Running head: ARTICLE OF IMPORTANCE

Article of Importance: Accommodating Remedial Readers in the General Education Setting

Johnny Allred
Weber State University

ARTICLE OF IMPORTANCE

Article of Importance: Accommodating Remedial Readers in the General Education Setting

The study detailed in this article was designed to investigate listening-while-reading
(LWR) using text-to-speech technology as an accommodation intended to increase reading
comprehension among below-grade readers. The researchers explained that accommodations are
used within the teaching environment in an attempt to provide equal access to curriculum
content thereby leveling the playing field between students with and without academic skill
deficits (Schmitt, Hale, McCallum, & Mauck, 2011, p. 37). The study explained in this article
is significant to the education field because it can answer whether listening to audio while
reading text is an effective accommodation to help struggling readers comprehend what they are
reading. Especially for English and Special Education teachers, the research in this study could
prove valuable. The study was conducted four or five years ago, so its findings are relevant to
todays classroom.
The first question the researchers asked was whether the reading comprehension of
remedial readers improved by the LWR accommodation using text-to-speech technology
(Schmitt et al., 2011). The primary task of the study was to answer that question. The study also
was designed to answer whether LWR accommodation using text-to-speech technology had a
noticeable impact on factual versus inferential reading comprehension (Schmitt et al., 2011).
This second question, according to Schmitt et al. (2011), separated the study at hand from all
previous studies regarding reading comprehension and assistive technology.
The target population of this study was general education remedial readers, as defined in
the research questions. The participants of this study included 6 sixth-grade students, 10
seventh-grade students, and 9 eighth-grade students (Schmitt et al., 2011). The 25 participants
described were chosen from a middle-school classroom in the Southeastern United States.

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Schmitt et al. (2011) conceded that a larger sample of students from a wider sampling of grades
across geographic regions would shed more light on the study at hand, so that is one limitation of
their work.
The researchers used specific grade-level books based on the average number of syllables
and sentences for each passage (Schmitt et al., 2011). Six consecutive passages from grades six,
seven, and 8 were used. Each participant was given passages that corresponded to his or her
grade. From these passages, ten multiple choice questions were supplied within the books; five
of these questions were evaluating factual comprehension and five were evaluating inferential
comprehension (Schmitt et al., 2011, p. 39). The six passages had an equal balance of LWR
experiences and silent reading (SR) experiences, so those were the dependent variables of this
study (Schmitt et al., 2011, p. 39).
As each student read and listened, individual words were highlighted in yellow and then
displayed in green when being read aloud. After each reading was complete, the text was
removed from the screen. The 10 comprehension questions were then administered on a single
sheet of paper, and participants were told to read directions and select the best answer from three
possible options. The comprehension assessments were scored for total, factual, and inferential
comprehension separately and accurately (Schmitt et al., 2011, p. 40).
The researchers found that there was no significant difference in total comprehension
performance between LWR and SR conditions, nor was there any significant difference between
factual and inferential comprehension (Schmitt et al., 2011). There was not enough statistical
backing to the researchers hypothesis that LWR increases comprehension.
The researchers stated that LWR did not result in improved total reading comprehension
of the current participants, even after controlling for general reading ability. This finding was

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not expected given that the few published LWR studies have found small comprehension gains
(Schmitt et al., 2011, p. 42).
I was surprised by the results of this study, and this article sparked my curiosity regarding
reading comprehension, motivation, and remediation that led me to my final project and paper. It
has also sparked my curiosity regarding educational technology, which will lead me down more
roads for years to comeI am applying to PhD programs in educational technology for this
coming fall semester. Perhaps its because the results surprised me, but this study and article by
Schmitt et al. (2011) was a catalyst for me in my program of study and beyond.

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5
References

Schmitt, A. J., Hale, A. D., McCallum, E., & Mauch, B. (2011). Accommodating remedial
readers in the general education setting: Is listening-while-reading sufficient to improve
factual and inferential comprehension?. Psychology In The Schools, 48(1), 37-45.
doi:10.1002/pits.20540