Do Various Reading Activities Differently Influence Hispanic American Student Reading Achievements? Findings Drawing on Data From PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) 2006

• In Event: Roundtable Session 32
  In Roundtable Session: Do Various Teaching Approaches and Students’ Self-Concepts Affect Achievement Across Racial Groups and Subjects Differently? Findings Using the Data From Large-Scale International Studies

Abstract

Reading efficiently, extensively, and critically is necessary for students to pursue their personal fulfillment (Flower, 1988), become productive workforce for the global economy (Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wlkinson, 1985), and functional citizens of the democratic society (Freire & Macedo, 1987; Purves, Harnisch, Quirk, & Bauer, 1981). Hispanic American students underperformed Caucasian American students in reading constantly (National Center for Education Statistics, 2010b). They are also different from their Caucasian peers as most of them are English learners who develop the essential reading skills such as phonological awareness later while most Caucasian American students are exposed to English reading in early childhood (Chall, 1996). Due to such delay, researchers recommended teachers to use the reading instruction involving small-group interactions infused with vocabulary instruction and oral reading to improve their reading skills while discouraging the instruction focusing on silent reading and reading books of students’ own choice (Gersten, et al., 2007). This suggestion presumes problematic for Hispanic American students at fourth or higher grade level for many of them have received three-years reading instruction and begin to shift from “learn to read” to “read to learn” (Chall, 1996). This study examines whether and to what extent the two kinds of reading activities influence Hispanic American students’ reading achievements differently.

The interactive-compensatory reading assumption guides the design, analysis, interpretation of our study, which suggests that students learn to read by decoding the linguistic items (bottom-up processing) and by relating this information to what they already know about the world (top-down processing) (Stanovich, 1980). With the increase of age and improved reading skills, students at higher grade levels are more likely to use top-down model and demonstrate a developmental disjunction between oral reading fluency and reading comprehension (Prater, 2009).

Drawing on U.S. data sets from PIRLS 2006, we used the reading achievement scores of the fourth grade Hispanic students as the dependent variable and the various reading instructional activities based on student and teacher survey as the independent variables in this study. Multiple-level regressions were conducted to identify the predictive effects of various reading activities on Hispanic American students’ reading achievement scores.

Our analysis revealed that reading instruction focusing on oral reading and small-group interaction was negatively related to Hispanic American students’ reading achievement scores. In contrast, reading instruction involving silent reading and reading books of their own choice was positively related to their reading performance.

The findings indicated that the reinforcement of phonological awareness and teaching interventions with small group interactions and oral reading activities may hinder Hispanic American students’ reading development at Grade 4 and higher levels. Different from students at early grades, these students are more likely to use top-down approach in reading (Stanovich, 1980) and enter the stage of “reading to learn” (Chall, 1996). The study suggest that teachers need to teach Hispanic American students at intermediate or higher grade using more independent reading activities at school and home and encourage them to reading books relevant to their own interest.

Authors

• Siping Liu, University of Nevada - Las Vegas

• Jian Wang, University of Nevada - Las Vegas