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The Role Of Discourse And Its Effects On Reading Comprehension In The Ela Classroom, Laurie Coville

Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Literacy

Researchers have consistently found a link between quality classroom discourse and the increase in student reading comprehension. Classroom discussions help students make sense of fiction and nonfiction texts while deepening their understanding. Incorporating the principles of Vygotsky’s social constructivism as the theoretical framework, the aim of this study was to examine the relationship between the use of accountable talk sentence stems and the quality of discussion using the fishbowl discussion strategy as a means of increasing student comprehension of a text. Observation of the effects of student discourse of 18 students over the duration of six weeks yielded measurable differences …