Abstract/Summary

It is vital that secondary school students have a good level of reading comprehension, and that teachers have evidence-based interventions to improve the reading comprehension of their students. Research indicates that oral language training is effective at improving the reading comprehension of primary age children; however, it is not clear whether this also applies to secondary age children. This randomised controlled trial examined the efficacy of text based (TB) and oral language (OL) training on the reading comprehension of students between the ages of 11 and 13 with poor reading comprehension, when compared to a waiting list control group (WLC). The main study was preceded by a pilot study. In the main study, the parallel intervention programmes were delivered for an hour each week over a period of eight weeks. Oral language training included vocabulary, reciprocal teaching with spoken language, spoken narrative and figurative language. Text-based training included metacognitive strategies, written narrative and inference skills. A specific re-attribution strategy was introduced at the start of each session in both the oral language and text-based training programmes to help students understand and develop effective beliefs about their reading comprehension success and failure, and to help internalise externally delivered strategies, so that they become a habit and basic attitude towards reading. There were statistically significant gains in reading comprehension and vocabulary in both the text-based and oral language intervention when compared to the waiting list control group, indicating that both the oral language and text-based interventions were effective at improving reading comprehension and vocabulary standard score. Therefore, the design and delivery of the intervention programmes enabled the participants to close the gap in reading comprehension between themselves and their peers when reading comprehension was measured immediately after the intervention. 4 The change in word reading standard score from pre-intervention to post-intervention was significantly different for the text-based group when compared with the waiting list control group. There were improvements in the students’ perceived value of reading and reading self-concept in both the text-based and oral language training compared to the waiting list control group. Neither the gain in vocabulary and word reading standard scores, or these standard scores at initial testing (T1) mediated the mean reading comprehension for either the OL or TB groups at re-testing (T2). Overall, this research shows that evidence-based interventions can be feasibly implemented within a school environment to ameliorate students’ reading comprehension difficulties, and interventions directly targeting both students’ oral language comprehension and text-based skills produce significant gains in the reading comprehension of secondary-age students relative to a waiting list control group.