.07
104.19
NARA II Reading comprehension**
91.04
95.33
WIAT II Reading comprehension**
94.16
97.58
CELF Listening comprehension*
80.15
84.87
TOWRE -NARA II discrepancy
16.63
15.73
WASI VIQ***
83.09
98.65
Ravens Matrices NVIQ
Standard score points
WIAT II
pale = pre test
bright = maintenance post test
Statistically significant between groups differences
*p<0.05,**p<0.01,***p<0.001
VIQ significant predictor of improvement
High VIQ make greater gains than Low VIQ
No interaction between VIQ and condition

12. Summary
In poor comprehenders, 20-week intervention programmes can produce significant gains in text comprehension and oral language.
Importantly these gains are relative to an untreated waiting control group.
The gains maintain over time and for the OL condition the difference between the intervention group and controls increases in significance.
The gains in text comprehension are partially mediated by vocabulary learning in the OL condition and fully mediated by vocabulary learning in the COM condition.
VIQ at pre test moderates response to intervention, however there are no significant differential effects of VIQ across conditions.

13. Implications
Teaching assistants with a relatively small amount of training can deliver high quality effective teaching.
The skills that underpin oral language and text comprehension are trainable in children aged 8-11 years.
Evidence to suggest a causal relationship between vocabulary and text comprehension. Improvements in text comprehension can be explained, at least in part, by improvements in vocabulary skill.

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