Abstract:

Community colleges in the United States serve many students who are unprepared for college-level academics. Noncredit developmental reading courses are offered, but research shows that these courses are generally not successful in student retention and advancement to college-level courses. A major deficit area for students is reading, specifically phonological transcription of polysyllabic words heard in academic courses and understanding of content vocabulary in reading assignments.

This study investigated a word study strategy for acquisition of content vocabulary which incorporated four steps:
(1) segmenting spoken words by syllables;
(2) using a phonetic alphabet (i.t.a.) to transcribe spoken words to good phonetic equivalents;
(3) finding the written word in electronic spell checkers (iPads or online dictionaries); and
(4) accessing the meaning of words.

The emphasis will be on Latin-based vocabulary from content courses. The hypothesis was that mastery of this process with college-level terms will result in increased vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension.

This single-subject research study included nine college freshmen whose placement tests on entrance indicated that they needed a developmental reading course before they could be enrolled in college-level academic courses. The investigator met with these students for two 45-minute intervention sessions per week for eight weeks.

Measures used included the following pre and post-tests:
(1) Nelson-Denny Reading Tests, Vocabulary and Comprehension Subtests;
(2) Wide Range Achievement Test, Spelling, with misspellings scored for phonetic equivalents;
(3) Auditory Analysis Test-Revised for assessment of phonological skills; and
(4) a researcher-developed vocabulary test featuring content words from freshmen-level academic courses.

This study is in process and will conclude in May, 2017. Analysis of study results will include graphical presentation of pre and post-test scores for each individual student on the four assessment measures. Paired-sample t-tests will investigate group progress.

Keywords:

Reading disabilities, higher education, educational intervention, phonological deficits.