The Importance of Oral Language for
Reading Comprehension Among
Adolescents
Barbara Foorman, Ph.D., Professor & Director, Florida
Center for Reading Research & the REL Southeast
This information is being provided as part of a webinar administered by the U.S. Department of
Education, with support from the Institute of Education Sciences’ National Center for Education
Research (NCER) and National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE).
Specifically, the research reported here was supported by IES/NCER through a subaward to Florida
State University from Grant R305F100005 to the Educational Testing Service as part of the Reading for
Understanding Research Initiative. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not
represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education. Information about the Reading
for Understanding Research Initiative can be found here:
http://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/program.asp?ProgID=62
Information and materials for this webinar are also supported by IES/NCEE’s Regional Educational
Laboratory Southeast at Florida State University (Contract ED-IES-12-C-0011) as resources and
examples for the viewer's convenience. Their inclusion is not intended as an endorsement by the
Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast or its funding source, the Institute of Education Sciences.
In addition, the instructional practices and assessments discussed or shown in this presentation is not
intended to mandate, direct, or control a State’s, local educational agency’s, or school’s specific
instructional content, academic achievement system and assessments, curriculum, or program of
instruction. State and local programs may use any instructional content, achievement system and
assessments, curriculum, or program of instruction they wish.
Outcomes
• Understanding of academic language and
instructional implications
• Understanding of features of text cohesion and
how to apply them to writing instruction
• Knowledge of how academic language relates to
writing in response to reading
• Knowledge of how to engage students in academic
discourse in the classroom
What is Oral Language?
Select the best answer(s)
a) System in which spoken words convey knowledge,
thought, and expression
b) System for communicating signs & emotions
c) Phonology, morphology, semantics, and
pragmatics
d) Orthography, structural analysis, and mnemonics
What is Oral Language?
The best answer(s) are in red:
b) System for communicating signs & emotions
d) Orthography, structural analysis, and mnemonics
Language
Semantics
(vocabulary lexicon),
Concepts such as
synonyms, antonyms,
multiple meanings,
similes, metaphors
Content
Phonology,
Morphology, Syntax
Form
Use
Pragmatics,
(discourse) how
language is used
What is Reading?
Select the best answer(s)
a) Memorizing visual shapes and sound segments
b) Pronouncing sound-spelling patterns
c) Conversion of written forms to oral language
forms
d) Obtaining meaning from print
e) Transcribing sounds to written form
What is Reading?
The best answer(s) are:
a) Memorizing visual shapes and sound segments
b) Pronouncing sound-spelling patterns
e) Transcribing sounds to written form
Rayner et al. (2001)
Simple View of Reading (Gough &
Tunmer, 1986)
• Posits that reading comprehension will
develop to the same level as listening
comprehension
Decoding
of text
Comprehension of
language
Reading
to gain
meaning
Academic Language is at the Core of
Literacy Instruction
Word
Meanings
• because it allows literate people to
discuss literary products (and was
previously referred to as extended discourse
or decontextualized language)
• because contextual cues and shared
assumptions are minimized by explicitly
encoding referents for pronouns,
actions, and locations
Text
• because it is the language of
disciplinary text
10
What Makes Written Language
(i.e., Text) Difficult to Understand?
11
Qualitative Ratings
• Structure
o Low complexity: simple, well-marked, conventional
o High complexity: complex, implicit, unconventional
• Language Conventionality and Clarity: literal, clear, contemporary, and
conversational language vs. figurative, ironic, ambiguous, purposefully
misleading, archaic/unfamiliar, academic & domain-specific language
• Knowledge Demands: Texts with few assumptions about reader’s life
experiences & depth of cultural/literary and content/discipline knowledge are
less complex than those with more assumptions.
• Levels of Meaning (literary text) or Purpose (informational text):
o Single vs. multiple levels of meaning (e.g., satire)
o Explicit vs. implicit
Coh-Metrix: Dimensions
• Narrativity: how story-like
• Syntactic simplicity: how short & familiar the
clauses and sentences are
• Word Concreteness: imaginable vs. abstract
• Referential cohesion: overlap of N, V, adj., and
major ideas
• Deep cohesion: presence of causal, temporal, &
logical connectives in the text
Referential Cohesion Examples
• Argument overlap: father-father(s); she-she
• Noun overlap: mother-mother; not mother-mothers
• Stem overlap: gives, gave, giving, giver
When water is heated, it boils and eventually evaporates.
When the heat is reduced, it turns back into a liquid form.
Effects of Referential Cohesion
• Lack of argument overlap increases reading time
• Noun and argument overlap predict comprehension of
informational text
• Semantic relatedness is shown to predict reading
comprehension
• A high density of pronouns compared with the density
of noun phrases creates referential cohesion
problems
Causal Cohesion: Examples
• Causal verbs: refers to change of state,
actions, or events
– break, freeze, move, enable, make
• Causal particles and connectives
– thus, therefore, the consequence of
– because, if, when, also, on the other hand
Effects of Causal Cohesion
• Causally related events are read faster than other
related events
• Causal cohesion is important in narrative
comprehension
• Coherence suffers when the ratio of causal particles
to causal verbs is small
[Coherence = cohesion × reader ability]
How the Smartphone Killed Typing—
But Started an AI Revolution
Steve Jobs often swam against the tide of prevailing opinion. (“You can't make a mouse without two buttons!” “You
can't make a computer without a floppy drive!” “You can't make a cell phone without a swappable battery!”) He turned
out to be right many times.
Occasionally, though, his decisions took the industry into awkward directions from which we've never really recovered.
Jobs was fixed, for example, on the idea of a cell phone without any keys. The iPhone became a hit, it spawned
imitators, and the rest is history (or the future, depending on how you look at it).
Eliminating the keyboard has its perks. It leaves more room on the phone for screen area—for photographs, movies,
maps and reading material. Only one activity really suffers: entering text.
The first iPhone offered an on-screen keyboard. The advantage, as Jobs pointed out, was it could disappear when you
didn't need it. It could also change languages or alphabets in a flash.
But at its core, typing on glass is slow and unsatisfying, especially compared with using a physical keyboard such as
the BlackBerry's. The history of contemporary smartphones has been a seven-year quest to fix that problem.
The original iPhone tried to help in two minor ways, which are still at work today. First, the on-screen keys change size
based on probability (not visually but behind the scenes). Second, there is autocomplete: spawner of a billion curses,
source of much hilarity but also often quite helpful.
[continued in Scientific American, Nov. 18, 2014]
Qualitative Rating of Smartphone Passage
• Structure:
•Moderate complexity: some inferences; unconventional; some
chronology; subgenre traits (from technology)
• Language Conventionality and Clarity:
•Some figurative and domain-specific language (abstract
technology terms)
• Knowledge Demands:
•Assumes some technological knowledge
•Levels of Meaning (literary text) or Purpose (informational text):
• Somewhat implicit purpose of defending Jobs’ decision not to
have physical keyboard on iPhones
How the Smart Phone Killed Typing
Text Complexity Measure
Score
Readability Measures
Lexile®
950
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
7.3
Coh-Metrix Factors (percentile)
Narrativity
50
Syntactic Simplicity
68
Word Concreteness
29
Referential Cohesion
2
Deep Cohesion
82
Coh-Metrix: Dimensions
• Narrativity: 50%
– Informational but some story elements
• Syntactic simplicity: 68%
– Sentences are fairly short; clauses and sentences are mostly familiar
• Word Concreteness: 29%
– Low word concreteness; many abstract words hard to visualize
• Referential cohesion: 2%
– Low: little overlap in words and ideas between sentences
• Deep cohesion: 82%
– High: relatively more connecting words that help clarify relations
between events, ideas, and information
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the following prompts?
• According to the text, which technological advances have
most impacted changes in digital text entry?
• According to the text, what are the most significant
issues facing engineers in developing the perfect digital
text entry system?
• Describe at least three benefits to cell phone design that
have led to sacrifices in typing proficiency for consumers.
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the first prompt?
• According to the text, which technological advances have
most impacted changes in digital text entry?
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the first prompt?
According to the text, which technological advances have
most impacted changes in digital text entry?




speech recognition
predictive text
autocompletion
on-screen key size (based on probability)
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the second prompt?
• According to the text, what are the most significant issues facing
engineers in developing the perfect digital text entry system?
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the second prompt?
According to the text, what are the most significant issues facing
engineers in developing the perfect digital text entry system?
 accents & dialects in speech recognition (lo-fi audio)
 typing on glass is slow & unsatisfying
 making predictive text catch what you intend
 divided attention between focus on keys & predictive text
suggestions
 predictive text doesn’t reflect style in different contexts (e.g.,
texting to a friend vs. emailing your boss)
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the third prompt?
• Describe at least three benefits to cell phone design that
have led to sacrifices in typing proficiency for consumers.
Writing in Response to Reading the
Passage about the Smartphone
What were your answers to the third prompt?
Describe at least three benefits to cell phone design that
have led to sacrifices in typing proficiency for consumers.
 photos & movies
 reading material
 maps
Study of Oral Language & Reading in 4th-10th
Grades
(Foorman et al., in press)
• 1,792 students from 18 schools in 2 large urban
districts in the SE. 25.5%-100% free and reduced
price lunch, with median of 59%. 6 of 18 schools
were Title 1.
• Integrated dataset: 3 cohorts over 3 years.
• Planned missing data design to reduce testing
burden yields data considered missing completely
at random.
Table 1
Final Number of Participants by Grade, Gender, and Race/Ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity (in percentages)
Grade
N
Female
4
271
5
Multicultural
Other
White
Not
Reported
1
4
0
28
6
23
1
3
0
23
9
26
18
0
5
1
39
5
3
9
38
0
2
0
25
21
51
3
9
36
0
2
0
27
22
238
61
4
12
24
0
7
2
45
5
122
65
6
9
24
1
7
0
45
8
Asian
Black
Hispanic Indian
58
6
30
26
321
56
5
35
6
309
55
5
7
299
51
8
232
9
10
Research Questions
• Does a 1-factor, 3-factor, 4-factor, or bi-factor model of oral
language fit better when examining the dimensionality of
measures of syntax, vocabulary, and decoding fluency in
4th-10th grades?
• What are the unique effects of the best fitting oral language
and decoding fluency factors in predicting latent reading
comprehension in 4th-10th grades?
Measures
• Syntax (i.e., sentence use): Recalling Sentences (CELF4) and Grammaticality Judgment (CASL)
• Vocabulary: PPVT-4; SARA vocab & morph
awareness
• Decoding Fluency: TOWRE (nonwords & real words)
• Outcome: Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test-4; FL
Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT 2.0)
Grade 8 SEM: Bi-Factor Model
.34**
CELF
.19
Syntax
.10
.26**
CASL
.89*
.79**
.01
.86**
PPVT
.33**
.03
Vocabulary
.82**
.17**
SARA V
.24
.30
.56**
.64**
.14
.87**
SARA M
.25
.67**
.16
.40**
SWE A
.87**
.68
SWE B
.23
Oral Language
.88**
Decoding
.30*
PDE A
.80*
.28*
.84**
.85**
PDE B
.36**
GMRT
.50**
.80**
Reading
Comprehension
.71**
FCAT
.71**
Results
• Bi-factor model fit the data best in all 7 grades
and explained 72%-99% of the variance in
reading comprehension (RC)
• Specific factors of syntax & vocab explained
significant unique variance in RC in 1 gr each
• Decoding fluency significantly correlated with
RC and oral language (OL) in all grades, but in
the presence of OL was not significantly
associated with RC
Implications
• Results support a bi-factor model of lexical
knowledge rather than the 3-factor model of the
Simple View of Reading, with the vast amount of
variance in reading comprehension explained by
a general oral language factor.
• Thus, to improve RC among adolescents,
educators must build OL→Written Language
connections
• In short, teach academic language!
Teaching Academic Language
• Teach lexical quality (i.e., word’s pronunciation,
spelling, etymology, multiple meanings, derivations)
• Teach connectives – words or phrases that link
clauses and sentences together to create more
complex text.
• Teach pronoun reference; subj-verb agreement
• Practice cohesive elements in writing
Teaching Academic Content &Literacy to
English Learners in Elem & MS
1. Teach academic vocabulary words
intensively across several days using a
variety of instructional activities
2. Integrate oral/written English language
instruction in content-area teaching
3. Provide regular, structured
opportunities to develop written
language skills
4. Provide small-group instructional
intervention to students struggling in
areas of literacy & English language
development
Effective Practices for
Literacy Instruction
1. Provide explicit vocabulary instruction.
2. Provide direct and explicit
comprehension strategy instruction.
3. Provide opportunities for extended
discussion of text meaning and
interpretation.
4. Increase student motivation and
engagement in literacy learning.
5. Make available intensive and
individualized interventions for
struggling readers that can be
provided by trained specialists.
1. Vocabulary Strategies
• Morphological Analysis – ex. audience,
audible, auditory
• Word Origin Tracing – ex. Greek/Latin roots
• Semantic Mapping – visual displays of words
• Synonyms & Antonyms
• Context Clues
2. Comprehension Strategies
•
•
•
•
•
•
Summarizing
Finding the main idea
Self-questioning
Paraphrasing
Drawing inferences
Graphic Organizers
Take-home Points
• Make academic language a focus of
instruction in all content areas
• Teach students the features of text cohesion
and teach them to use these features in their
writing
• Build academic language by writing in
response to reading in the content areas
• Have students engage in academic discourse
in the classroom
Thank You!
Comments or Questions?
bfoorman@fcrr.org
References
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Beck, I., McKeown, M., & Kucan, L. (2008). Creating robust vocabulary. NY: Guilford.
Foorman, B., Koon, S., Petscher, Y., Mitchell, Al., Truckenmiller, A. (in press). Examining
general and specific factors in the dimensionality of oral language and reading in 4th-10th
Grades. Journal of Educational Psychology.
Foorman, B., & Wanzek, J. (2015). Classroom Reading Instruction for all students. In S.
Jimerson, M. Burns, & A. VanDerHeyden (Eds.), The Handbook of Response to
Intervention: The Science and Practice of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. NY, NY:
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Gough, P. & Tunmer, W. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and
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Graesser, A., McNamara, D., Louwerse, M., & Cai, Z. (2004). Coh-Metrix: Analysis of
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Kirby, J., & Savage, R. (2008). Can the simple view deal with the complexities of reading?
Literacy, 42, 75-82.
References (cont.)
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., Kelley, J., & Harris, J. (2014). Effects of academic vocabulary
instruction for linguistically diverse adolescents: Evidence from a randomized field
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