Effects of an early reading intervention based on grapho-syllabic decoding and fluency training in French elementary schools

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Effects of an early reading intervention based on grapho-syllabic decoding and fluency training in French elementary schools Les effets d’une intervention précoce en lecture basée sur des entraînements au décodage grapho-syllabique et sur la fluence auprès d’élèves du primaire C. Gallet b , C. Viriot-Goeldel d , V. Leclercq a,b,c,∗ a

University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, university Montpellier, EPSYLON EA 4556, 34000 Montpellier, France INSHEA, 58, avenue des Landes, 92150 Suresnes–UPL, France c Grhapes - Groupe de recherche sur le handicap, l’accessibilité et les pratiques éducatives et de scolarisation, EA 7287–INSHEA–UPL, 92150 Suresnes, France d Université Paris-Est, EA 4384 Circeft - Escol, université Paris 8, UPEC, 94010 Créteil cedex, France b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 29 February 2016 Received in revised form 7 June 2019 Accepted 19 July 2019 Keywords: Reading Written-word identification difficulties Elementary school Evaluation Remediation

a b s t r a c t Introduction. – Studies conducted in recent decades have led to the development of instructional interventions to help prevent or eliminate a large proportion of reading difficulties. However, few experiments have been conducted in French schools. Objective. – Aims for this research were to create, implement and evaluate a remediation program for French students with reading difficulties up to the end of elementary school. Method. – This paper examines the effects of a decoding-skills and fluency-based intervention on 133 struggling readers in second- to fifth-grade. Depending on the nature of their reading difficulties, students were given a year-long training based either on grapho-syllabic conversion — focusing on syllable units, rather than phonemic units, is considered a promising way of helping French-speaking beginning readers — or on repeated reading techniques, used to improve fluency. Results. – Increases in written-word identification scores were greater for students who followed the program than they were for a control group of 184 students with reading difficulties who did not follow the program. Conclusion. – The results show that programs combining early evaluation of written-word identification abilities followed by a year-long series of remediation sessions focusing on specific difficulties can help students progress in written-word identification. However, further research is needed to examine why our program was less effective with children from disadvantaged (“éducation prioritaire”) areas. © 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

r é s u m é Mots clés : Lecture Difficultés d’identification de mots écrits École primaire Évaluation Remédiation

Introduction. – Alors que les programmes d’aide destinés aux apprentis-lecteurs en difficulté et validés par la recherche se multiplient Outre-Atlantique, ils sont encore rares en langue franc¸aise. Objectif. – La présente étude vise à concevoir, à mettre en œuvre et à analyser les effets d’un programme d’aide à l’identification des mots et à la fluence auprès d’élèves franc¸ais du CE1 au CM2. Méthode. – Cent trente-trois élèves présentant des difficultés dans l’identification de mots écrits ont participé à cette étude. En fonction de leur profil, les élèves du groupe expérimental ont bénéficié pendant une année scolaire soit d’un entraînement à la conversion grapho-syllabique — approche considérée comme prometteuse en langue franc¸aise — soit d’un entraînement à la fluence. Résultats. – Les résultats laissent apparaître des gains en identification de mots écrits plus importants pour le groupe expérimental que pour le groupe contrôle, constitué de 184 élèves qui n’ont pas bénéficié de ce programme.

∗ Corresponding author at: University Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, university Montpellier, EPSYLON EA 4556, 34000 Montpellier, France. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Gallet), [email protected] (C. Viriot-Goeldel), [email protected] (V. Leclercq). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erap.2019.100471 1162-9088/© 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Gallet, C., et al. Effects of an early reading intervention based on grapho-syllabic decoding and fluency training in French elementary schools. Rev. Eur. Psychol. Appl. (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erap.2019.100471

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Conclusion. – Les résultats indiquent que la mise en place d’un programme combinant une évaluation précoce des habiletés en identification de mots et une remédiations axée sur la difficulté des élèves peut aider ces derniers à progresser dans l’identification de mots écrits. Reste à poursuivre ces travaux afin d’élucider les raisons pour lesquelles les effets de ce programme sont moindres en éducation prioritaire. ´ ´ es. © 2019 Elsevier Masson SAS. Tous droits reserv

1. Introduction 1.1. Context of this study One in ten young French people are “handicapped by reading difficulties” (Vourc’h, Rivière, De La Haye, & Gombert, 2015). This is the conclusion of the French education ministry’s Department for Evaluation, Prospective and Performance (DEPP), which has repeatedly expressed its concern that French students are over-represented in the weakest category of students in the PIRLS and PISA international studies of reading ability (Colmant & Le Cam, 2012; Bourny, Fumel, Kespaik, & Trosseille, 2013). According to the DEPP’s own SPEC6 study, carried out in 2007, 24.1% of French school students have difficulty in quickly processing words when they start sixth grade (Daussin, Keskpaik, & Rocher, 2011). Far from disappearing during a student’s school career, these difficulties are still identifiable in assessments of reading included in the “Defense and Citizenship Day” tests taken by young people aged 17 years and older. In fact, as the 2007 study noted, the automation of the cognitive processes involved in identifying words does not guarantee the efficient processing of complex written texts. This is particularly true for the 9.6% of students with reading difficulties (Vourc’h et al., 2015). However, the ability to automatically identify words is a necessary condition for understanding texts. In the United States, the No Child Left Behind Act, and especially its Reading First initiative, has encouraged the introduction of numerous research-validated programs to help beginning readers overcome reading difficulties (Viriot-Goeldel, 2011). Although the existence of several meta-analyses shows the dynamism of research in this field in English-speaking countries (Elbaum, Vaughn, Hughes, & Moody, 2000; D’Agostino & Murphy, 2004; Swanson, 1999), such programs and studies are rare in France, and teachers are often at a loss of how to help students in difficulty—a problem that is exacerbated by a reduction in the availability of special education teachers (Viriot-Goeldel, 2013). The present research addressed this issue by designing, implementing, and evaluating an approach through which teachers use resources already available within their schools to help students who are struggling to learn to read.

1.2. What we know about reading acquisition Our study followed Hoover and Gough’s (1990) “simple view” model of reading, according to which skilled reading requires efficient word recognition associated with good linguistic comprehension skills. Several types of model have been put forward to account for the mechanisms underlying written-word identification, including dual-path models. According to these widely used models (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001), expert readers use two procedures (paths) to identify written words: a lexical procedure and an analytical procedure. The lexical procedure involves identifying all known words by direct activation of their orthographic and phonological representations in the mental lexicon. Readers use this procedure when reading words stored in their memories. The “analytic” (or sublexical) procedure enables readers to identify words that are not registered in their mental lexicon

(unknown words, pseudowords, etc.) by breaking down written words into sublexical units and applying grapheme-phoneme conversion rules. This procedure requires more attentional resources than the lexical procedure. These two procedures are also components of connectionist models of reading, such as the Multi-Trace Memory model (Ans, Carbonnel, & Valdois, 1998), although in this model the two procedures are not linked to two different paths. According to these models, reading activates both procedures in parallel. Known words are very quickly identified via their orthographic representations, which activate their phonological representations before the analytic procedure is completed, whereas unknown words are identified via the analytic procedure. Initial developmental models of reading postulated that reading develops in successive stages, with each stage being characterized by the use of different procedures (Frith, 1985); however, subsequent work has questioned the strict succession of these stages. More recent developmental models have been derived from connectionist models of expert reading and focus on early interaction between phonological and orthographic units. In fact, experimental data suggest that beginning readers develop their alphabetic and lexical knowledge simultaneously (Martinet, Valdois, & Fayol, 2004). Hence, the acquisition of orthographic knowledge is initiated early, as soon as students start learning to read, rather than being conditioned by their level of alphabetic knowledge. However, this does not mean that the two reading procedures are equally effective at the outset of learning to read (Valdois, 2010). Even though beginning readers are able to memorize words they encounter as soon as they start learning to read, their initial stock of memorized words is very small, so it takes time for the lexical procedure to become effective. Consequently, at first, most words are identified via the analytical procedure, which develops very rapidly. Given this context, what can be done to help students with reading difficulties when the work on grapheme-phoneme correspondences done in first grade has not enabled them to read words?

1.3. The grapho-syllabic component The most effective programs for helping readers with decoding difficulties are those that explicitly focus on links between orthographic and phonological units (Ehri et al., 2001; Harm, et al., 2003). Most interventions designed to improve decoding skills in an English-speaking context are based on explicit training in grapheme-phoneme conversion (see, for example, Success for All and most of the other programs described by Slavin, Lake, Davis, & Madden, 20011). However, a large body of experimental evidence suggests that the syllable is a more salient unit for recognizing French words (Colé, Magnan, & Grainger, 1999; Maïonchi-Pino, Magnan, & Ecalle, 2010). Several studies have found that the syllable is the earliest available pre-lexical phonological unit in French pre-readers (Maïonchi-Pino et al., 2010; Maïonchi-Pino, Cara, Ecalle, & Magnan, 2012). According to the syllabic bridge hypothesis (Doignon-Camus & Zagar, 2014), initial connections between oral and written words are established through syllabic units. Accordingly, several studies have tested the efficacy of

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computerized training methods based on syllabic units (Ecalle et al., 2009; Ecalle, Kleinsz, & Magnan, 2013). These methods have been found to improve word reading skills, and therefore general fluency, in French beginning readers, although Ecalle et al. (2013) highlighted the need for further research in this area. These studies suggest that syllabic units are fundamental and allow more efficient (i.e., less cognitive load) written-word identification. Thus, approaches based on syllabic units could be beneficial, especially for weak readers (Magnan, Liger, Jabouley, & Ecalle, 2010). The present study tested a grapho-syllable-based, rather than a grapho-phoneme-based, remediation program for French students with difficulties in decoding. 1.4. The fluency component In order to become an expert reader it is necessary to free up a maximum amount of attentional resources for the comprehension process. Consequently, it is not enough to master the correspondence between the written and spoken forms of a word; a certain degree of automaticity in the decoding process involved in reading is also required. When decoding is automatic, the processing of written words involves the smallest possible attentional cost, thereby facilitating a rapid, accurate, and expressive rendering of text (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003). The present study addressed the first two of these components, that is, rapidity and accuracy. In addition to developing decoding skills, fluent reading requires the reader to have a large stock of words that can be read automatically via the lexical path (Torgesen, 2002; Zorman et al., 2008). As noted by Silverman, Speece, Harring, & Ritchey (2012), fluent reading has a mediating role in explaining the relation between decoding and reading comprehension. Reviews of research into fluency have shown that repeated reading improves word recognition accuracy, automaticity, comprehension, and attitude toward reading (Dowhower, 1994; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Rasinski, Reutzel, Chard, & Linan-Thompson, 2011). Hence, teacher- or tutor-guided repeated reading should substantially improve reading fluidity and comprehension (National Reading Panel, 2000; Therrien, 2004; Meyer & Felton, 1999). Consequently, our program requires students who have mastered the decoding rules but who still have difficulties in identifying written words to work on fluency by repeated reading of the same texts. The aim of this study was to evaluate a new reading remediation protocol that can be applied in classrooms. The protocol combines two types of remedial training: grapho-syllabic conversion exercises to help students overcome decoding difficulties and repeated-reading exercises to help students with no decoding difficulties but who are still poor readers make these processes automatic. Unlike most existing methods for improving decoding and reading fluency, which are aimed at the first two or three years of elementary school, our protocol was designed to be used throughout elementary school, from second grade to fifth grade. In our protocol, teachers of an experimental group were asked to conduct remediation sessions during class time, for the entire school year. We expected the yearlong training program to result in larger improvements in reading performance in students who followed our remediation protocol compared with students in a control group who did not. We also tested for a potential impact of students’ socioeconomic background on the efficacy of our approach by studying schools in both non-disadvantaged and disadvantaged areas (Réseau d’Éducation Prioritaire [REP]). Classification as an REP is based on a social index comprising four objective measures of social status known to affect school success: percentage of parents in lower socio-economic groups, percentage of students who receive grants, percentage of students living in disadvantaged urban areas, percentage of students with learning difficulties at the end of the 6th grade (Ministère de l’éducation

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nationale, de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, 2014). Students in such areas are ten times more likely to have reading difficulties as those from wealthier areas (Fluss, Bertrand, Ziegler, & Billard, 2009) and it is also these areas that have seen the largest increase in reading difficulties among students in the last 10 years (Daussin, Keskpaik, & Rocher, 2011). Consequently, we expected the positive effect of our remediation program to be greater for students in such areas compared with other students.

2. Method 2.1. Participants We tested our program in eight French urban schools, four of which were classified as REPs. The experimental group, consisting of 174 second graders, 116 third graders, 109 fourth graders, and 118 fifth graders, was drawn from four of these schools, including two of the REP schools. The control group, consisting of 81 second graders, 117 third graders, 94 fourth graders, and 99 fifth graders, was drawn from the four remaining schools, two of which were REP schools. Experimental and control schools were matched according to socioeconomic characteristics (REP and non-REP), school performance, and location. Children with “student assistant with disability” or newcomers were not included in the research. Finally, to minimize teacher-related effects, all teachers in the control and the experimental groups were non-beginner women in teaching, with at least 4 years of experiment in the classroom level they had at the time of the experiment.

2.2. Procedure For the experimental group, a pre-test was carried out to evaluate students’ written-word identification and writing skills at the beginning of the school year (in October). Word identification was assessed by asking each student to read aloud for 1 minute and calculating the number of words correctly identified. We used texts from the standardized ELFE protocol (Cogni-Sciences, www.cognisciences.com) for second-, third-, and fourth-graders; from the standardized ROC protocol (CogniSciences, www.cognisciences.com) for fifth graders. We chose these tests because they were designed for teachers, they are free, and they are easy to use. We used the ROC protocol (designed for children in fifth grade and above) for the fifth graders because it includes a dictation test, which is not the case for the ELFE protocol. Students who scored below the 30th percentile were considered to have difficulties with written-word identification. In order to determine whether reading difficulties were related mostly to decoding or mostly to construction of the orthographic lexicon, we used a dictation test to evaluate the writing skills of students identified as having reading difficulties. Second-grade students were asked to do a syllable and pseudoword dictation test; third-, and fourth-grade students were asked to do a sentence dictation test that we created (Appendix 1). For fifth graders, we used the results from the dictation test included in the ROC protocol. The students’ teachers, with our help, analyzed dictation errors. These analyses were used to determine whether the remediation training given to each student should focus on decoding or on building/constructing his/her orthographic lexicon (fluency). For students with difficulties in phoneme to grapheme conversion (i.e., maison written maidon), training focused on decoding skills. Training for students who made no phoneme-to-grapheme-conversion mistakes but who made spelling mistakes (i.e., writing mézon, not maison) focused on fluency.

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2.3. Training sessions Small groups of three to five students were provided with remedial training by their teacher from November to May. To enhance the efficacy of the training sessions, the objectives were explained clearly to the students and sessions were short, highly structured, intensive, and frequent (2 or 3 times a week for 20 minutes — see INSERM “Expertises Collectives” report, 2007). Remediation training for students with decoding difficulties was based on “Imprégnation Syllabique” (Garnier-Lasek, 2002), which uses syllables, rather than phonemes, to consolidate decoding skills. The program is based around a series of syllable boards (7 levels of difficulty) that can be easily used by teachers. Remediation sessions were progressive, starting with simple syllables and then moving on to more complex phonetic units (trigraphs, such as “ian” and “ein”, and contextual spellings, such as the contextual ‘g’). Students were assigned to training groups on the basis of their pre-test dictation results. Some groups began at level one of the remediation program, whereas others began at higher levels. Once students were capable of automatically processing the syllables included in a level (i.e., they were able to correctly read and write syllables and pseudowords formed from those syllables), they moved on to the next level of complexity in the Impregnation Syllabique program. Importantly, once a certain number of syllables were automated (after level 2 of Impregnation Syllabique), the teachers ended sessions by asking students to read sentences, in order to show that reading is not just about decoding. Students were timed and read these sentences several times during the week, so it was possible for them to see their progress, as in the repeated-reading remediation sessions. When students reached the final level of the Impregnation Syllabique program and were capable of automatically processing all the syllables, remediation sessions began focusing on fluency. All the fluency remediation exercises combined reading and writing, whether the students were working on discrete syllables, pseudowords, or words containing syllables they had studied during the sessions. Teachers gave students immediate feedback after each answer, so they could assess what they knew and memorize the correct forms (for more information on feedback, see Gibbs & Simpson, 2004). Further details of these remediation sessions are provided in the Appendix 1. For students who were able to correctly decode words but who had difficulties with automating written-word identification, remediation training was based on fluency and used repeatedreading techniques (Lequette, Pouget, & Zorman, 2011) to increase the students’ orthographic lexicon. The aim was to facilitate automatic word identification and thereby help students read fluently. Students were asked to perform repeated and timed readings of texts suited to their ability, with the teacher providing feedback after each task. Repetition improves reading fluency, but students also need feedback to help them correct their mistakes and improve their word identification. In order to strengthen word memorization, students were also required to perform writing tasks (flash copy, etc.). Further details of these remediation sessions are provided in the Appendix 1. Students in the control group were asked to do the same pretests to evaluate their written-word identification and writing performance at the beginning of the school year (in October). After this evaluation, control group teachers were told which of their students were experiencing difficulties in written-word identification but these students did not follow our remediation program and the teachers were not given any instructions on how to help struggling readers. For both experimental and control groups, we re-evaluated the students’ written-word identification abilities at the end of the school year (June), using the same reading tests as at the beginning of the year. This allowed us to evaluate the impact of

our remediation program by comparing progress in reading by the two groups of students (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). 2.4. Teacher training We described the background, objective, and content of our remediation program to experimental group teachers during a 6hour training course at the beginning of the school year. The course outlined current theories about learning to read and explained how our remediation program should be implemented, providing numerous examples. We stressed the importance of getting the students to read and write, and of providing feedback to help students correct mistakes and assess their progress. We gave each teacher a practical guidebook to the program and guidance on how to interpret the data from the dictation tests. However, when necessary, we helped teachers assign students to remediation groups. We met with the teachers in their classrooms twice a year, and invited them to contact us at any time if they had questions or problems. More information about the teacher training is provided in the Appendix 1. If an experimental group teacher modified the protocol, we explained it to the teacher again. However, as we could not prevent teachers from modifying the protocol (teachers in France are free to decide how they teach), we excluded those who did from our analyses. All the classes from one of the non-REP schools, one fourth-grade class from the other non-REP school and one secondgrade class from one of the REP schools were excluded because remediation sessions were provided only once a week. In addition, we excluded two third-grade classes and one fourth-grade class from one of the REP schools because a theater project was integrated into the remediation program (students practiced reading texts which they would then perform). As a result, our analyses were based on data for 102-second graders (4 classes), 73 third graders (3 classes), 59 fourth graders (2 classes), and 118 fifth graders (4 classes). 3. Results The written-word identification test given to students in the experimental group at the beginning of the school year led to 44 second graders, 31 third graders, 33 fourth graders, and 25 fifth graders being considered to have reading difficulties (written-word identification test score below the 30th percentile, see Table 1). For the control group, the written-word identification test conducted at the beginning of the school year led to 48 second graders, 71 third graders, 40 fourth graders, and 25 fifth graders being considered to have reading difficulties (Table 1). The mean number of words correctly identified in one minute at the beginning and end of the school year for struggling readers in each grade are presented in Table 1. For the experimental group, analyses of the dictation test indicated that all second- and third-grade students needed remediation based on grapho-syllabic conversion in order to help them improve their decoding abilities. Ten fourth graders and seven fifth graders also need remediation based on grapho-syllabic conversion (their dictation tests contained mistakes in this ability), and twentythree fourth graders and eighteen fifth graders needed remediation focused on fluency (results for the control group are shown in Table 1). Before studying the impact of our remediation protocol, we checked for differences in reading abilities between the two groups at the beginning of the year by comparing the written-word identification scores obtained at each grade in the experimental and control groups (using Student’s t-tests, or Mann Whitney tests when the variances were not homogeneous and/or the distribution

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Table 1 Characteristics of students identified as having reading difficulties at the beginning of the school year. Grades

Experimental Group Number of students with reading difficulties at the beginning of the year Percentage of the starting group (%) Mean age in months (stand. deviation) Number of students (percentage of the starting group) at REP/non-REP schools Mean number of words correctly identified in 1 minute (standard error) at the beginning of the year Percentage of students in need of decoding remediation/fluency remediation at the beginning of the year (%) Mean number of words correctly identified in 1 minute (standard error) at the end of the year Control group Number of students with reading difficulties Percentage of the starting group (%) Mean age in months (stand. deviation) Number of students at REP/non-REP schools Mean number of words correctly identified in 1 minute (standard error) at the beginning of the year Percentage of students in need of decoding remediation/fluency remediation at the beginning of the year (%) Mean number of words correctly identified in 1 minute (standard error) at the end of the year

2nd grade

3rd grade

4th grade

5th grade

44

31

33

25

43 87.8 (4.0) 18 (36)/26 (50)

42 100.0 (5.4) 13 (35)/18 (50)

56 112.4 (3.5) 12 (46)/21 (64)

19 127.6 (7.5) 21 (23)/4 (16)

29.3 (2.0)

50.0 (1.5)

68.9 (2.7)

73.7 (3.0)

100/0

100/0

30/70

28/72

64.1 (3.4)

84.4 (3.1)

111.3 (4.1)

106.6 (5.0)

48 59 88.2 (4.6) 27 (64)/21 (54) 25.8 (2.2)

71 61 100.5 (5.2) 33 (61)/38 (60) 50.5 (1.0)

40 43 112.7 (5.3) 21 (54)/19 (35) 68.8 (3.4)

25 25 127.6 (6.2) 16 (30)/9 (20) 72.8 (2.8)

100/0

100/0

33/67

24/76

52.5 (3.3)

66.0 (2.7)

93.1 (3.5)

88.9 (4.7)

Table 2 Average number of words correctly identified in 1 minute (standard error) for students identified as having reading difficulties at the beginning of the year and results of the comparison test at each grade. Grades

Experimental group

Control group

Test used

Value

p

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

29.3 (2.0) 50.0 (1.5) 68.9 (2.7) 73.7 (3.0)

25.8 (2.2) 50.5 (1.0) 68.8 (3.4) 72.8 (2.8)

Student Student Mann Whitney Student

t = −1.16 t = 0.23 z = −0.49 t = −0.22

.250 .589 .626 .830

was not normal). These analyses (Table 2) did not reveal any significant differences between the experimental and control groups in the written-word identification scores at each grade. In order to test the efficacy of our remediation protocol, we performed an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on the written-word identification scores achieved by the students identified as having reading difficulties. The ANOVA was carried out on the number of words correctly identified in 1 minute at the beginning and at the end of the school year, with Evaluation Period (beginning or end of the year) as a within-subjects factor, and Grade (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th), Group (Experimental, Control), and School’s Social Environment (REP, non-REP) as between-subjects factors. The effects of Grade (F(3, 301) = 97.92; p < .001; 2 = .49), Evaluation Period (F(1, 301) = 758.22; p < .001; 2 = .72), and Group (F(1, 301) = 11.0; p < .01; 2 = .04) were significant. Thus, written-word identification scores increased with each grade; students’ writtenword identification scores at the end of the year (mean of 82.6 words identified in 1 minute, standard error (SE) = 1.4) were higher than they were at the beginning of the year (54.9, SE = 0.9); and the experimental group obtained higher written-word identification scores (72.4, SE = 1.7) than the control group (65.1, SE = 1.4). Most importantly, the Evaluation Period × Group interaction was significant (F(1, 301) = 49.5; p < .001; 2 = .14), thereby indicating a greater increase in written-word identification scores between the beginning and end of the year for the experimental

group (increase of 34.8 words identified in 1 minute, SE = 1.7) than for the control group (increase of 20.6, SE = 1.1). Planned comparisons showed no difference between the experimental and control groups at the beginning of the year but a significant difference at the end of the year (Fig. 1). The interaction between the Evaluation Period and Grade factors was significant (F(3, 301) = 3.77; p < .05; 2 = .04) indicating that the improvement in written-word identification scores observed in all four grades was smaller in the third and fifth grades (respectively 24.6 and 24.4) than in the second and fourth grades (respectively 30.4 and 31.4). The effect of School’s Social Environment did not reach significance (p = .062), but the School’s Social Environment × Evaluation Period interaction was significant (F(1, 301) = 9.5; p < .01; 2 = .03). Although there was no difference in written-word identification scores between non-REP (55.4, SE = 1.4) and REP (54.4, SE = 1.2) schools (p = .58) at the beginning of the year, scores for the non-REP schools (86.2, SE = 2.2) were higher than those for the REP schools (79.0, SE = 1.9; p < .05) at the end of the year. The School’s Social Environment × Evaluation Period × Group double interaction was also significant (F(1, 301) = 7.5; p < .01; 2 = .02). Planned comparisons indicated that progress in writtenword identification (that is the difference in the number of words correctly identified in 1 minute at the end and at the beginning of the school year) was greater for the experimental group than the

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Fig. 1. Number of words correctly identified in 1 minute for each group at the beginning and at the end of the year.

Fig. 2. Progression over the year in written-word identification (difference in number of words read correctly in 1 minute at the beginning and the end of the school year) by students at RE and non-RE schools for each group.

control group for REP and non-REP schools (REP schools p < .001, non-REP schools p < .0001), but this effect was greater for students at the non-REP schools (the difference in the increase in writtenword identification scores between the experimental and control groups was 19.7 points) than it was for students at the REP schools (an 8.6 point difference) (Fig. 2). Finally, the Evaluation Period × Group × Grade double interaction did not reach significance (F(3,301) = 1.8, p = .149), which shows that the greater improvement in reading in the experimental group than in the control group occurred across all four grades. Tests comparing the increase in written-word identification scores between the experimental and control groups for each grade (using Student’s t-tests, or Mann Whitney tests when the variances were not homogeneous and/or the distribution was not normal) confirmed that the increase in written-word identification scores at the end of the school year was greater for students in the experimental group than it was for those in the control group, and this was the case for all four grades (Fig. 3).

Table 3 shows the percentage of students from the experimental and control groups who were considered to have reading difficulties at the beginning of the school year (written-word identification score below the 30th percentile) and who were no longer considered to have reading difficulties at the end of the year (written-word identification score above the 30th percentile). Additional analyses: The results of this experiment showed that our remediation program helped students to progress in writtenword identification. However, working with students in small groups, as was done in the remediation sessions, is known to increase student engagement (Harn, Linan-Thompson & Roberts, 2008; Suchaut, Bougnères, & Bouguen, 2014). Consequently, our results may have been partly due to a Hawthorn effect. As mentioned above, some experimental group classes (2nd to 4th grades) were excluded from our analyses because their teachers did not follow the remediation protocol correctly. In order to estimate the impact of the Hawthorn effect on our results, we compared progress in written-word identification between

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Fig. 3. Progression in written-word identification at each grade for the experimental and control groups.

Table 3 Percentage of students from each group no longer considered to have reading difficulties at the end of the school year.

Experimental group Control group

2nd grade (%)

3rd grade (%)

4th grade (%)

5th grade (%)

52 38

58 17

52 40

80 48

Table 4 Number of students in the Protocol and Modified-Protocol Groups. Protocol Group

Modified-Protocol Group Theater

Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4

44 31 33

when compared with the less-frequent-sessions modified-protocol group (increase of 31.6, SE = 4.3) (t(108) = 1.63; p = .053). Once a week 23

33 15

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students who strictly followed the remediation protocol (protocol group) and students who did not strictly follow the remediation protocol (students excluded from the previous analyses), but who might have benefited from a small group remediation effect (modified-protocol group). As no fifth graders were excluded, these additional analyses were conducted on second, third, and fourth graders only (Table 4). If our results are not entirely due to a Hawthorn effect, students who strictly followed our remediation program should have made greater progress in written-word identification than students who followed a modified protocol. However, the difference in progress between students in the protocol group and students in the modified-protocol group who followed our protocol but with less frequent sessions (frequency modified-protocol) should be smaller than the difference between students in the protocol group and students in the modified-protocol group who followed a more extensively modified protocol (theater modified-protocol). Student’s t-tests (Fig. 4) indicated greater progress in written word identification for the protocol group (increase of 37.1 words identified in 1 minute, SE = 1.8) than for the modified-protocol group (increase of 23.7 words, SE = 2.1) (t(187) = 5.30; p < .001). This greater progress was significant when compared with the theater modified-protocol (an increase of only 16.6 words identified in 1 minute, SE = 3.5) (t(110) = 5.94; p < .001) and tendential

4. Discussion The present study’s aim was to create, implement, and evaluate a remediation program for students with reading difficulties. In contrast to most programs for improving decoding skills and reading fluency, which generally target the first two years of elementary school, our study examined the extent to which such programs can help struggling readers in every year of elementary school. Moreover, interventions focusing on decoding usually provide grapho-phonemic training, whereas our intervention, targeting French students, provides grapho-syllabic training. Finally, our experiments included two schools in both disadvantaged (REP) and non-disadvantaged (non-REP) areas, so we were able to assess the impact of this variable on the effectiveness of our remediation program. Our results show that this program, in which early evaluation of word identification abilities is followed by a yearlong series of remedial sessions focusing on specific difficulties, can help students progress in written-word identification. At the end of the school year, a substantial percentage of students identified as having written-word identification difficulties at the beginning of the year were no longer in difficulty and this percentage was higher for students who had followed the remediation program (experimental groups) than for students in the control group (Table 3). By implementing our remediation program in all grades from second to fifth, we were able to show that our program is effective with students across a wide age range. This result highlights the importance of consolidating written-word identification in subsequent years if students have not mastered this aspect of reading by the end of second grade.

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Fig. 4. Progression in written-word identification for the groups of the complementary analyses.

Importantly, although we communicated pre-test results to all participating teachers, we did not give teachers specific guidance on how to help struggling readers. Control group teachers taught as usual. Some of them used differentiated instruction to help struggling readers or made use of the APC (additional educational activities)1 scheme; others did nothing in particular. Our data do not include information about the approaches these teachers used; however, they were less effective than our research-based remediation program. Recent studies have highlighted the importance of syllabic units in word recognition in French (Colé et al., 1999; MaïonchiPino et al., 2010), and Ecalle and Magnan (2015) showed that grapho-syllabic training is more effective than grapho-phonemic training in helping French students learn to read. However, very few grapho-syllabic training programs have been created. Such training programs, including our remediation program and those of Ecalle et al. (2013, 2015), have demonstrated the beneficial effects of providing French struggling readers with grapho-syllabic training based on syllabic units. In contrast with Ecalle et al. (2013) and Ecalle and Magnan (2015), which provided training via computers to first- and second-graders, our program does not require classroom computers and also appears to be effective with third-graders, all of whom received grapho-syllabic training at the beginning of the remediation program. In addition, our results show that grapho-syllabic training is effective, albeit to a lesser extent, with students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. The progress made by fourth and fifth graders supports the effectiveness of the repeated reading technique in improving written-word identification, which was the remediation program’s main feature at these two grades. Although the National Reading Panel (2000) encourages the use of this technique, little research has been carried out on this issue in France. Our results concord with those obtained recently in French-speaking classrooms by Canadian researchers (Boily, Ouellet, & Turcotte, 2015; Dubé, Ouellet, & Bessette, 2015).

1 The ‘APC’ (Activités Pédagogiques Complémentaires) scheme was introduced at the start of the 2013 school year in order to provide 36 hours of instruction per year per class “to help pupils who are experiencing difficulties learning, to support them in their individual education, or include them in any other activity scheduled under the school’s education ivités action program and — where appropriate — the local authority’s education support project.”

Hence, combining grapho-syllabic and repeated-reading techniques with systematic reading assessments is potentially a valuable method for remediating reading difficulties of second- to fifth-grade French students. Moreover, this program can be applied by the students’ regular teachers after a short period of training that contributes to their professional development and provides principles they can apply or adapt to other teaching situations. Limitations and further developments: our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of a remediation program by comparing the progress made by students who followed the program with that of students who did not (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). Because remediation sessions were carried out in small groups, our results may be due, at least in part, to a Hawthorn effect. However, improvements in written-word identification were greater for students who followed our protocol strictly than they were for students whose teachers modified the protocol. Hence, when it was followed correctly, our remediation program had a significant and positive effect on reading abilities at all ages from second to fifth grade. Nevertheless, our remediation program now needs to be compared with another program (e.g., grapho-phonologic training) in order to scrupulously control for a Hawthorn effect and measure the impact of conducting remediation sessions in small groups. The difference in reading improvement was particularly great between students who followed our protocol and those who followed the theater modified-protocol, for whom the theater project may have blurred the objective of “learning to read”. Exercises presented as explicitly focusing on learning to read are more effective than project-based learning, especially for struggling students (Bissonnette, Richard, Gauthier, & Bouchard, 2010). Furthermore, the teachers of these classes did not provide any specific work on decoding abilities, despite the importance of this type of work, especially for the most disadvantaged students. These protocol modifications raise the question of the strengths and weaknesses of this kind of collaborative research involving both teachers and researchers. We chose the most ecological protocol possible for our study in order to produce usable results for the program’s effectiveness in a “real-world” situation. This meant directly involving the students’ usual teachers in applying the protocol. With help from the researchers, the teachers evaluated their students’ reading difficulties so they could provide each student with appropriate training within the protocol, which they applied throughout the school year. So the experimental group teachers would be able to do this, before

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they applied the program we provided professional development courses during which we explained the remediation program’s theoretical foundations and objectives. This way of empowering teachers was an essential part of our protocol, because programs are likely to be more successful if the people applying them understand how they are supposed to work. Nevertheless, we had no way of forcing the teachers to scrupulously apply the protocol. Some teachers implemented it extremely well, sometimes exceeding our expectations,2 but others did not, despite the training we gave them. In addition, it is impossible to check exactly what every teacher does over an entire school year, so we sometimes had to rely on teachers’ reports of what they had done. We asked the teachers to carefully note what they did during each remediation session during the school year, but some teachers did not do so, claiming that it was too much work. As a result, we were unable to include in our analyses information on aspects such as when students moved from one level of syllabic impregnation to another and how many students progressed from code-based remediation to fluency-based remediation. Consequently, we were unable to analyze differences in efficacy between the two types of remediation. Finally, the fact that, contrary to our hypothesis, our program was less effective with disadvantaged students requires further analysis. Although the REP-school students who followed our program made more progress in written-word identification than the control group students, they did not progress as much as students at the non-REP schools who followed the program. Several factors could account for this. One possible factor is the size of the students’ vocabulary. Already knowing words and their meaning is a condition for quickly learning to read them (NICHD, 2005; Roberts et al., 2008), but children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families often know two to three times fewer words than children from privileged families (White, Graves, & Slater, 1990). Not already knowing words substantially increases the workload involved in learning to read them. Even though, during the training sessions, teachers had to first ensure their students knew the words they were trying to read, this variable might have had an impact on our results. An ongoing project to monitor students at REP schools over a school year and thereby collect more data on a number of factors, including linguistic ability, will provide further insight into this issue. We may also integrate vocabulary instruction into future remediation programs, as suggested by Pressley (2006) and Roberts et al. (2008). However, interviews carried out with teachers suggest that other factors may have affected our results. Some of the teachers at the REP schools complained about the large number of projects they are asked to implement. This profusion of projects may adversely affect learning, especially in the case of struggling students, by blurring the school’s priorities. Our data do not allow us to assess the impact of this factor or rule out other possible hypotheses (e.g., greater parental support for students at non-REP schools), so further research is needed to clarify this issue. 5. Conclusion Our results show that it is possible to develop programs all teachers can use to remediate some of the difficulties elementary school students encounter when learning to read. However, for a program to be effective teachers need to receive specific training covering both the program’s theoretical foundations and

2 The headmaster of one of the non-REP schools strongly supported our experiment and the teachers were eager to find ways of helping their students improve their reading skills. Consequently, our remediation program was very well received and followed scrupulously, and it had a very strong impact. The school even began to center its approach to teaching reading round our program.

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program implementation. In addition, the significant progress made by the post-second-grade students who followed our remediation program shows the importance of continuing to work on written-word identification after second grade. This type of training program has already been described in the international literature, but the specificities of the French language and school system meant it was necessary to test its advantages and limitations for French beginning readers. Our results indicate the potential benefits of following the lead set by countries such as Finland (Takala & Hausstätter, 2012) and ensuring programs based on an initial evaluation of reading ability followed by remediation sessions are made available to all students.

Disclosure of interest The authors declare that they have no competing interest.

Acknowledgments This research has been supported by a funding from Université Paris Lumière.

Appendix 1. Intervention protocol Teacher training course (6 hours): Two hours on reading theory:

- Introduction to Hoover & Gough’s (1990) Simple View of Reading - Analytic and orthographic procedures, errors in dictation associated with difficulties in each procedure - Introduction to the processes involved in learning to read

Four hours on intervention procedures:

- Principles of the intervention: small-groups, frequency and duration of interventions, feedback, importance of supporting reading and writing together. - Intervention contents: analysis of ready-to-use graphophonemic training sessions and repeated reading sessions - Construction of training sessions (group work)

Teachers were directed toward several resources they could use to build and conduct their training sessions (GarnierLasek, 2002; Lequette et al., 2011 and INS HEA resources: http://www.inshea.fr/fr/content/situations-p%C3%A9dagogiqueslangage-%C3%A9crit). Teachers were also asked to attend two or three discussion and coaching sessions during the school year. Principles of the remediation program for students with decoding difficulties This remediation program is based on a book called “Imprégnation Syllabique” (Garnier-Lasek, 2002), which includes a series of syllable boards (7 levels of difficulty) that can be easily used by teachers (Figure 1). Figure 1: Examples of syllable boards of different levels of difficulty.

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During the training course, teachers from the experimental group received ready-to-run, decoding-based remediation sessions as illustrations of possible scenarios. Every remediation session follows the same format in order to reassure students and help them focus on the objective. This standard format also helps teachers set up the sessions. Remediation sessions were designed to be progressive, starting with simple syllables and then moving on to more complex phonetic units (trigraphs, such as “ian” and “ein”, and contextual spellings, such as the contextual ‘g’). This progression followed the order presented in “Impregnation Syllabique”, but the level at which each student started was chosen according to that student’s dictation test result. On average, four sessions were spent working on each syllable board. Session 1 - The teacher presents the learning objective for the session and reads the syllable board aloud. The students are then asked to read the same syllable board several times: each student, one after another, reads one syllable aloud (this helps to keep the students’ attention). Then, the syllable board is displayed on the chalkboard and the teacher dictates syllables (between 5 and 8) that students have to write on the chalkboard. Immediate feedback is provided after each syllable. Syllables that are written incorrectly are dictated again. Finally, students have to read ten two-syllable pseudowords. Each pseudoword consists of an automated syllable (syllable that the students know well) and a new syllable from the syllable board. Students read the pseudowords one after another (one student reads a pseudoword, then the next student reads the next word). To conclude, the students paste the reading materials in their home-school liaison book. The next three sessions begin as follows: students recap what they learned during the previous session and the teacher presents the objective of the new session. The students read aloud the same syllable board three or four times. Then, for each session: Session 2 - Students go to the chalkboard to write a syllable from dictation. If necessary, they use their liaison book for help. However, in order to encourage recall from memory, students are not allowed to take their liaison book to the chalkboard. The students and teacher confirm or correct each syllable as soon as it is written, in order to provide immediate feedback. Then, students read pseudowords of two and then three syllables. The session concludes by reading a few common words containing the syllables studied. Teachers were encouraged to use the EOLE word-frequency scale (Pothier & Pothier, 2004) when choosing these words. If necessary, teachers explain the words and ask the students to say a sentence using them. The students paste the reading materials in their liaison book. Session 3 - Students have to read pseudowords of two and then three syllables. If a student wants to read the list alone, the teacher encourages him or her to do so. Next, students read the frequent words presented at the previous session. To conclude, the students write a sentence containing as many of these words as they can.

The teacher provides feedback on mistakes and successes. Students write their sentence in their liaison book. Session 4 - Each student has to read the entire list of frequent words. They then go to the chalkboard to write these words from dictation. If necessary, they use their liaison book for help. However, in order to encourage recall from memory, students are not allowed to take their liaison book to the chalkboard. Immediate feedback is provided after each word. To conclude, teachers provide activities to help students memorize how words are spelt. Teachers were told to change the syllable board once the syllables had been sufficiently automated, that is, when their students were able to read all the syllables and pseudowords without making mistakes. This four sessions scenario is not appropriate for all syllables, as some require more sessions (e.g., syllables containing the grapheme “oi”). Once a certain number of syllables have been automated (towards level 2 of “Impregnation Syllabique”) the teachers conclude sessions by asking the students to read sentences. This helps students realize that reading is not just about decoding. These sentences are read several times during the week, so they can be timed, as in the repeated reading remediation sessions. When students reach the final level of “Impregnation Syllabique” and have automated the code, teachers start focusing remediation sessions on fluency. Further information about the content of remediation sessions can be found at: http://www.inshea.fr/fr/content/ imprégnation-syllabique-0 Principles of the fluency remediation program based on repeated-reading techniques (Lequette et al., 2011) Students who are able to correctly decode words but who have difficulties with automating written-word identification received remediation training focusing on fluency. Repeated-reading techniques (Lequette et al., 2011) are used to increase the students’ orthographic lexicon. During the training course, the experimental group teachers received ready-to-run fluency remediation sessions as illustrations of possible scenarios. Every remediation session follows the same format in order to reassure students and help them focus on the objective. This standard format also helps teachers set up the sessions. On average, four sessions are spent on each text. Session 1 - The teacher presents the session’s learning objective, which is to memorize how words are spelt by reading the same text several times. Then, the teacher reads the text aloud to the students. They do not have the text, so they have to concentrate on the meaning of the words so they will be able to reformulate what they have understood. Any unknown words are explained in order to eliminate comprehension problems, which can impede lexical memorization. Then, each student reads the text aloud. (Texts increase in length from around 30 words for second graders to around 80 words for fourth graders.) The teacher times how long each student takes to read the text and asks the other students to

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note any mistakes, so they have to keep paying attention to the text. When the student finishes reading, any errors are corrected and the reader re-reads words that he or she had read incorrectly. Finally, the student notes his or her time and the number of mistakes made in a table. This procedure is repeated for each student in turn. At the end of the session, the students paste the text and their own time/mistake scores in their home-school liaison book. The next three sessions begin as follows: students recap what was learned during the previous session and the teacher presents the objective of the new session. Each student reads the text again and any mistakes are corrected. Reading times and mistakes are noted in the table and the teacher highlights progress. The rest of the sessions continue as follows: Session 2 - Students do a postponed copying exercise. The teacher writes on pieces of paper (one per student) a sentence constructed using the most frequent words in the text (without grammatical aspects that could cause spelling difficulties). These pieces of paper are placed on a table at the back of the class. Students have to go to the back of the class, read the sentence, memorize it, and then go back to their desk to write it. Depending on the length of the sentence and the students’ ability, they may be allowed two or three trips to read the sentence. Students correct their writings by referring directly to the model. The teacher then provides individual and group feedback. Session 3 - Students have to flash copy the words presented during the previous session. The teacher writes a word on a piece of paper, shows it for 5 seconds and then hides it. Students then have to write it down. Correction is done immediately. If a word causes problems, it is spelt and studied, and mnemonic means are sought to remember its spelling (drawing, word families, links with other words). Finally, the students do a postponed copying exercise using the same words, but the number of times they are allowed to read the words is limited. Session 4 - Students do another postponed copying exercise, but this time they have to write the correct grammatical form of each word. In effect, once students have automated lexical spelling they can focus on mastering grammatical spelling. The teacher chooses simple rules, such as plurals of nominal groups. Students correct their writings by referring directly to the model and the teacher provides group feedback. This scenario includes four sessions because some students no longer decrease their reading time after a certain number of readings. During the training course, we stressed the importance of helping students transfer the skills they acquire during these sessions. Further information about the content of remediation sessions can be found at: http://www.inshea.fr/fr/content/fluence-0

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Please cite this article in press as: Gallet, C., et al. Effects of an early reading intervention based on grapho-syllabic decoding and fluency training in French elementary schools. Rev. Eur. Psychol. Appl. (2019), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erap.2019.100471