The Effects of a Teaching Program Mixing Basic Skills Training and Comprehension Instruction with 7-8 Year-Old International School Students

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of two different teaching programs, one skill based, one mixed skill and content based with 7-8 year-old international school students (N=36). Group 1 (N=12) received a basic skills training in 2x40 mins sessions, Group 2 (N=12) received 1x40 mins basic skills training and 1x40 mins text comprehension instruction for a duration of twelve weeks. Group 3 (N=12) did not receive any additional training to their mainstream curriculum. The findings suggest that direct instruction of decoding appears to be effective, moreover appears to have indirect effect on sentence comprehension. Spelling results are somewhat ambiguous. Significant progress in text comprehension remained specific to the training. The study concludes that explicit, focused instruction of decoding, and text comprehension in a small group setting has real benefits.