Comparison of Reading and Listening-Reading Techniques for Administration of Sat Reading Comprehension Subtest: Justification for the Bypass Approach

Abstract

The Advanced Stanford Achievement Test (SAT) Reading Comprehension subtest was administered to a group of 36 Caucasian learning disabled children (6 girls and 30 boys) in Grades 7 through 9 who were classified by the clinical Lexical Paradigm as either good readers or poor readers. Using the standardized (silent reading) method of administration, these learning disabled children all scored below the normative (50th percentile) level of performance and the poor readers scored substantially lower than good readers. When the child was allowed to listen and read silently, however, while the test material was read aloud, both poor readers and good readers showed significantly improved performance. This improvement which allowed the average of the poor readers to approach the normative level and the good readers to exceed it, supports the argument that a “bypass approach” to education of poor readers which includes listening-reading tasks might greatly enhance their learning and performance in school-related reading tasks.