Effects of pause-based prosodic intervention on classical Chinese poetry reading among students with reading difficulties

This study examined the impact of pause-based prosodic reading (PBPR) on the classical Chinese poetry (CCP) reading development of students with reading difficulties (SRD) and then compared its effects with those of meaning-based intervention (MBI).

This study included 211 Grade 7 Chinese SRD who were randomly assigned to three groups: PBPR, MBI and control. Students in the PBPR group received explicit instruction in pause placement during CCP oral reading, whereas those in the MBI group received structurally equivalent instruction focusing on vocabulary, meaning-unit interpretation, imagery understanding and thematic discussion. SRD in the control group received typical CCP instruction. The intervention lasted 8 weeks, with two 45-min sessions each week. Students' CCP comprehension, classical Chinese receptive vocabulary, reading engagement and pause-related prosodic reading were all assessed before and after the intervention.

Both PBPR and MBI enhanced SRD's CCP comprehension, classical Chinese receptive vocabulary and reading engagement compared with typical instruction. Moreover, PBPR produced greater gains in boundary pause ratio and greater reductions in inappropriate pause ratio than MBI. No statistically group difference was found for mean pause duration. Furthermore, MBI improved comprehension-related outcomes but did not significantly reduce inappropriate pause ratio than typical instruction.

The study's findings indicate that PBPR and MBI support CCP reading development among SRD. More importantly, PBPR has unique value in improving pause-placement accuracy during CCP oral reading, suggesting that explicit pause-based scaffolding may be a useful approach for helping SRD organize compact poetic lines into meaningful oral units.