title: Ameliorating children's reading-comprehension difficulties: a randomized controlled trial.
abstract: Children with specific reading-comprehension difficulties can read accurately, but they have poor comprehension. In a randomized controlled trial, we examined the efficacy of three interventions designed to improve such children's reading comprehension: text-comprehension (TC) training, oral-language (OL) training, and TC and OL training combined (COM). Children were assessed preintervention, midintervention, postintervention, and at an 11-month follow-up. All intervention groups made significant improvements in reading comprehension relative to an untreated control group. Although these gains were maintained at follow-up in the TC and COM groups, the OL group made greater gains than the other groups did between the end of the intervention and follow-up. The OL and COM groups also demonstrated significant improvements in expressive vocabulary compared with the control group, and this was a mediator of the improved reading comprehension of the OL and COM groups. We conclude that specific reading-comprehension difficulties reflect (at least partly) underlying oral-language weaknesses that can be effectively ameliorated by suitable teaching.
authors.affiliation: University of York, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Paula J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Clarke
authors.forename: Margaret J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Snowling
authors.forename: Emma
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Truelove
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hulme
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D032882:Comprehension; D004410:Dyslexia / Q000628:therapy*; D004493:Education / Q000379:methods; D004522:Educational Status; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D011932:Reading; D012574:Schools; D014825:Vocabulary