title: Training reading fluency among poor readers of German: many ways to the goal.
abstract: Outcomes of two training programs aimed at improving reading speed for 39 German-speaking poor readers in grades 2 and 4 were evaluated. During a 6-week training period, a specific target for children in a computer group was to improve reading of word-initial consonant clusters by practice in associating an orthographic unit with a corresponding phonological unit. Children in a paired reading group read books with an adult tutor. The results showed that, in reading words in which the computer-trained sublexical items were included, both groups exhibited similar improvement. A post hoc analysis suggested that computer training was associated with better reading skills with respect to the trained sublexical items; however, this improvement did not show large generalization effects to the words with the sublexical items. The paired reading group showed a more rapid gain in global word reading fluency than the computer group. Neither of the groups improved their pseudoword reading.
authors.affiliation: Niilo Mäki Institute, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, Jyväskylä, 40014, Finland. sini.huemer@nmi.fi
authors.forename: Sini
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Huemer
authors.forename: Karin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Landerl
authors.forename: Mikko
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Aro
authors.forename: Heikki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lyytinen
mesh_terms: D001332:Automatism; D002648:Child; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary