ERIC ED575682: Developmental, Component-Based Model of Reading Fluency: An Investigation of Predictors of Word-Reading Fluency, Text-Reading Fluency, and Reading Comprehension

2015·0.62 MB·English

by  ERIC

Developmental, Component-Based
Model of Reading Fluency:
An Investigation of Predictors of
Word-R eading Fluency, Text- Reading
Fluency, and Reading Comprehension
Young-Suk Grace Kim ABSTRACT
Florida State University and Florida The primary goal was to expand our understanding of text- reading fluency
Center for Reading Research , (efficiency or automaticity): how its relation to other constructs (e.g., word-
Tallahassee , USA reading fluency, reading comprehension) changes over time and how it is
different from word- reading fluency and reading comprehension. The study
examined (a) developmentally changing relations among word- reading flu-
ency, listening comprehension, text- reading fluency, and reading compre-
hension; (b) the relation of reading comprehension to text- reading fluency;
(c) unique emergent literacy predictors (i.e., phonological awareness, ortho-
graphic awareness, morphological awareness, letter name knowledge, vo-
cabulary) of text- reading fluency versus word- reading fluency; and (d) unique
language and cognitive predictors (e.g., vocabulary, grammatical knowledge,
theory of mind) of text- reading fluency versus reading comprehension. These
questions were addressed using longitudinal data (two timepoints; mean
age = 5 years 2 months and 6 years 1 month, respectively) from young Korean-
speaking children ( N = 143). Results showed that listening comprehension was
related to text- reading fluency at time 2 but not at time 1. At both times,
text- reading fluency was related to reading comprehension, and reading com-
prehension was related to text- reading fluency over and above word- reading
fluency and listening comprehension. Orthographic awareness was related to
text- reading fluency over and above other emergent literacy skills and word-
reading fluency. Vocabulary and grammatical knowledge were independently
related to text- reading fluency and reading comprehension, whereas theory
of mind was related to reading comprehension but not text- reading fluency.
These results reveal the developmental nature of relations and mechanisms
of text-r eading fluency in reading development.
T
ext- reading fluency is typically defined as “the ability to read a
text quickly, accurately, and with proper expression” (National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development [NICHD],
2000 , p. 3- 5). In particular, previous studies that operationalized text-
reading fluency as text- reading efficiency or automaticity excluding
reading prosody have shown a strong relation of text- reading fluency
to reading comprehension (Daane, Campbell, Grigg, Goodman, &
Oranje, 2005 ; Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001 ; Jenkins, Fuchs,
van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003 ; Kim, Park, & Wagner, 2014 ;
Kim, Wagner, & Lopez, 2012 ; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003 ; Riedel, 2007 ;
Roehrig, Petscher, Nettles, Hudson, & Torgesen, 2008 ). Evidence from
Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0) these studies suggests that text- reading fluency explains additional
pp. 1–23 | doi: 10.1002/rrq.107
© 2015 International Literacy Association . variance in reading comprehension over and above word reading and
1
language comprehension (Kim et al., 2012 , 2014 ; Klauda cognitive capacity (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974 ; Samuels,
& Guthrie, 2008 )—the two critical and necessary skills 2 006) . Reading words with accuracy and speed lifts
of reading comprehension according to the simple view cognitive constraints, allowing cognitive resources
of reading (Catts, Adlof, & Ellis Weismer, 2006 ; Hoover (e.g., working memory, attention) to be used for higher
& Gough, 1990 ; Joshi, Tao, Aaron, & Quiroz, 2012 ; order meaning construction. That is, text- reading
Kim, 2015 ; Mancilla- Martinez, Kieffer, Biancarosa, fluency unglues the child from decoding (Chall, 1983 ).
Christodoulou, & Snow, 2011 ; Savage, 2006 ; Vellutino, Recent studies have shown that text- reading fluency,
Tunmer, Jaccard, & Chen, 2007 ). although highly related, is a separate construct from
Despite a large number of studies showing a strong word- reading fluency (Kim et al., 2011 , 2012 , 2014 ;
relation of text- reading fluency to reading comprehen- Kim & Wagner, 2015 ; cf. Schwanenflugel et al., 2006 ),
sion for primary- grade children, however, we have and text- reading fluency was predicted not only
limited empirical evidence about the nature and role of by word- reading fluency but also by oral language
text- reading fluency (efficiency) in reading develop- comprehension (hereafter l istening comprehension) ,
ment. To address this gap, the present study examined especially after children reached a certain level of
how the relation of text- reading fluency to reading com- word- reading proficiency. These results are in line
prehension changes over time and how text- reading with Stanovich, Cunningham, and Feeman ’ s ( 1984 )
fluency is a differentiated construct from word- reading finding that first- grade children read the same words
fluency and reading comprehension by examining more rapidly in context (i.e., coherent paragraph) than
unique, independent predictors of text-r eading fluency out of context (i.e., random, incoherent paragraph),
versus word- reading fluency, and text-r eading fluency and this difference was more pronounced at the end of
versus reading comprehension. These questions were the school year than the beginning.
addressed using longitudinal data (two timepoints) from Furthermore, the relation of text-r eading fluency
Korean- speaking children. to reading comprehension changed over time (Kim
It is important to note that in the present study, I et al., 2012 , 2014 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ). In the begin-
operationalize r eading fluency as the accuracy and rate ning phase of reading development when decoding is
at which the individual reads words at the lexical (i.e., the primary focus of development, word- reading flu-
reading words in isolation) and discourse levels (i.e., ency and text- reading fluency largely overlapped such
reading words in context). Therefore, t ext-reading flu- that word- reading fluency strongly influenced reading
ency refers to reading words in connected texts, such as comprehension, whereas text- reading fluency did not
passages, and word-reading fluency refers to reading make an independent contribution to reading compre-
words in isolation or a list format. Reading prosody (or hension. At a later phase, text- reading fluency made an
expression) is an important aspect of text- reading flu- independent contribution to reading comprehension
ency (Kuhn, Schwanenflugel, & Meisinger, 2010 ; Kuhn over and above word- reading fluency and listening
& Stahl, 2003 ), but it was beyond the scope of the pres- comprehension. For children learning to read in an
ent study. Although I acknowledge that a utomaticity opaque orthography, English, an independent contri-
and e fficiency 1 are more accurate terms to describe the bution of text- reading fluency was observed as early as
accuracy and rate of reading words in or out of context, grade 2 (Kim et al., 2012 ) and also grade 4 (Jenkins
I use the term f luency , given its wide use in the litera- et al., 2003 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ; Klauda & Guthrie,
ture (e.g., Adlof, Catts, & Little, 2006 ; D.L. Baker, 2008 ). For children learning to read in a relatively
Stoolmiller, Good, & Baker, 2011 ; Fuchs et al., 2 001; transparent orthography, Korean, an  independent
Jenkins et al., 2003 ; Kim et al., 2014 ; Kim, Wagner, & contribution of text- reading fluency was observed for
Foster, 2011 ; Nathan & Stanovich, 1991 ; Roehrig et al., younger children, kindergartners, in a cross- sectional
2008 ; Schwanenflugel et al., 2006 ; Silverman, Speece, study (Kim et al., 2014 ).
Haring, & Ritchey, 2013 ; Wolf & Katzir-C ohen, 2001) . The finding in Korean raises an important ques-
Therefore, in the present study, w ord-reading fluency tion about text- reading fluency, namely, whether the
refers to word- reading efficiency or automaticity, and developmental progression pattern observed in English
text-reading fluency refers to text- reading efficiency or (e.g., Kim et al., 2011 , 2012 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ) is
automaticity. generalizable to languages with a transparent ortho-
graphy. Theoretically, the pattern of developmental
progression is expected to be similar across opaque and
Text- Reading Fluency transparent orthographies: As children develop word-
reading skills, their cognitive resources can be allo-
and Reading Comprehension
cated to meaning construction, and children ’ s ability to
Theoretical account about the role of text- reading process meaning (i.e., listening comprehension) is
fluency in reading comprehension involves limited expected to be related to text- reading fluency. Although
2 | Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0)
opaque and transparent orthographies differ in terms word- reading fluency versus text- reading fluency. If
of duration of word- reading acquisition (Frost, Katz, & text- reading fluency is a distinctive construct from
Bentin, 1987 ; Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003 ), the over- word- reading fluency, various emergent literacy skills
all pattern of developmental relations of word- reading would be somewhat differentially related to word-
fluency, listening comprehension, text- reading fluency, reading fluency versus text-r eading fluency.
and reading comprehension might be similar. According to Ehri ’ s ( 2002 ) model of word- reading
The hypothesis that text- reading fluency involves development, text- reading fluency is a direct outcome of
meaning comprehension to some extent (Jenkins word- reading fluency, which, in turn, is the outcome of
et al., 2 003 ; Stanovich et al., 1984 ; Wolf & Katzir- word- reading accuracy. Given that the foundational skill
Cohen, 2001 ) is supported by two lines of studies. for text- reading fluency is word- reading fluency (Hudson
First, studies have suggested that reading comprehen- et al., 2012 ), the influence of emergent literacy skills2
sion makes an independent contribution to text- (e.g., phonological awareness, orthographic awareness,
reading fluency after accounting for word- reading morphological awareness, letter name knowledge, vocab-
fluency (Jenkins et al., 2003 ), and word- reading flu- ulary, rapid automatized naming) on word- reading flu-
ency and decoding fluency for children (Hudson, ency versus text- reading fluency should be largely shared,
Torgesen, Lane, & Turner, 2012 ). These results have particularly during the beginning phase of reading de-
been taken to suggest that text- reading fluency and velopment. However, there might be unique emergent
reading comprehension have a bidirectional relation. literacy skills that relate to text- reading fluency over and
The second line of studies has shown that listening above word-r eading fluency.
comprehension is related to text- reading fluency after In particular, orthographic awareness (i.e., knowl-
accounting for word- reading fluency (Kim et al., 2011 , edge of letter patterns, word- specific orthographic rep-
2012 , 2014 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ). resentation; Apel & Apel, 2011 ) might play a unique
Together, these studies indicate that text compre- role in text- reading fluency because readers, including
hension (listening comprehension and reading com- developing readers, process words parafoveally (e.g.,
prehension) is indeed involved in text- reading fluency. Plummer & Rayner, 2012 ; Rayner, Pollatsek, Ashby, &
However, what is unclear is whether reading compre- Clifton, 2012 ). Therefore, the ability to recognize mul-
hension versus listening comprehension matters in re- tiletter units beyond one- on- one mapping (i.e., ortho-
lation to text- reading fluency after accounting for each graphic awareness, forming orthographic codes) might
other. Previous studies of reading comprehension ’ s re- facilitate word reading in connected texts (Nathan
lation to text-r eading fluency did not account for lis- &  Stanovich, 1991 ). In fact, Barker, Torgesen, and
tening comprehension (D.L. Baker et al., 2011 ; Hudson Wagner ( 1992 ) found that orthographic awareness was
et al., 2012 ; Jenkins et al., 2003 ), and those of listening more strongly related to text- reading fluency than to
comprehension ’ s relation to text- reading fluency did word- reading fluency.
not account for reading comprehension (Kim et al., To examine this hypothesis, the following emer-
2011 , 2012 , 2014 ; Kim & Wagner, 2015 ). In the present gent literacy skills were included in the present study
study, I addressed this gap in the literature by investi- as predictors of word- reading fluency and text-
gating (a) the relations of word- reading fluency and reading fluency: phonological awareness, ortho-
listening comprehension to text- reading fluency, and graphic awareness, morphological awareness, letter
their relations to reading comprehension; and (b) the name knowledge, rapid automatized naming, and vo-
relation of reading comprehension to text- reading cabulary. These emergent literacy skills were selected
fluency after accounting for word- reading fluency based on evidence about their relations to word read-
and listening comprehension. ing in English and Korean (e.g., Adams, 1990 ; Cho &
McBride- Chang, 2005 ; Cho, McBride- Chang, & Park,
2008 ; Compton, DeFries, & Olson, 2001 ; Kim, 2007 ,
Emergent Literacy Skills Involved
2011 ; NICHD, 2000 ; Ouellette, 2006 ; Ricketts, Nation,
in Text- Reading Fluency Versus & Bishop, 2007 ; Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis,
Carlson, & Foorman, 2004 ; Wang, Ko, & Choi, 2009 ).
Word-R eading Fluency
These emergent literacy skills were assessed at time 1,
One critical question in understanding text- reading whereas word- reading fluency and text- reading
fluency as a construct is what differentiates it from fluency were assessed at both earlier (time 1) and later
word- reading fluency. That is, what distinguishes accu- (time 2) timepoints. This allowed me to investigate
racy and speed of reading words in connected text from how emergent literacy skills are similarly or diffe ren-
accuracy and speed of reading context- free words? tially related to word- reading fluency and text- reading
One way to examine this question is investigating how fluency at an earlier and a later phase of reading
unique component emergent literacy skills differ for development.
Developmental, Component-Based Model of Reading Fluency | 3
Language and Cognitive knowledge (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994 ; Kintsch,
1988 ; Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2007 ). Therefore,
Processes Involved in
higher order cognitive skills such as theory of mind,
Text- Reading Fluency Versus
inference making, and comprehension monitoring
Reading Comprehension are candidate processes unique to text comprehension
(Cain, 2007 ; Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2004 ; Kim, 2015 ;
Another question about text- reading fluency as a
Kim & Phillips, 2014 ; Oakhill, Cain, & Bryant, 2003 ;
construct involves what differentiates it from reading
Tompkins, Guo, & Justice, 2013 ).
comprehension. Semantic processes were hypothesized
Note that theory of mind, typically defined as one ’ s
to be involved in text- reading fluency (Jenkins et al.,
representation of others’ mental state (de Villiers, 2000 ;
2003; Perfetti, 1999 ), and evidence indeed suggests that
de Villiers & Pyers, 2002 ; Slade & Ruffman, 2005 ), has
text- reading fluency is a function of not only word read-
been studied extensively, particularly in relation to
ing but also text comprehension (Hudson et al., 2012 ;
syntactic aspects of oral language and the autism spec-
Jenkins et al., 2003 ; Kim et al., 2011 , 2012 , 2014 ; Nation
trum (Baron- Cohen, Tager- Flusberg, & Cohen, 1994 ;
& Snowling, 1998 ). Then, what comprehension pro-
de Villiers & Pyers, 2002 ; Johnston, Miller, & Tallal,
cesses are involved in text- reading fluency versus read-
2001 ; Slade & Ruffman, 2005 ). Theory of mind is in-
ing comprehension?
cluded in the present study because it captures complex
According to Posner and Snyder ( 1975 ), two processes
cognition such as making inferences about others’
are involved in information processing: (1) Automatic ac-
thoughts or emotions, which is an important aspect of
tivation of semantically related memory is fast and does
text comprehension (Graesser et al., 1994 ). However,
not use attentional capacity, and (2) slow- acting attention
evidence about the role of theory of mind in text com-
mechanism, in contrast, responds to a preceding context
prehension is mixed.
and costs limited- capacity cognitive processing. Similarly,
Theory of mind was independently related to nar-
the verbal efficiency theory (Perfetti, 1999 ) hypothesizes
rative story comprehension for English- speaking kin-
that variation in automatic semantic activation and con-
dergartners after accounting for inhibitory control,
scious and/or unconscious prediction processes influence
vocabulary, and comprehension monitoring (Kim
reading efficiency. Therefore, it is reasonable to hypothe-
et al., 2014 ), and for Korean- speaking kindergartners
size that automatic processes related to the semantic net-
after accounting for working memory, grammatical
work would be implicated in text- reading fluency, whereas
knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension monitor-
higher order cognitive processes that might require slow-
ing (Kim, 2015 ). In a study with English- only children
acting attention would be uniquely implicated in reading
and English learners in kindergarten, first grade,
comprehension. and second grade, theory of mind was related to com-
Inasmuch as vocabulary captures semantic activation prehending fables after accounting for vocabulary
and related processes, vocabulary is expected to be in- and metacognitive language, all measured in English
volved in text- reading fluency. Grammatical knowledge (Pelletier, 2006 ). In contrast, in a study with Chilean
may also be involved in text- reading fluency because kindergartners, theory of mind was not related to
morphosyntactic knowledge is essential to encoding comprehension of wordless picture book and story re-
meaning. In fact, in the verbal efficiency model, quality of call after accounting for working memory, vocabulary,
lexical representation includes a network of meanings, inhibitory control, attention, inference, and compre-
such as vocabulary and morphosyntactic processes hension monitoring (Strasser & del Río, 2014 ).
(Perfetti, 2007 ; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014 ). In addition, indi- In addition to higher order cognitive skills, gram-
vidual differences in working memory are likely to influ- matical knowledge was hypothesized to be related to
ence text- reading fluency to allow holding linguistic reading comprehension because grammatical knowl-
information temporarily (Perfetti, 1985 ). edge, particularly the ability to repair grammatical
Whereas some semantic activation and prediction errors, has been hypothesized to play a key role in inte-
processes might be involved in text- reading fluency grating propositions and establishing coherence in text
(Jenkins et al., 2003; see semantic activation in reading comprehension (Perfetti, 2007 ; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014 ).
in priming studies, e.g., Hohenstein, Laubrock, & Indeed, evidence from English- speaking children has
Kliegl, 2010 ), reading comprehension is likely to rely on provided support for this hypothesis (Cain, 2007 ).
a slow- acting attention mechanism such as higher order
cognitive processes. Reading comprehension requires
constructing the situation model (Kintsch, 1988 ), which
The Present Study
involves a deep level of meaning processing, such as
evaluating initial propositions, making inferences To expand our understanding of text- reading fluency,
across propositions, and integrating them with prior the present study had three guiding research questions.
4 | Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0)
The first research question asked about the developmen- are likely to be attributed to the educational context in
tal nature of the relations among word- reading fluency, South Korea in which early literacy instruction is typi-
listening comprehension, text- reading fluency, and read- cally provided in preschool (or kindergarten year 1) and
ing comprehension. Based on previous studies, I hypoth- kindergarten, as well as various home- visit programs
esized that word- reading fluency would be strongly (Kim, 2011 ).
related to text-r eading fluency during an earlier phase An additional critical factor in literacy acquisition is
of reading development, and listening comprehension grapheme–phoneme consistency. The Korean language
would be related to text- reading fluency at a later phase has a relatively transparent orthography called Hangul.
when children ’ s word- reading proficiency is more ad- Although its visual representation is alphasyllabic (i.e.,
vanced. I further expected that word- reading fluency both syllables and phonemes are visually represented),
would be independently related to reading comprehen- Hangul is an alphabetic system in which graphemes rep-
sion at an earlier phase of reading development, whereas resent phonemes. Given a relatively rapid acquisition of
text- reading fluency would be independently related to word- reading skills in languages with transparent or-
reading comprehension at a later phase. Listening com- thographies (see Seymour et al., 2003 ), children in the
prehension was hypothesized to be related to reading present study were assessed in a relatively short time span
comprehension at both timepoints. I did not have a spe- between timepoints, approximately eight months apart,
cific hypothesis about the relation of reading comprehen- to adequately capture the changing nature of relations.
sion to text- reading fluency over and above word- reading
fluency and listening comprehension.
The second research question asked how various Method
emergent literacy skills are related to word- reading
Participants
fluency versus text- reading fluency. In particular, I was
interested in the relations of emergent literacy skills to Data reported in the present study are from a larger
text- reading fluency after accounting for their contri- study of reading development in Korean. The larger
butions to word- reading fluency. It was hypothesized study consists of four timepoints of data collection from
that orthographic awareness would be uniquely related kindergarten year 1 (or prekindergarten) to kindergar-
to text- reading fluency after accounting for its relation ten year 2. In the present study, I report data from two
to word- reading fluency. timepoints when measures relevant to the present study
The third research question asked about the lan- were administered. In South Korea, 143 children (63
guage and cognitive predictors of text-r eading fluency girls) were assessed in prekindergarten (or kindergarten
versus reading comprehension. I hypothesized that year 1; mean age = 5 years 2 months, standard deviation
foundational language and cognitive skills, such as vo- [ SD] = 3.34 months) and again in kindergarten year 2
cabulary, grammatical knowledge, and working mem- (mean age = 6 years 1 month, S D = 3.36 months). At
ory, would be related to text- reading fluency, whereas time 1, children were assessed seven months into the
grammatical knowledge and higher level cognitive academic year, and at time 2, they were assessed three
skills, such as theory of mind and comprehension mon- months into the next academic year. At time 2, 130
itoring, would be independently associated with read- children remained in the study, which corresponds to
ing comprehension. Recent findings have shown that approximately 9% attrition. However, children who left
foundational and higher order skills are directly and the study did not differ from those who remained in the
indirectly related to text comprehension (Florit, Roch, study in all the measures at time 1 (p s  ≥ .24). In addi-
& Levorato, 2013 ; Kim, 2015 ; Kim & Phillips, 2014 ), and tion, Little ’ s ( 1988 ) test indicated missingness com-
therefore, in the present study, I examined direct and pletely at random, χ2 ( 16)  =  17.80, p   =  .34. Gender
indirect relations of language and cognitive skills to imbalance reflected enrollment status in the institute.
text- reading fluency versus reading comprehension. The sample children were from a single private insti-
These three primary questions were addressed by tute. Kindergarten attendance in Korea is virtually the
using longitudinal data from kindergartners in South norm, albeit not mandatory (Kim, 2011 ). Kindergarten
Korea. Although typically developing English- speaking education is offered in public and private institutes, and
kindergartners are not expected to have developed suf- kindergarten tuition is partially subsidized by the govern-
ficient text- reading fluency and reading comprehension ment. Data on socioeconomic status were not available
to be measured reliably, many previous studies with from individual children, but according to the school per-
Korean- speaking children have indicated that kinder- sonnel and the neighborhood, the sample children were
gartners in Korea have proficient word- reading skills from middle class families. Korea is highly homogeneous
(Cho, 2009 ; Cho & McBride- Chang, 2005 ; Cho et al., in terms of ethnic composition, and all the children in the
2008 ; Kim, 2007 , 2011 ), text- reading fluency, and read- present study were monolingual Korean speakers without
ing comprehension (Kim, 2011 ; Kim et al., 2014 ). These any hearing, vision, or language impairments.
Developmental, Component-Based Model of Reading Fluency | 5
Measures Text- Reading Fluency
Because I wanted to examine developmental patterns of Three previously unseen passages were used (Kim,
the relations among word- reading fluency, text- reading 2011 ; Kim et al., 2014 ). The child was asked to read each
fluency, reading comprehension, and listening compre- passage quickly and accurately. The three passages
hension, these constructs were assessed at times 1 and 2. ranged from 279 to 362 syllables. Korean is an aggluti-
However, emergent literacy skills and language and cog- native language, and therefore, texts used in the present
nitive skills were assessed only at times 1 and 2, respec- study included many inflected words. The texts ranged
tively, due to time and resource constraints. That is, from one- to six- syllable words3 with two to 16 graph-
children ’ s emergent literacy skills, such as phonological emes. Children ’ s performances were measured by the
awareness, letter name knowledge, orthographic aware- number of accurately read syllables in 40  seconds.
ness, morphological awareness, rapid automatized nam- Syllables omitted or substituted and hesitations of more
ing, and vocabulary, were assessed only at time 1, and than three seconds were scored as errors. Test–retest
language and cognitive skills (i.e., vocabulary, grammati- correlations were reported to be greater than .91. The
cal knowledge, working memory, theory of mind, com- number of syllables, not words, is reported in the pres-
prehension monitoring) were assessed only at time 2. ent study because the concept of word and related spac-
Administration times for emergent literacy skills and lan- ing in Korean is different from that in English (Lee &
guage and cognitive skills were determined considering Ramsey, 2000 ). Instead, the syllables count is used as
developmental progression: Emergent literacy skills were the metric of text volume in Korean (Kim et al., 2014 ).
expected to be critical for fundamental reading skills (e.g.,
word reading) at an earlier timepoint, and language Word-R eading Fluency
and cognitive skills were hypothesized to be important
To assess children ’ s word- reading fluency, they were
to more advanced reading skills, such as text- reading
shown words in a context- free list format and asked to
fluency and reading comprehension.
read words aloud quickly and accurately in three tasks.
No standardized and normed assessments were
A total of 60 items in each task, ranging from 175 to 195
available in Korean at the time of the study, and thus,
syllables, were randomly selected from the three pas-
measures were developed and/or adapted from previous
sages for the text- reading fluency tasks. Therefore, the
studies with Korean-s peaking children and English-
same words were used in the word- reading fluency and
speaking children. Unless otherwise noted, all the items
text- reading fluency tasks. The number of accurately
in the tasks were scored dichotomously. All the tasks
read items in 40 seconds was the child ’ s score. Note that
had high reliability estimates (see Table  1 ) except for the
in the text- reading fluency tasks, the number of cor-
listening comprehension task 1 at time 2, which had
rectly read syllables is reported, whereas in the word-
a relatively low estimate (.64). However, its impact is
reading fluency task, the number of correctly read items
minimized due to the use of a latent variable approach
is reported. This is because in the word- reading fluency
in the present study.
task, items correspond to spacing in the text- reading
fluency texts. For instance, 아빠한테 ( dad  + the post-
Skills Assessed at Times 1 and 2
positioned t o ) was presented together as an item in the
Reading Comprehension word- reading fluency task because they are not sepa-
rated by a word space in connected texts, although
Three tasks from previous studies were employed (Kim,
nouns and prepositions are separated by a space and
2011; Kim et al., 2014 ). In the first two tasks, the child
considered two separate words in English (see Lee &
was asked to read short passages and answer compre-
Ramsey, 2000 , for more information about the concept
hension questions about characters, events, problems,
of words and spacing in Korean). There were four prac-
and resolutions. At time 1, two passages were 100 words
tice items that were not from the text- reading fluency
(294 syllables) and 97 words (314 syllables) long with
passages, and there were 60 test items.
five and six comprehension questions, respectively. At
time 2, two passages had 112 words (313 syllables) and
Listening Comprehension
158 words (507 syllables) with six and seven compre-
hension questions, respectively. The last task, which Two tasks were used from a previous study (Kim et al.,
was administered at both times as an oral cloze task, 2014 ). These were originally adapted from the Listen-
had been adapted from the passage comprehension sub- ing Comprehension Scale of the Oral and Written
test of the third edition of the Woodcock–Johnson Tests Language Scales (Carrow- Woolfolk, 1 995 ) and the
of Achievement (Woodcock, McGrew, & Mather, 2 001 ). paragraph comprehension subtest of the Comprehensive
In this task, the child was asked to read sentences and Assessment of Spoken Language (Carrow- Woolfolk,
short passages and provide missing words. There were 1999 ). In the first task, children were asked to point to
three practice items and 21 test items. the picture that best described the heard sentences out
6 | Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0)
TABLE 1
Descriptive Statistics
Standard
Variable C ronbach ’ s α Mean deviation Minimum Maximum Skewness Kurtosis
Time 1
Text- reading fluency 1 a 48.22 46.78 0 211 1.09 0.75
Text- reading fluency 2 a 47.43 45.35 0 210 1.07 0.66
Text- reading fluency 3 a 51.15 48.40 0 195 1.03 0.45
Word-r eading fluency 1 a 11.92 12.87 0 46 1.07 0.20
Word-r eading fluency 2 a 10.42 12.77 0 51 1.46 1.44
Word-r eading fluency 3 a 10.89 12.44 0 46 1.30 0.72
Reading comprehension 1 .84 1.69 1.84 0 5 0.56 −1.18
Reading comprehension 2 .93 3.00 2.56 0 6 −0.12 −1.76
Reading comprehension 3 .93 5.49 5.19 0 20 0.80 −0.29
Listening comprehension 1 .80 15.97 3.96 4 25 −0.23 −0.05
Listening comprehension 2 .77 11.76 3.43 3 19 −0.39 −0.35
Letter- naming fluency .93 b 8.13 7.41 0 36 0.94 0.94
Orthographic awareness .81 21.31 4.80 11 30 −0.39 −0.94
Phonological awareness .91 13.14 6.91 0 27 −0.12 −0.48
Morphological awareness .87 8.86 4.34 0 18 −0.36 −0.72
Rapid automatized naming .86 48.94 17.16 21 120 1.66 3.71
Expressive vocabulary .77 19.71 4.29 11 30 0.04 −0.82
Time 2
Text- reading fluency 1 a 84.67 46.88 0 198 0.25 −0.56
Text- reading fluency 2 a 83.09 46.77 0 214 0.50 −0.16
Text- reading fluency 3 a 87.37 49.97 0 195 0.48 −0.40
Word-r eading fluency 1 a 21.45 13.63 0 54 0.37 −0.54
Word-r eading fluency 2 a 20.29 14.03 0 59 0.63 −0.14
Word-r eading fluency 3 a 21.08 14.68 0 58 0.54 −0.51
Reading comprehension 1 .79 2.38 1.99 0 6 0.19 −1.32
Reading comprehension 2 .81 2.25 2.11 0 7 0.52 −0.97
Reading comprehension 3 .93 9.65 5.62 0 20 −0.06 −1.03
Listening comprehension 1 .64 20.65 3.81 9 31 −0.33 0.38
Listening comprehension 2 .76 14.67 3.20 6 19 −0.57 −0.45
Theory of mind .72 10.02 3.09 2 17 0.05 −0.56
Comprehension monitoring .72 17.28 3.86 7 23 −0.60 −0.26
Receptive vocabulary .79 40.38 4.85 27 48 −0.64 −0.19
Grammatical knowledge .88 18.17 5.53 6 26 −0.57 −0.82
Working memory .79 13.05 6.18 0 26 −0.45 −0.05
a See Table 2 for alternate form reliability. b Test–retest reliability (approximately seven days apart; n = 50).
Developmental, Component-Based Model of Reading Fluency | 7
of four options (i.e., four pictures). There were two constraints in the Korean writing system was assessed.
practice items and 34 test items. In the second task, For instance, in Korean, a vertical vowel letter is only per-
children were asked to identify the one picture out of mitted on the right of the preceding consonant, not on the
four that best described the answer to the question left. Therefore, ㅏ오 is illegal, whereas 와 is legal. There
based on the short stories they heard. There were one were four practice items and 30 test items.
practice item and 19 test items.
Rapid Automatized Naming
Emergent Literacy Skills A digit task was used (Kim, 2011 ). In this task, five dif-
Assessed at Time 1 ferent digits were repeated randomly 10 times in five
rows. The child was asked to name all the stimuli as fast
The emergent literacy skills in the present study have
as possible. As expected, there were few errors in accu-
been used in previous studies, and greater details are
racy, and thus, the latency score was used.
found in those studies (e.g., nature of orthographic
awareness task items; Kim, 2010 , 2011 ).
Expressive Vocabulary
Letter- Naming Fluency In this task, the child was asked to provide names of
items (e.g., a irplane) , synonyms (e.g., another word for
Korean alphabet letters (a total of 40) were presented in
angry ), and superordinate terms (e.g., f urniture; Kim,
random order in a row of eight letters in 13 rows, and
2011 ). Items were presented with corresponding illus-
the child was asked to name the letter as accurately and
trations. There were three practice items and 33 test
fast as possible. The number of correctly identified let-
items.
ters in 40 seconds was the score. Self- corrected names
were given credit.
Language and Cognitive Skills
Phonological Awareness Assessed at Time 2
A deletion task was used, in which the child was asked
Working Memory
to delete syllables and phonemes (Kim, 2011 ). For in-
The listening span task from previous studies (Cain
stance, for the syllable deletion task, the child was asked
et al., 2004 ; Florit, Roch, Altoè, & Levorato, 2009 ; Kim
to say /∫ige/ and delete /∫i/ from /∫ige/ (c lock or watch ),
& Phillips, 2014 ) was adapted to Korean. In this task,
and the correct answer is /ge/ (d og or crab) . In the pho-
the child was asked to identify whether the sentence
neme deletion task, the child was asked to say /mul/
they heard was correct or not (i.e., yes/no response).
( water ) and say the word without /l/, which is /mu/ (r ad-
After hearing all the sentences (e.g., two sentences), the
ish ). There were five practice items (three syllable items
child was asked to identify the first words in the sen-
and two phoneme items) and 27 test items (15 syllable
tences they heard. The sentences were statements
items and 12 phoneme items). As seen in Table  1 , it ap-
involving common knowledge (e.g., “Birds fly in the
pears that on average, children were able to perform
sky”). Note that listening span tasks in English and
accurately at the syllable level (mean [M ] = 13.14) but
other European languages require children to identify
with large variation around the mean ( SD = 6.91).
the last word in each sentence (e.g., Cain et al., 2004 ;
Florit et  al., 2009 ). However, this was modified in
Morphological Awareness
Korean as identifying the first word in each sentence
A compound construction task was used because in
because of the subject- object- verb sentence structure in
Korean, compound construction is an important mor-
Korean. Verbs and adjectives in Korean are always
phological feature (Cho et al., 2008 ; Kim, 2011 ). In the
inflected and tend to have the same or similar final in-
first nine items, the child was presented with scenarios in
flections in a given context. Therefore, sentence- final
two or three sentences and asked to create a compound
words (i.e., verbs with highly similar inflections) were
noun. An example item is as follows: “When a refrigerator
deemed inappropriate for the task. The first words in
keeps kimchi (a Korean dish) in it, we call it a kimchi
the task were all nouns.
refrigerator. If a refrigerator keeps a flower in it, what
There were four practice items and 15 experimental
we would we call it?” The correct answer is a flower refrig-
items with increasing difficulty (i.e., listening to two sen-
erator. The second nine items were presented without
tences vs. three). Children ’ s yes/no responses regarding
scenarios. There were two practice items and 18 test items.
the veracity of the statement were not scored, but their
responses on the first words in correct order were given a
Orthographic Awareness score of 2 per item, and responses including the first
An orthographic choice task was used (Kim, 2010 , 2011 ). words in incorrect order was given 1 point. Therefore,
In this task, the child ’ s sensitivity to several orthographic a total possible maximum score was 30.
8 | Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0)
Receptive Vocabulary explained the context. Then, the tester asked the child a
series of questions involving characters’ beliefs, such as,
A receptive vocabulary task was adapted from the fourth
“Where do you think Jungwoo will look for his cake?”
edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Dunn
and, “Minsoo thinks that they sell only sweet potato
& Dunn, 2007 ). In this task, the child hears a word and is
bread at the bakery. Why does he think that?” (see, e.g.,
asked to identify a corresponding picture out of four
Bartsch & Wellman, 1989 ; Caillies, Hody, & Calmus,
options. The task included 51 items with increasing dif-
2012 ; Caillies & Sourn- Bissaoui, 2008 , for a similar ap-
ficulty that had accompanying color illustrations. Task
proach). There were a total of 18 items: three questions
administration stopped after six consecutive incorrect
in each of the four first- order tasks and six questions in
responses.
the second- order task.
Grammatical Knowledge
Comprehension Monitoring
The child was asked to detect and correct grammatical
An inconsistency detection task was adapted from the
errors and complete unfinished sentences. In the error
studies of L. Baker ( 1984 ) and Cain et al. ( 2004) . A simi-
detection and correction part, the child was asked to
lar adapted task has been used with English- speaking
identify whether the sentence they heard was correct
kindergartners (Kim & Phillips, 2014 ). In the task, the
or incorrect, and if incorrect, the child was asked to
child was asked to identify whether the story made
correct the sentence. In the three practice items, the
sense or not, and if the story did not make sense, the
child was provided explanations. For instance, the sen-
child was asked to provide a brief explanation. An ex-
tence “나는 가게 가 갑니다” (“I go to a store”) has an
ample of an inconsistent item is as follows: “Minhee ’ s
incorrect postposition (the underlined part). The child
favorite color is blue. She wears blue every day. Minhee
was told that 가 (/ka/; postposition) is incorrect, but 에
has blue pants and even blue shoes. Minhee likes to
(/e/) is correct. Twelve experimental items (nine incor-
have everything purple!” An example of a consistent
rect sentences) involved grammatical markers, tenses,
and coherent story is as follows: “Joonsoo is 5 years old.
and postpositions. In the sentence completion items
He only likes chocolate milk. He pours cool milk into a
(one practice item and five test items), the child was
cup every evening. Joonsoo ’ s favorite milk is chocolate
asked to complete the sentence based on the preceding
milk.” There were four practice items and 15 experi-
sentence heard. For example, the child heard “Minsoo,
mental items. Feedback and explanations (e.g., meaning
did you do homework? No, later homework….” The
of “not making sense”) were provided in the practice
correct response is “(I) will do.” Note that verbs come at
items. Consistent (seven items) and inconsistent stories
the end of the sentence in Korean.
(eight items) were randomly spread across items. For
Altogether, there were a total of 17 experimental items
the eight inconsistent stories, the accuracy of children ’ s
in the grammatical knowledge task, but a total possible
explanations were also dichotomously scored, and thus,
maximum score was 26 because 1 point was given per
a total possible score was 23 (15 + 8).
correct response for 12 grammatical error identification
items, 1 point for correcting nine incorrect sentences, and
Procedures
1 point for each of the five sentence completion items.
Rigorously trained research assistants assessed children
Theory of Mind individually in a quiet room in the school. Assessments
were counterbalanced within each session to reduce fa-
First- and second- order false- belief scenarios were em-
tigue effects. Research assistants had extensive experience
ployed. There were four first- order scenarios, involving
with children, including language and literacy assess-
locations of a cake, a drawing, a birthday gift, and the
ments. The assessment battery was typically administered
contents of a snack box adapted from a previous study
in four sessions, each lasting 25–30 minutes.
(Gwon & Lee, 2012 ). The first three involved change- of-
location stories, and the last one was an appearance-
Data Analysis Strategy
reality task (or unexpected identity) using a snack box
that is highly familiar to children in Korea. One second- Confirmatory factory analysis and structural equation
order false- belief scenario involved different types of modeling using Mp lus version 7.1 (Muthén & Muthén,
bread sold in a bakery, which was adapted from a previ- 2013 ) were the primary data analytic strategies. Latent
ous study with English- speaking children (Kim & variables were created for the following constructs for
Phillips, 2014 ). The second- order task examined the which multiple measures were used: word- reading flu-
child ’ s ability to infer a story character ’ s mistaken belief ency, text- reading fluency, listening comprehension, and
about another character’ s knowledge. reading comprehension. The latent variable approach is
In all the tasks except the snack box task, the preferred because latent variables capture common vari-
tester presented a series of illustrations to the child and ables among observed variables (also called indicators)
Developmental, Component-Based Model of Reading Fluency | 9
and thus minimize the influence of measurement error values were on the borderline, raw scores were used in
(Bollen, 1989 ; Kline, 2005 ). However, children ’ s emer- the analysis. Note that when analysis was conducted ex-
gent literacy skills and language and cognitive skills cluding outliers in the rapid automatized naming task,
were assessed by single measures for each construct due results were essentially the same, and thus, results from
to time and resource constraints. the entire sample are reported herein.
The research questions were addressed by fitting struc- Tables  2 and 3 show correlations among measures at
tural equation models. Model fits were evaluated by using times 1 and 2, respectively. Correlations between time 1
the following multiple indexes: chi- square statistics, the and time 2 measures are not presented due to space
comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), constraints but are available upon request. All the rela-
Akaike information criterion (AIC), Bayesian information tions are in expected directions. Emergent literacy skills
criterion (BIC), root mean square error of approximation were weakly to moderately related to one another
(RMSEA), and standardized root mean square residual (−.28 ≤  r s ≤ .56; see Table  2 ) and moderately to relatively
(SRMR). Typically, RMSEA values below 0.08, CFI and strongly related to literacy skills (.41 ≤ r s ≤ .68; see
TLI values equal to or greater than 0.95, and SRMR values Table  2 ). Literacy skills were all fairly strongly to
equal to or less than 0.05 indicate an excellent model strongly related to one another (.59 ≤ r s ≤ .96; see
fit (Hu & Bentler, 1999 ), and TLI and CFI v alues greater Tables  2 and 3 ). Language and cognitive skills were
than 0.90 are considered to be accep table (Kline, 2005 ). weakly to fairly strongly related to reading comprehen-
Note that given multiple hypothesis testing, I applied sion (.17 ≤  r s ≤ .59; see Table  3 ). Language and cognitive
Benjamini–Hochberg correction for stati stical signifi- skills were also weakly to relative strongly related to lis-
cance testing (Benjamini & Hochberg, 1 995 ). Therefore, tening comprehension skills (.17 ≤ r s ≤ .65; see Table  3 ),
only statistically significant paths after the Benjamini– which is similar to previous studies with children
Hochberg corrections are reported, but p - values asso- speaking English, Finnish, or Italian (Florit et al., 2009 ;
ciated with statistically significant paths are from the Kim & Phillips, 2014 ; Lepola, Lynch, Laakkonen, Silvén,
uncorrected outputs. & Niemi, 2012 ).
Research Question 1: Developmental
Results Relations Among Word-R eading
Fluency, Listening Comprehension,
Descriptive statistics are presented in Table  1 . On aver-
Text-R eading Fluency, and Reading
age, at time 1, children were able to read 10–12 words in
Comprehension
40 seconds in the context- free format and approxi-
mately 48–51 syllables per 40 seconds in connected text. Prior to addressing the research question, confirmatory
Forty- eight syllables were equivalent to approximately factor analysis was conducted to examine whether
38 words in 60 seconds using the English convention of word- reading fluency and text- reading fluency tasks
words. At time 2, this increased to an average perfor- are best described as a single construct or two dissocia-
mance of 20 or 21 words in the context- free format and ble constructs. When the tasks were considered to
83–87 syllables in connected text. The latter perfor- capture a single construct, the model fit was poor,
mance is similar to what was reported in a previous χ 2( 53)  =  415.82, p   <  .001; CFI  =  0.91; TLI  =  0.88;
study with kindergartners from similar backgrounds RMSEA  =  0.22 (90% confidence interval [CI; 0.20,
(Kim et al., 2014 ) and was equivalent to approximately 0.24]); SRMR = 0.02. In contrast, model fit for two sepa-
63 words in 60 seconds following the English conven- rate constructs was excellent, χ2 ( 48) = 71.77, p  = .02;
tion of words. CFI = 0.99; TLI = 0.99; RMSEA = 0.06 (90% CI [0.03,
Children ’ s average performances at time 2 on the 0.09]); SRMR = 0.007. A chi- square difference test indi-
reading comprehension and listening comprehension cated that the two- factor model was superior,
tasks were also similar to a previous study with kinder- Δχ2 (Δd f  = 5) = 344.05, p  < .001.
gartners (Kim et al., 2014 ). Note, however, that at time 1, After establishing that word- reading fluency and
the word- reading fluency task 2 and rapid automatized text- reading fluency are best described as dissocia-
naming had somewhat large skewness values. The ble constructs, I examined measurement invariance
skewness value for the rapid automatized naming was at two timepoints for the model in Figure  1 follow-
driven by a few slow namers, which stretched the tail on ing procedures of Brown ( 2006 ). First, a baseline of
the right (see the Appendix for the plot). The positive the noninvariance model was specified by allowing
skew of the word- reading task also indicates some floor the loadings to vary completely. This model yielded
effect, which is a limitation of the study. Because trans- good fit to the data, χ2 (191)  =  324.09, p   <  .001;
formations of these measures did not make substantial CFI = 0.97; TLI = 0.97; RMSEA = 0.07 (90% CI [0.057,
changes in distribution patterns, and the skewness 0.083]); SRMR = 0.03. When a full invariance model
10 | Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0)