Why Prosody Matters: The Importance of Reading Aloud with Expression

• July 26, 2012 by Logan De Ley

Reading aloud with expression is a foundational reading skill students should be developing between grades 1 - 5, according to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (2012). It is pretty easy to recognize when someone skillfully reads aloud in an expressive manner. However, to effectively teach or assess this skill, a closer examination of its features, development, and relationship to other reading skills is needed.

Prosody, the defining feature of expressive reading, comprises all of the variables of timing, phrasing, emphasis, and intonation that speakers use to help convey aspects of meaning and to make their speech lively. One of the challenges of oral reading is adding back the prosodic cues that are largely absent from written language.

Researchers have found strong links between oral reading prosody and general reading achievement. For example, after comparing students’ reading prosody in first and second grades with their reading comprehension at the end of third grade, Miller and Schwanenflugel (2008) concluded that, “early acquisition of an adult-like intonation contour predicted better comprehension.” Another study, which included more than 1,750 fourth graders participating in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), found a strong correlation between prosody and overall reading achievement (Daane, Campbell, Grigg, Goodman, & Oranje, 2005).

In the context of oral reading, prosody can reflect linguistic features, such as sentence structure, as well as text features, such as punctuation. Skilled readers pick up on these features, and respond to them when reading aloud, as when they pause briefly at relevant commas, pause slightly longer at sentence boundaries, raise their pitch at the end of yes-no questions, and lower their pitch at the end of declarative sentences.

While punctuation provides some cues to prosody, young readers can be misled by it. For instance, they may pause at every comma, even when the grammar of the sentence does not call for pausing (e.g., “He made his usual egg, cheese, and tomato sandwich.”). As young readers move toward adult proficiency, their pauses increasingly respect the grammar of the text rather than doggedly following the punctuation (Miller & Schwanenflugel, 2006).

Prosody can also reflect aspects of meaning. For instance, slight fluctuations in pitch, timing, and emphasis can change a simple question (e.g., “What did you do?”) into an expression of censure.  Learning to read dialog in a manner that reflects the intentions and emotional states of the characters is a great way for adolescent readers to delve deeply into literature. However, younger students may not understand this use of prosody well enough to apply it to oral reading (Cutler & Swinney, 1987). Notably, in the NAEP study, only 10% of fourth graders were judged as reading aloud with this level of expressiveness.

Finally, when thinking about prosody, it is critical to remember the other aspects of reading fluency: word reading accuracy and reading rate. Inefficient word reading is the primary barrier to good prosody for most young readers (Schwanenflugel, Hamilton, Wisenbaker, Kuhn, & Stahl, 2004). Children who are struggling to decode individual words tend to pause too frequently and for too long, so that their timing and phrasing are seriously disrupted. Furthermore, they must put so much effort into decoding that they do not have the mental resources left for constructing meaning and conveying it expressively.

Listening to the prosody of a child reading aloud provides parents and educators with a window into many aspects of reading skill. By reading aloud with appropriate timing, phrasing, and end of sentence intonation, younger readers can demonstrate their ability to:

• read words accurately;

• read at a reasonable rate;

• read most words automatically, so that mental resources are available for comprehension;

• use grammar and punctuation to help construct meaning;

By reading aloud with increasingly adult-like intonation and expressiveness, adolescent readers can demonstrate their ability to:

• use discourse-level features, such as pronouns and signal words, to recognize relationships across and among the sentences in a text;

• understand characters and their intentions when reading fiction

• understand an author’s purpose or attitude.

Ultimately, all of these abilities must be brought to bear to achieve the ultimate goal of reading with comprehension.

 

 

References:

Common Core State Standards Initiative (2012). English Language Arts Standards – Reading: Foundational Skills (Grade 1 – Grade 5). National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO): Washington, DC. 

Cutler, A. & Swinney, D. A. (1987). Prosody and the development of comprehension. Journal of Child Language, 14, 145-167.

Daane, M.C., Campbell, J.R., Grigg, W.S., Goodman, M.J., and Oranje, A. (2005). Fourth-Grade Students Reading Aloud: NAEP 2002 Special Study of Oral Reading(NCES 2006-469). U.S. Department of Education. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. 

Miller, J. & Schwanenflugel, P. J. (2008). A Longitudinal Study of the Development of Reading Prosody as a Dimension of Oral Reading Fluency in Early Elementary School Children. Reading Research Quarterly, 43, 336-354. 

Miller, J. & Schwanenflugel, P. J. (2006). Prosody of Syntactically Complex Sentences in the Oral Reading of Young Children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 839-843. 

Schwanenflugel, P. J., Hamilton, A. M., Kuhn, M. R., Wisenbaker, J. M., & Stahl, S. A. (2004). Becoming a fluent reader: Reading skill and prosodic features in the oral reading of young readers. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96, 119–129. 

Related Reading:

Building Fluent Readers: How Oral Reading Practice Helps Reading Comprehension

5 Fluency and Comprehension Strategies That Every Reader Can Use

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant

Tags: academic proficiency, child reading development, elementary learning, fluency, improving reading skills, learning to read, literacy, oral reading, reading comprehension

After Just 24 Days, Summer School Students Significantly Improve Reading Scores

• March 24, 2011 by Logan De Ley

In a 5-week summer program, students at eleven schools from Wayne County Public Schools in North Carolina used the Reading Assistant software from Scientific Learning. To evaluate the impact of this program, the district conducted an observational study using reading scores, collected before and after the intervention, from 117 students.

The outcomes measure used for the study was Reading Progress Indicator - RPI for short. This computer-based assessment is standardized and nationally normed, and it is correlated with other widely used reading measures. RPI assesses student learning in four key skill areas: phonological awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Study participants used Reading Assistant software, which combines advanced speech verification technology with research-based interventions to function as a personal tutor for guided oral reading practice. On average, the study participants worked with the software for a total of 6.3 hours over a 24 day period.

At the beginning of Wayne County’s summer program, the study participants scored at the 21^st percentile in reading skills, on average. Five weeks later, after working with Reading Assistant, the study group moved to the 30^th percentile in reading skills – a statistically significant improvement. They also improved their average reading level, moving from “struggling readers” to “emerging readers.”

Related Reading:

How Does Learning Coach Technology Work?

Can Scientific Learning Products Improve School Test Scores?

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Categories: Education Trends, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, below grade level, child reading development, how children learn, improving reading skills, increased test scores, literacy, phonemic awareness, reading test gains, student reading growth, technology in education, vocabulary

Truth in Numbers: School Achieves Statistically Significant Improvements on TAKS

• March 3, 2011 by Logan De Ley

In the 2008-2009 school year, selected students at Sam Houston Elementary School in the Grand Prairie Independent School District, TX, worked with the Reading Assistant software. To evaluate the impact of this intervention, the school conducted an observational study using scores from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or “TAKS,” the annual state assessment. Administered in the spring of each year, students throughout Texas take the TAKS, which measures progress against the state’s curricular standards.

On average, the study students worked with the Reading Assistant software for a total of two and a half hours over a 27-day period. The outcomes measure used for the study was the reading portion of the TAKS. Assessment results were reported in Lexile scores, which provide a continuous scale for tracking students’ reading achievement over time.

Before and after scores were available for 18 fifth graders who had worked with the software:

• Prior to using Reading Assistant, many of these students were struggling readers. Only 56% of study participants met the state standard for reading proficiency in 2008. The group’s average reading level was more than a year below what it should have been for their grade.
• After using Reading Assistant, the percentage of students who met the Texas state standard for reading proficiency increased from 56% to 78%. The group’s average Lexile score went up from 541 before using the software to 753 after using the software.

The study group showed statistically significant gains in both reading score and passing rate, suggesting that guided oral reading practice with Reading Assistant had a dramatic impact on reading achievement. Reading Assistant software combines advanced speech recognition technology with research-based interventions to function as a personal tutor for guided oral reading practice.

For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on results schools and districts have achieved with Fast ForWord and Reading Assistant software. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.

 

Related Reading:

One Half Year Increase in One Month with Reading Assistant

Nevada Department of Education: Fast ForWord is a “High-Gain Program”

 

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Categories: Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: academic success, accelerate learning, child reading development, elementary school learning, improving reading skills, increased test scores, learning to read, literacy, reading comprehension, reading intervention, reading test gains, student reading growth, TAKS, technology in education, Texas, video

Building a Foundation for Academic Success

• October 15, 2010 by Logan De Ley

Becoming an expert reader depends upon having extensive reading experience. Researchers often refer to an individual’s cumulative reading experience as their level of “print exposure,” and they have found that print exposure is linked to educational achievement, that it depends on reading fluency, and that it varies widely among both children and adults. Reading a lot will certainly make you a better reader, but does it have any other cognitive consequences? Cunningham and Stanovich conducted a series of studies to answer this question. Their studies consistently showed that sheer volume of reading is a powerful predictor of verbal skills and world knowledge. In addition, they concluded that “reading yields significant dividends for everyone—not just for the ‘smart kids’ or the more able readers.”

In another study, Cunningham and Stanovich collected data from a group of students over a ten year period, to examine the relationship between early skills and 11th grade print exposure. Across a range of 1st grade measures, the most important predictor they found was the students’ reading fluency, as measured by tests of decoding, word recognition, and comprehension. It is worth noting that they found an even stronger connection between 3rd and 5th grade reading fluency and 11th grade print exposure. This suggests that students who don’t get off to a quick start can overcome that setback, as long as they eventually become fluent readers.

Just how much does children’s exposure to print vary? Data collected by Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding, who investigated how much time fifth graders spent reading books outside of school. They found quite a range: children at the 10th percentile averaged only one tenth of a minute per day, while children at the 90th percentile averaged more than 20 minutes per day – 200 times as much – and the students who read more made greater gains in reading comprehension.

Students who don’t choose to read independently are usually non-fluent readers, and they may benefit from interventions that improve fluency and increase print exposure. As daunting as this gap looks, adding just 10 minutes of book reading time each day could substantially reduce it.  Increased exposure would move a student from the 30th percentile to somewhere above the 70th percentile in words read per year.

Teachers can’t control how their students spend their time outside of school. However, by providing well structured guided oral reading practice, they can help their students gain fluency and increase print exposure during the school day. Scientific Learning Reading Assistant™ software is a tool that helps teachers provide this kind of research-based reading intervention. Reading Assistant is designed to help students across a wide range of ages and ability levels to become more fluent readers.

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Categories: Family Focus, Reading & Learning, Reading Assistant

Tags: academic success, achievement gap, child reading development, early learning, elementary school learning, improving reading skills

Results from a “Gold Standard Study” Show Significant Student Gains in Language and Literacy Skills

• September 22, 2010 by Logan De Ley

A research study was conducted in Western Australia to evaluate the use of Fast ForWord products for improving language and literacy skills. This study was conducted by educators at four primary schools in a major metropolitan area of Western Australia. Clinicians with Sonic Hearing, a local private practice, supported the educators with training and expert assistance in Fast ForWord implementation. Across the four schools, 144 students participated in the study.

At the beginning and end of the study, the students’ language and literacy skills were assessed by school personnel, using a battery of tests from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals and the Queensland University Inventory of Literacy.

The study was conducted using a randomized controlled trial design. Half of the students were randomly assigned to an intervention group, and only the students in this group used the Fast ForWord products during the study. The remaining students were assigned to a control group. Students in the control group did not use the Fast ForWord products until after the study. Research evaluators such as the What Works Clearinghouse consider this type of study to provide strong evidence about an intervention’s effectiveness. The randomized controlled trial design is also known as a “Gold Standard Study.”

The intervention group used the Fast ForWord products for an average of 9 weeks – typically working 50 minutes per day, 5 days per week. Most of the students used two Fast ForWord products, starting on Fast ForWord Language, or Fast ForWord Middle & High School, and then advancing to Fast ForWord Language to Reading.

Scores from the test battery were combined for statistical analysis. The results of this analysis showed that, on average, the students who used Fast ForWord made significantly greater language and literacy gains than the students who did not. These results suggest that using the Fast ForWord products strengthened the students’ foundational skills and better positioned them to benefit from the classroom curriculum.

For more information, please see the Educator Briefing on this study as well as any of our 200+ additional reports on Fast ForWord results. If you have questions about any of our research studies, please contact us.

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Categories: Brain Fitness, Fast ForWord, Reading & Learning, Scientific Learning Research

Tags: brain training, curriculum, elementary learning, elementary school learning, Gold Standard Study, improve test scores, improving reading skills, increased test scores, literacy, student reading growth, What Works Clearinghouse