Abstract
In this study, the socio-cultural variation in reading comprehension development was examined in 331 fifth graders from schools in Lima, Peru. Reading comprehension was measured using an adaptation of the PIRLS Reading Literacy test. The fifth graders’ reading comprehension results, measured over the course of fifth grade, were related to the development of word decoding, vocabulary, and motivation for reading. Children’s development in these domains was related to their gender, intellectual maturity, home literacy climate, and socio-economic status. Structural Equation Modelling showed that the development of reading comprehension was influenced by the children’s ability to decode words, their vocabulary, and reading motivation. Furthermore, gender and intellectual maturity as well as children’s home literacy climate and socio-economic status appeared to substantially predict reading comprehension development, directly or indirectly. More than half of the variance in reading comprehension by the end of the fifth grade could be explained based on these predictor variables.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aarnoutse, C. A. J., & van Leeuwe, J. F. J. (1998). Relation between reading comprehension, vocabulary, reading pleasure, and reading frequency. Educational Research and Evaluation, 4, 143–166.
Ansión, J., Lazarte, A., Matos, S., Rodríguez, J., & Vega-Centeno, P. (1998). Educación: La mejor herencia [Education: The best legacy]. Lima, Peru: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP.
Arakaki, M. (2004). Estrategias de lectura para el estudio y comprensión de textos en universitarios de primer año [Reading strategies for learning and text comprehension in first-year university students]. Unpublished licenciate dissertation, Lima, Peru: Catholic University.
Arbuckle, J. L., & Wothke, W. (1999). Amos 4.0. Chicago, IL: Small Waters.
Artelt, C., Schiefele, U., & Schneider, W. (2002). Predictors of reading literacy. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 16, 363–384.
Au, K. H. (1993). Literacy instruction in multicultural settings. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace.
Baker, L., Scher, D., & Mackler, K. (1997). Home and family influences on motivations for reading. Educational Psychologist, 32, 69–82.
Beck, I., & McKeown, M. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 789–814). New York, NY: Longman.
Bowey, J. A. (1995). Socioeconomic status differences in preschool phonological sensitivity and first grade reading achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 476–487.
Burga, A. (2008, October). Diseño y avances del estudio longitudinal de primaria- Ministerio de Educación [Study design and initial results of longitudinal study for the evaluation in primary school-Peruvian Ministry of Education]. VII International Conference on Educational Psychology, Lima, Peru.
Carreño, B. (2000). Comprensión de lectura al finalizar primaria en niños peruanos [Reading comprehension at the end of the primary school in Peruvian children]. Unpublished Magister dissertation, Lima, Peru: Catholic University.
Corporación Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado. (2001). Informe gerencial de marketing [Managerial report on marketing]. Lima, Peru: Author.
Corporación Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado. (2003). Niveles socioeconómicos Perú [Socio-economic levels in Peru]. Lima, Peru: Author.
Cueto, S., Jacoby, E., & Pollitt, E. (1997). Rendimiento en niños y niñas de zonas rurales y urbanas del Perú [Achievement in boy and girls of rural and urban areas of Peru]. Revista de Psicología de la PUCP, 14, 115–133.
Dunn, L. M., Padilla, E. R., Lugo, D. E., & Dunn, L. (1986). Test de Vocabulario en Imágenes Peabody. Adaptación hispanoamericana [Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. Hispanic American adaptation]. Circle Pines, MN: AGS.
Gambrell, L. A., Martin Palmer, B., Codlin, R. M., & Anders Mazzoni, S. (1995). Assessing motivation to read. Maryland, MD: NRRC.
Goff, D., Pratt, C., & Ong, B. (2005). The relations between children’s reading comprehension, working memory, language skills and components of reading decoding in a normal sample. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 18, 583–616.
Goldenberg, C., Rueda, R. S., & August, D. (2006). Social and cultural influences on the literacy attainment of language-minority children and youth. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Report of the National Literacy Panel on K-12 youth and adolescents (pp. 269–318). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Goodenough, F. (1969). Test de inteligencia infantil [Intelligence test for children]. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Paidós.
Guthrie, J. T., & Wigfield, A. (2000). Engagement and motivation in reading. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research (Vol. 3, pp. 403–422). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática. (2000). La educación y la circularidad de la pobreza [Education and circle of poverty]. Lima, Peru: Author.
International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. (2000). Framework and specifications for PIRLS assessment 2001. Chestnut Hill, MA: PIRLS International Study Center-Boston College.
Jaccard, J., & Wan, C. K. (1996). Lisrel approaches to interaction effects in multiple regression. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Jenks, C., & Phillips, M. (Eds.). (1998). The black-white test score gap. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Lawrence, J. E. S. (1992). Literacy and human resources development: An integrated approach. Annals AAPSS, 520, 42–53.
Majluf, A. (1993). Marginalidad, inteligencia y rendimiento escolar [Marginality, intelligence, and achievement at school]. Lima, Peru: Brandon Enterprise.
Martin, M. O., Mullis, I. V. S., & Kennedy, A. M. (Eds.). (2003). PIRLS 2001 [Technical Report]. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College.
McCormick, C. E., & Mason, J. M. (1986). Intervention procedures for increasing preschool children’s interest in and knowledge about reading. In W. H. Teale & E. Sulzby (Eds.), Emergent literacy: Writing and reading (pp. 90–115). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Ministerio de Educación del Perú. (2002). Los aportes de PISA a la comprensión de los factores asociados al logro educativo [Contributions of PISA to the understanding of the factors associated to educational achievement]. Boletín UMC, 21, 24–25.
Ministerio de Educación del Perú. (2004a). Lineamientos de política 2004–2006 [Education policy lineaments 2004–2006]. La República Suplemento, 4, 7–12.
Ministerio de Educación del Perú (2004b, December 5). Evaluar para mejorar [Evaluation for improving education]. El Comercio Suplemento, pp. 2–5.
Morales, S. (1999). Comprensión de lectura en alumnos de cuarto y quinto grados de primaria de Lima [Reading comprehension in fourth and fifth graders of elementary schools in Lima]. Revista de Psicología de la PUCP, 17, 263–282.
Mullis, I. V. S., Martin, M. O., Gonzales, E. J., & Kennedy, A. M. (2003). PIRLS 2001: International report. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College.
Muter, V., Hulme, C., Snowling, M. J., & Stevenson, J. (2004). Phonemes, rimes and language skills as foundations of early reading development: Evidence from a longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 40, 663–681.
Nagy, W. E. (1989). Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension [NCTE report No. 52384]. Urbana, IL: NCTE.
Nakano, T. (1996). El programa curricular de articulación de inicial y primer grado de educación primaria y el rendimiento en comprensión de lectura inicial en niños de primer grado [Curricular program of preescholar and first grade articulation, and the achievement in inicial reading of first graders]. Unpublished licensee dissertation, Lima, Peru: Catholic University.
Paris, S. G., & Oka, E. R. (1986). Self-regulated learning among exceptional children. Exceptional Children, 53, 103–108.
Perfetti, C. A. (1992). The representation problem in reading acquisition. In P. B. Gough, L. C. Ehri, & R. Treiman (Eds.), Reading acquisition (pp. 145–174). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Perfetti, C. A., & Hart, L. (2001). The lexical quality hypothesis. In L. Verhoeven, C. Elbro, & P. Reitsma (Eds.), Precursors of functional literacy (pp. 189–214). Amsterdam, The Netherlands/Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins.
Pinzás, J. (1993). Cognitive monitoring in reading comprehension: A study of differences among schools in Lima, Peru. Unpublished doctoral thesis, The Netherlands: University of Nijmegen.
Pollitt, E., & Cueto, S. (2002). Determinantes de la eficiencia escolar [Determinants of the school success]. In E. Pollitt (Ed.), Consecuencias de la desnutrición en el escolar peruano [Consequences of malnutrition in the Peruvian student] (pp. 63–82). Lima, Peru: Fondo Editorial de la PUCP.
Serpell, R. (2001). Cultural dimensions of literacy. In L. Verhoeven & C. E. Snow (Eds.), Literacy and motivation (pp. 243–274). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Smith, S. S., & Dixon, R. G. (1995). Literacy concepts of low- and middle-class four-year-olds entering preschool. Journal of Educational Research, 88, 243–253.
Snow, C. E., Barnes, W., Chandler, J., Goodman, I., & Hemphill, L. (1991). Unfulfilled expectations: Home and school influences on literacy. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.
Snow, C. E., Burns, M. S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Stanovich, K. E. (2000). Progress in understanding reading: Scientific foundations and new frontiers. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Freeman, D. J. (1984). Intelligence, cognitive skills and early reading progress. Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 278–303.
Sternberg, R. J. (1987). Most vocabulary is learned from context. In M. G. McKeown & M. E. Curtis (Eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 89–105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Storch, S. A., & Whitehurst, G. J. (2001). The role of family and home in the literacy development of children from low-income backgrounds. In P. Rebello Britto & J. Brooks-Gunn (Eds.), The role of family literacy environments in promoting young children′s emerging literacy skills (pp. 53–71). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Thorne, C. (1991). Beginning reading in Lima. Unpublished doctoral thesis, The Netherlands: University of Nijmegen.
van Elsäcker, W. (2002). Development of reading comprehension: The engagement perspective. Unpublished doctoral thesis, The Netherlands: University of Nijmegen.
van Kraayenoord, C. E., & Schneider, W. E. (1999). Reading achievement, metacognition, reading self-concept and interest: A study of German students in grades 3 and 4. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 14, 305–324.
Verhoeven, L., & Perfetti, C. (2008). Advances in text comprehension: Model, process and development. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 293–301.
Verhoeven, L., & van Leeuwe, J. (2008). Predictors of text comprehension development. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 22, 407–423.
Wigfield, A., Guthrie, J., & Mc Gough, K. (1996). A questionnaire measure of children’s motivation for reading. Maryland, MD: NRRC.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Appendices
Appendix A
See Table 4.
Appendix B
Home Literacy Climate Questionnaire
1. How often do you read at home?
2. How often do you read the newspaper?
3. Do you have a subscription to a children’s magazine?
4. How many books do you have at home?
5. How many books do your parents have at home?
6. How often did your parents read to you when you were small?
7. How often do your parents read to you now?
8. How do your parents react to your reading?
9. Do you usually finish the books you read?
10. When you read at home, how long would you like to go on reading?
11. Do you have a quiet place at home where you can read?
12. When you are reading a book, how often do your parents ask you what it is about?
13. How often do you talk about a book you have read at home?
14. How often do you look up a word in a dictionary at home?
15. How often do you read aloud to someone else at home?
16. How often do you, or someone else in your family, tell a funny or interesting story without reading it from a book?
17. How often do you write a story yourself at home?
18. How often do you sing songs together at home?
19. How often do you visit the public library?
Appendix C
See Table 5
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Morales Silva, S., Verhoeven, L. & van Leeuwe, J. Socio-cultural variation in reading comprehension development among fifth graders in Peru. Read Writ 24, 951–969 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9242-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9242-2