Examining the Effects of Reading Modality and Passage Genre on Reading Comprehension in Middle School Students

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of reading modality (oral versus silent) and passage genre (narrative versus expository) on the reading comprehension of middle school students. A normative sample of sixth- and seventh-grade students (N = 175) read narrative and expository texts from the Qualitative Reading Inventory, Fifth Edition (QRI-5; Leslie & Caldwell, 2011) aloud or silently and then answered questions about what they read. General reading skill was assessed by the Test of Silent Contextual Reading Fluency, Second Edition (TOSCRF-2; Hammill, Wiederholt, & Allen, 2014). A 2 (passage genre) X 2 (reading modality) mixed between-within subjects ANOVA was conducted separately by grade. Findings suggest that text genre influenced reading comprehension across both sixth- and seventh-grade students. Not surprisingly, expository text was more challenging than narrative text in terms of students’ understanding. Importantly, reading modality was not found to influence the reading comprehension of seventh-grade students, and only approached significance for the sixth-grade students. These results suggest that although students may have effectively transitioned to being independent silent readers, additional pedagogical support may be required to develop effective strategies for understanding expository text