Reading research

The power of reading, the power of libraries and the "summer slide"

Letter published in Language Magazine, May, 2017

Stephen Krashen

http://tinyurl.com/ll3d36s

Language Magazine readers might be interested in a case study that confirms Andrew Johnson's recommendations for dealing with the summer slide in reading  ("Tales of summer," April, 2017).  In a published journal paper, we (Shu-Yuan Lin, Fay Shin, and S. Krashen) described the case of "Sophia," a high school student whose reading test scores dropped during three consecutive academic years, but increased during the summer. In fact, Sophia's fall reading scores were higher than they were the previous spring. What did Sophia do during the summer that caused this improvement? She did not attend special classes, did not get instruction in reading strategies, did not work through vocabulary lists, and did not write book reports. All she did was read for pleasure. According to her mother, Sophia read an average of about 50 books per summer, largely from the local public library. Early favorites were the Nancy Drew and Sweet Valley High series, followed by the Christy Miller series and other books by Francine Pascal, the author of the Sweet Valley series. (Sophia informed us that she was “addicted” to the Christy Miller books; it took her only a week to read the entire series “because I just couldn’t put them down.”)

Sophia’s mother told us that during the school year Sophia was so busy with school work that she had hardly any free time to read. Her mother, in fact, joked that it might be a good idea to keep her daughter at home during the school year in order to increase her scores on standardized tests of reading.

Lin, S-Y, Shin, F., & Krashen, S.  2007. Sophia’s choice: Summer reading. Knowledge Quest 35(4). Available for free download at www.sdkrashen.com, under "free voluntary reading."

Language acquisition literature review

Krashen continues  "the long-standing discussion on the familiar topic of whether subconscious language acquisition is more powerful than conscious language learning, with a focus on vocabulary, adding recent studies as well as older ones I missed in previous publications on this topic."
Krashen, S. (2013). Reading and Vocabulary Acquisition: Supporting Evidence and Some Objections. (Stephen Krashen, Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 1 (1): 27-43. www.iljtr.com

Library access research

Three multivariate analyses, all controlling for the effects of poverty, confirm the importance of the library. Replicating McQuillan’s analysis of 1992 NAEP scores, access to books in school and public libraries was a significant predictor of 2007 fourth grade NAEP reading scores, as well as the difference between grade 4 and grade 8 2007 NAEP reading scores, suggesting that access is important for improvement after grade 4. Access (school/classroom libraries) was a significant predictor of scores on the PIRLS test, a reading test given to fourth graders in 40 countries.

In some of the analyses, access to books had a larger impact on reading achievement test scores than poverty, and in other cases had nearly as strong an impact. This suggests that providing more access to books can mitigate the effect of poverty on reading achievement, a conclusion consistent with other recent results. This result is of enormous practical importance: Children of poverty typically have little access to books. It seems that libraries can provide this access.

Stephen Krashen, Syying Lee, and Jeff McQuillan . (2012). Is The Library Important? Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level. http://backseatlinguist.com/blog/

Music (and reading) Study and Analysis

Stephen Krashen writes:
According to a recent column in Science Daily, "A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly reveals that music participation, defined as music lessons taken in or out of school and parents attending concerts with their children, has a positive effect on reading and mathematic achievement in early childhood and adolescence."

This kind of announcement deserves a close look at the actual data. As usual, the cheerful announcement of the benefits of music was not quite accurate, and some very important results were not mentioned.

Fortunately, the analysis was multivariate, which means that important factors such as socio-economic status were controlled. Unfortunately, it is difficult to quantity the impact of all the predictors, as many were simply coded as "present" or "absent" (score of 1 or zero), so my statements about strong and weak effects are somewhat imprecise.

Music lessons outside of school, it turns out, had no impact on math scores, and was actually negatively correlated with children's reading scores. It had a small positive effect on adolescents' reading scores.

Music courses taken between grades eight and ten had a small positive effect on adolescents test scores.

Music participation in school (at least once a week) had a modest effect on both reading and math for children, and a much weaker effect for adolescents in reading and was not significant for adolescents in reading.

Parents attending concerts had no effect on reading at all, no effect on adolescent math scores and a weak positive effect for children and math. It is also not clear from the paper what this variable means, whether it means attending concerts with or without their children, or concerts in which children are performing.

In other words, not all these predictors counted. More important, those that counted were not very strong.

The most dramatic case is adolescent reading: Adolescents who do music both inside and outside of school are predicted to score 1.32 points higher in reading. In contrast, the study also reports that having more than 50 books in the home, and higher socioeconomic status predicts a score of nearly seven points higher (6.97). Higher socio-economic status, as has been pointed out, means, among other things, more books available in the community and at school, as well as at home. A reasonable interpretation is that access to books is a much stronger factor that music.

I wonder if some people will conclude from the Science Daily summary that music classes are all we need: Since we have music, we don't need to worry about school library quality. There are plenty of good reasons to include music in the school curriculum, but ironically the article provides more evidence for supporting libraries than for music when it comes to reading as well as math.


Southgate, D. and Roseigno, V. 2009. The Impact of Music on Childhood and Adolescent Achievement. Social Science Quarterly 90, 1:4-21.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117976158/home?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Adolescents Involved With Music Do Better In School. (2009). http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090210110043.htm

Reading studies

Stephen Krashen contribution (email sent to CALIBK12):

Direct Instruction and Heavy Phonics: No "Lasting
Benefits" for Struggling Readers
Sent to the Providence (RI) journal, November 15, 2007

Seven schools in Providence are doing “direct
instruction,� a phonics-heavy program, because of
the results of a study done in 1977, showing that
direct instruction produced “lasting benefits.�
(“Some schools turn to direct instruction to master
basics,� November 14.)

I suggest that Providence administrators take another
look at those “lasting benefits.� Direct
instruction children did better on “word reading�
in grades 5 and 6, but did very poorly (15th and 16th
percentile) on tests of reading comprehension. In
other words, they were able to read words aloud that
were presented on a list, but had serious problems on
tests in which they had to understand what they read.
This is identical to the pattern California State
University researcher Elaine Garan found for more
recent studies.

Some basic phonics instruction is helpful for
beginning readers, but the groups that lag behind in
reading, the “struggling readers,� are those that
are read to least and have the least access to books,
not those who get the least phonics instruction.

Stephen Krashen

Becker, W. and Gersten, R. 1982. Follow-up of
Follow-Through: The later effects of the direct
instruction model on children in fifth and sixth
grades. American Educational Research Journal 19 (1):
75-92.

Garan, E. 2001. Beyond the smoke and mirrors: A
critique of the National Reading Panel Report on
phonics. Phi Delta Kappan, 82: 500-506.

Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth:
Heinemann and Westport: Libraries Unlimited.


Some schools turn to direct instruction to master
basics
November 14, 2007

http://www.projo.com/education/content/mc_read_11-14-07_Q27KBA6_v15.282df36.html