Enhancing Poor Readers’ Reading Comprehension Ability through Word Semantic Knowledge Training

Abstract

Word semantic knowledge (WSK) is crucial to the development of one’s reading comprehension ability. A total of 608 students (208 poor readers in the experimental group and 200 poor readers in the control group one, and 200 typical readers in control group 2) from grade 4 participated in this study. Selected reading ability assessments were administered at pretest, post-test and a 3-month delayed post-test. After 6 weeks of intervention, poor readers from the experimental group scored higher in Chinese reading abilities than the poor readers in control group one. Experimental group students reached a similar level of reading abilities with typical readers. Findings from this study suggested the main challenge in reading activities for those students who had reading problems is the characters’ semantic identification. The current study confirmed the self-agency learning mode is an effective approach to semantic intervention design on semantic network construction for primary school learners.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Children can understand the complex and abstract reading materials through word semantic intervention.

• There is a positive causal effect of word semantic knowledge on reading comprehension, content inference, receptive vocabulary, word recognition, and reading mastery goals.

• Self-agency learning mode is an effective approach to semantic knowledge intervention design

• Word semantic training is an effective method in facilitating poor readers’ reading abilities at early reading stages

Additional information

Funding

The work described in this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (CityU 11619816).