Parental Participation in Paired Reading: a controlled study

Abstract

A double‐blind controlled study of the effects of Paired Reading was carried out with 33 failing readers and their parents. The children were aged 8 to 11 and had reading delays of at least 18 months. After a mean time of 7.6 hours of Paired Reading at home, spread over six weeks, the children made gains of 2.43 months for reading accuracy and 4.36 months for reading comprehension compared with a control group which experienced respective gains of 0.81 months and 1.69 months. The differences were statistically significant for accuracy but not for comprehension. The conclusions of previous Paired Reading studies are discussed in the light of these results and suggestions are made for the evaluation of future, similar projects.