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Styles, Reading Strategies and Test Performance: A Follow-Up Study of Beginning Readers

Author(s):
Chittenden, Edward A.
Publication Year:
1983
Report Number:
RR-83-31
Source:
ETS Research Report
Document Type:
Report
Page Count:
48
Subject/Key Words:
California Achievement Tests, Early Childhood Education, Elementary Education, Learning Processes, Performance Factors, Reading Skills

Abstract

Follow-up data consisting of teacher ratings and reading achievement scores (CAT) were collected for twenty children whose early reading progress had been extensively documented in previous observational research. The children in the Follow-up sample represented two contrasting stylistic groups with distinctive strategies for reading. The data indicated no difference between the groups in general reading ability by the end of the primary grades. There was evidence, however, of stylistic influences on children's responses to measures (subtests) of reading comprehension. Children who broadly relied upon anticipation of meanings, as their entry into text, exhibited reading strategies that were not well suited to constraints of comprehension items, whereas the children whose styles of learning were more linear and more narrowly focused exhibited strategies that were better matched to the task. (48pp.)

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