Melissa Lovelady Helselt and Dr. Dennis A. Wright, Linguistics
The focus of my study was to answer two questions: “Is scriptural literacy different from conventional literacy?” and “What factors, if any, foster competent scripture comprehension and retention?” The study involved a series of tasks with children between the ages of 5 and 12 living in Wymount Terrace. To simplify my experiment, I used only Latter Day Saint children whose native language was English, and used only the Book of Mormon.
To determine the child’s conventional reading level, I used the reading section of the WRAT (Wide Range Achievement Test) which is accepted among researchers as a reasonable measuring of reading achievement. To find a “scriptural literacy” level, each child read three two-verse passages, mispronounced words were noted, and a percentage score derived. An interesting observation was that many children automatically substituted synonymous modern words for scripture words; for example, you” for “thee” and even “street” for “course.”
In order to measure how much the children understood of what they had heard/read, I read a passage and the children retold the story in their own words. In the next task, I read to them, or had them read (depending on the reading level) a passage and answer questions about it. I assessed how much prior knowledge and retention each child had by asking 12 general Book of Morrnon questions from throughout those scriptures. We set the proficiency rate at 70% for 12 year olds, then 5% less was expected for each year younger. The final task was a fill-in-the-blank exercise (CLOZE task) in with every fifth word deleted and the child was asked to fill in the proper word correctly. This task measured whether the children had a fluency the language of the scriptures. Only exact replacements were accepted as this gave the most accurate evaluation.
In order to answer my second inquiry (“What factors … foster competent scripture comprehension and retention?”) Parents and children filled out questionaires about their families’ scripture reading methods, Family Home Evening regimen, and the children’s general reaction to the scriptures. This was in my opinion the most fascinating information I obtained.
Overall the scores were very low (see Fig. 1). The CLOZE task in particular rendered inadequate scores, with the average score being only 19%. However many inserted words of similar meaning, such as “to” for “unto” and “rejoin” for “reunite.” I did learn, nonetheless, that the children with the highest composite scores had some things in common. Although their conventional reading level seemed to have no bearing on their success in scripture reading, almost two-thirds of the high-scoring participants had parents who explained the scriptures as they went, or likened and applied the scriptures to life. Every one of the “high group”(see Fig.2) had and used storybooks about the scriptures, and some also supplemented with videos. Most held regular Family Home Evening, although none cited scripture reading as part of this activity. All of the children above age 6 claimed to read the scriptures on their own.