© 2022 Published by KURA Education & Publish-
ing. This is an open access article under the CC
BY- NC- ND license. (https://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/)

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International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education
March 2023, Volume 15, Issue 4, 357-369

The Agenda of The Reading Teacher
Journal on Reading and Reading Skills:
A Corpus Analysis in the Last Decade
Turan Temura,*, Taner Sezerb

Abstract

Reading is one of the main skills to be learned and used
in schools and through the entire life of an individual.
Its crucial importance made reading one of the central
topics in different academic disciplines such as education,
psychology, linguistic and neuroscience. Advances in
multidisciplinary approaches to and studies of reading
gave us the reason to talk about the science of reading.
Improvement in research into reading during the last century
reveals the fact that different approaches emphasized
the importance of partially different aspects of reading
skills. Different approaches presented sound arguments for
different priorities in teaching and learning of reading. For
some decades ago strong dichotomic arguments were so
sharp that in the United States the reading literature talked
about ‘the reading wars’. During the recent decades, the
debate of reading and approaches to reading, reading
skills and reading processes have changed. Studies
of reading presented different arguments for partially
different priorities. The Reading Teacher (RT) has for many
decades been the one of the most important arenas for the
presentation of new findings, ideas, arguments, and trends.
Our present corpus-based study captured the frequent
collocations and their usage in the RT publications – 952
articles comprising 3 548 008 words - during the last decade,
2012-2021. TreeTagger was used for part-of-speech tagging
and CQPWeb/CWB framework was employed as the
corpus interface in the analysis process. The findings clearly
revealed that "reading comprehension" was the most
frequently used collocation, and it has never weakened
its position in the RT publications in the last decade. While
instructional activities and processes like ‘shared reading’,
‘during reading’, ‘while reading’, and ‘after reading’ were
given considerable attention, ‘before reading’ was almost
forgotten. Findings also show that linguistic diversity among
students, particularly in the US, also made an impact on the
emerging of new topics and thus frequency of concepts
like bilingual, multilingual, translanguaging, and coaching.
Findings related to the ascending and descending trends
reading collocations in RT publications regarding other
aspects of reading, teaching of reading, and reading
processes are discussed and some ideas for future research
are presented.

Keywords:

Reading, Collocations, Corpus, Reading Comprehension

Received : 13 December 2022
Revised : 22 February 2023
Accepted : 10 March 2023
DOI : 10.26822/iejee.2023.288

a,* Corresponding Author: Turan Temur, Department of
Elementary Education, Faculty of Education, Anadolu
University, Turkey.
E-mail: turantemur@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9410-8295

b Taner Sezer, Department of English Language and
Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Mersin University, Turkey.
E-mail: tanersezerr@gmail.com
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7328-7650

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March 2023, Volume 15, Issue 4, 357-369

Introduction

Reading is critical for children's success in school and social life. Therefore, the science of reading
aims to explain the process of teaching and learning
reading to educators, families, and students. This helps
them to gain a deeper understanding of this vital skill.
This research study can be considered as a new step
towards understanding the reading skill. It is a result of
a corpus-based analysis of the studies on reading and
teaching reading published in the Reading Teachers
(RT) in the last ten years, 2011-2021.

Reading skill has been the subject of research for those
working in the fields of education, linguistic, cognitive
science and cognitive neuroscience for years. While
researchers working in the field of education and
language focus on the applications of reading in the
classroom and teaching methods, cognitive science
and cognitive neuroscience focus on the cognitive
processes of this skill and the functions of the brain
during reading. According to the results of these studies,
Seidenberg (2013) emphasizes that the reading-based
functions of the brain and the mechanisms underlying
students' basic reading skills can be explained with
neuroimaging and computational models.

When it comes to the approaches to reading, one
can find many similarities but also some differences.
According to Anderson, Hiebert, Scott and Wilkinson
(1985) “Reading is the process of constructing meaning
from written texts. It is a complex skill requiring the
coordination of a number of interrelated sources of
information.” (p. 7). The researchers emphasize the
complexity of reading and the need to coordinate
various sources of information. In another approach
to reading Wixson, Peters, Weber and Roeber (1987)
consider it as

“the process of constructing meaning through
the dynamic interaction among: the reader's
existing knowledge; the information suggested
by the text being read; and the context of the
reading situation.” ( p. 750 ).

Here one can see that the researchers emphasize the
dynamic interaction between the reader's knowledge,
the text being read, and the reading context.

Another approach to reading by Torgesen, Houston,
Rissman and Kosanovich, (2007) is more result-oriented
compared to the previous approaches.

The researchers take into account the competencies
that students should acquire at the end of primary
school and state the following: “…students be able
to identify the words on the page accurately and
fluently; that they have enough knowledge and
thinking ability to understand the words, sentences,
and paragraphs; and that they be motivated and

engaged enough to use their knowledge and thinking
ability to understand and learn from the text.” (p. 1).

They also stress the importance of accurate
word recognition, thinking ability, motivation, and
engagement in reading proficiency, as well as
“knowledge”. This last point as ‘content knowledge’
was given even more attention and seen as an
important factor for reading in general and reading
comprehension in particular by the American National
Governors Association (2013) when they discuss the
prerequisites for reading: “Reading proficiency requires
three sets of interrelated skills that develop over time:
language and communication, mechanics of reading,
and content knowledge.” (NGACBP, 2013 p. 3). Here
they also identify ‘language and communication’ and
‘mechanics of reading’ along with content knowledge
as important factors for reading proficiency.

Although these approaches to some extend
emphasize different aspects of reading proficiency
and the skills it encompasses, it is possible to say that
they have similarities in some basic points; a) All of
the statements acknowledge that reading involves
the construction of meaning from written texts. b)
They all recognize that reading proficiency requires a
combination of skills and abilities. c) They all emphasize
the importance of the reader's existing knowledge
and engagement in the reading process.

Considering the components that the above
mentioned approaches include regarding the reading
skill, it can be said that it is a multidimensional and
complex developmental process. Several researchers
(Kendeou, van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009; Grabe,
2009) describe this process in two stages: One is lower-
level processes, including word recognition, syntactic
parsing, and meaning encoding, and the other is
higher-level, including text model formation, situation-
model building, inferencing, executive-control and
strategic processing. It seems that the acquisition and
development of reading skills is a gradual process that
starts with the letter-sound relationship and leads to
capturing and interpreting the meaning in the text.

The Focus of RT: evidence-based literacy instruction

RT is a respected journal in its field with its theoretical
and applied studies on reading and teaching reading.
The journal is published biannually by Wiley-Backwell
on behalf of the International Literacy Association
(ILA, 2023). RT has a publishing policy that covers a
wide range of topics related to literacy. Within the
framework of this policy, publications are made
in the form of theoretical and practical research,
book reviews and sample applications. With these
publications, the journal can be described as the

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meeting point of teachers, researchers, policy makers
and educators interested in literacy skills.

RT is a peer-reviewed journal. It publishes research-
based best practices for literacy studies. The journal
has a wide readership such as classroom teachers,
literacy coaches, reading specialists, researchers,
and teacher educators. The journal is also indexed
in various academic databases and indexes such
as Web of Science, Social Sciences Citation Index
(Clarivate Analytics), SCOPUS (Elsevier), ERIC, ProQuest
Professional Education and Academic Search
Complete (EBSCO). It is true to claim that unlike several
other academic journals, RT presents theoretical and
methodological approaches to reading and teaching
reading. In addition, RT publications have teaching
and learning of reading its main area of focus. These
qualities made RT as a journal of cutting- edge studies
of reading and a respected voice of science of
reading.

Previous studies on RT

The first one of the earlier studies of the focus of RT
(Staiger, et al., 1992), with regard to reading, concluded
that the articles in the journal from 1950 thru 1954 did
the following: 1) They informed classroom teachers
about current research and promising projects
on teaching reading, 2) They provided practical
information on classroom activities and reading
materials for teachers and students, and 3) They
provided information about the International Council
for the Improvement of Reading Instruction and its
local councils.

In the other five studies, researchers (Jerrolds, 1992;
Stahl & Fisher, 1992; Pearson, 1992; Dillon, et al., 1992 and
Mohr, et al., 2017) analysed the articles in RT which
were the milestones for trend topics and the journal
through content analysis. For instance, Jerrolds (1992)
determined the topics as milestones in teaching
reading from 1947 to 1991. Among these topics,
elementary reading, secondary reading, suggestions
for teachers, classroom reading teacher, reading
comprehension, modern instructional techniques,
parent-teacher cooperation, literacy-related
drawings created by children, and reading educators
were mentioned. One of the most striking points in this
study was that RT published articles from countries
such as Finland, then Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Mexico
and China after 1982.

Stahl and Fisher (1992) examined the first 20 years of
RT and emphasized that the following four different
reading related pedagogical issues were the major
themes: a) Reading readiness, b) Word recognition, c)
Reading comprehension, and d) Reading disabilities.

In the study conducted by Pearson (1992), the issues
of RT between 1968-1990 were included. It was found
that 22 different topics were addressed. Among these
topics, the most recurring were the following:

a) Integrated language arts, b) Children's literature, c)
Comprehension, d) Language and cultural influences,
and e)Testing/assesment and adminstrating reading
programs.

Dillon, et al. (1992), on the other hand, identified the
following most frequent article topics by quantitative
analysis of 2,168 articles in RT between the years
1948-1991: a) Instructional strategies, b) Assessment,
c) Children's literature, d) Emergent literacy/reading
readiness, e) Attitudes/habits/interests, and f) Cross-
cultural and reading problems

In a recent study, Mohr et al. (2017) examined the
articles in RT published between 1992-2016 and
found the following most frequently used concepts:
a) Instructional, b) Children's literature, c) Writing,
d) Attitudes/habits/interests, e) Comprehension, f)
Teacher education, g) Assessment, h) Content reading,
and i) Technology, and cross-cultural.

These findings, generally obtained by using keywords,
are very important in terms of analysing the content
of RT. However, there is another option through which
RT as a journal of an outstanding role in the field of
reading can be analysed. In our view a corpus-based
study.

The aim of the present study

The aim of this corpus-based study is to add some
valuable ideas and perspectives to the existing
literature and expand our knowledge base. Through
conducting a corpus-based study on the millions of
words used in 952 articles published in RT during the
period of from 2012 thru 2021, we identified the words
which the concept of reading often form collocation
with. By doing so, we aimed to answer the following
research questions:

1. What are the most frequently used
concepts in the RT Corpus?

2. What concepts frequently form collocations
with "reading" in the RT Corpus? What is the
distribution of these collocations by year?

3. What are the adjectives that form
collocations with "reading" in the RT
Corpus? What is the distribution of these
collocations by year?

4. What are the verbs that form collocations
with "reading" in the RT Corpus? What is the
distribution of these collocations by year?

5. What are the major concepts in the first
five and last five years of the RT Corpus?

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We hope that the findings of our study will expand our
knowledge about the advances in reading research
and the current areas of focus in the science of
reading.

Methodology

Corpus linguistics is primarily a quantitative approach,
relying on numerical data representing words and
phrases within corpora (McEnery & Hardie, 2011).
Therefore, statistics plays a vital role in corpus linguistics
by facilitating the effective processing and analysis of
quantitative information (Brezina, 2018).

Corpora are the tools used for linguistic analysis
of datasets, providing qualitative and quantitative
data about a particular language. Corpus has been
defined in the literature by considering its different
characteristics. Sinclair (1991) defines a corpus as "a
collection of texts selected and assembled according
to certain linguistic criteria that can be used as
examples of language", while Leech (1992) describes
it as "a large amount of data collected in a digital
environment (computer)". McEnery and Wilson
(2001) define corpus as "a collection of texts carefully
selected to represent a language", while Tognini-
Bonelli (2001) defines it as "a collection of texts put
together for linguistic analysis, supposedly capable of
representing a language.”

These conceptions of corpus emphasize three key
elements of corpus features: a) They are "structured",
b) They "consist of large amounts of data" and c) They
are "computer-readable".

Thus, it is reasonable to consider a corpus as "a
collection of large volumes of digitized language
data brought together for a specific purpose." Studies
using corpus provide information about the structure
of the language, its use, finding and observing various
patterns, the change and features of the language.

Corpus linguistics is a discipline that encompasses
the preparation processes of corpora and studies
using them. “Brown Corpus” (Kucera & Francis, 1967)
is accepted as the first corpus prepared on digital
platforms. With the increase in data processing
and storage capacities, especially after the 1990s,
large corpora such as British National Corpus (BNC)
(2023), Corpus of Contemporary American English
(2023) and Bank of English (2005) were prepared and
corpus linguistics has become an accepted discipline.
Corpora are also defined according to the "data" they
contain. The ones that attempt to present a general
profile of a language are referred to as "reference
corpora", while the corpora prepared based on a
specific topic or a particular type of text or source
are called "specialized corpora". The corpus prepared
within the scope of this study and serving as the main
source of it is also a specialized corpus.

RT Corpus

The corpus for this study was created by including all
the studies published online versions of the RT in the
last decade (2012-2021). The main reason for taking
the last ten years as a reference is that the content
analysis of the journal was made with keywords
until 2016 and the last five years were not resolved.
Considering that the number of words used in the first
five years would not be sufficient for a corpus analysis,
the second fifth year backwards was also included in
the study.

Online publications of RT in the last decade were
recorded based on the year, volume and issue. The
data were then transformed into raw text. Figures,
tables, graphic information, and footnotes were
excluded from the data. Each text was annotated
with “year, issue, volume, keyword 1 and keyword 2”
tags.

TreeTagger was used for part-of-speech tagging,
and CQPWeb/CWB framework was employed as the
corpus interface. The whole data formed a corpus of
3,548.008 words as one can see in the Table 1 below:

Table 1.
The Reading Teacher Corpus Metadata

Metadata

Total number of corpus texts 952
Total words in all corpus texts (Token) 3.548.008

Word types in the corpus 54.295

Type/token ratio 0.0153

Collocations

Phillips (1983, 1985) offers the theoretical foundation for
collocation networks, which examines the connection
between collocates and macrostructure within a
text. According to Phillips (1989), these networks, also
referred to as "lexical networks," can be utilized to
implement the psychological concept of a text's
"aboutness.". In essence, collocation networks serve to
understand a text's central themes and ideas (Vaclav,
McEnery, & Wattam, 2015).

In Reading Teacher, the concepts that formed
collocations with the concept of reading were
examined in the following three different ways: a) The
first collocations (such as reading comprehension,
close reading, reading recovery) consisted of the most
frequently used concepts with reading regardless of
the word types. b) In the second stage, concepts that
described the concept of reading and collocated with
an adjective or similar words (such as independent
reading, oral reading and repeated reading) were
examined. c) In the third stage, the verbs that
formed collocation with reading were identified and
discussed. Concepts that formed collocation with
reading are classified within themselves.

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Keywords list for sub-corpora

RT Corpus was divided into 2012-2016 and 2017-2021,
and two different corpora were formed. These two
corpora were compared in terms of concepts used in
the first five years and the ones in the last five years. In
this way, the concepts with ascending trend and the
concepts with descending trend in the RT corpus.

Analysis

In the data analysis of RT, word forms and maximum
window span were taken as +/-5 in determining the
concepts that formed collocation with reading. In
filtering the obtained collocations as word types, +/-3
distances and at least five (5) frequency values were
taken into account.

Analyses were conducted considering the total
number in the whole corpus, expected collocate
frequency, observed collocate frequency, the number
of texts they appeared in and log-likelihood values of
the concepts forming collocation with reading.

Findings

In this section, the most frequently used words in RT,
the nouns, adjectives, and verbs that form collocations
with the concept of reading, and the usage of the
collocations by years were presented. In addition,
the RT corpus was divided into two five-year periods
as mentioned above. By doing this, we identified the
ascending and descending trends in the use of those
collocations.

Table 2.
The Most Frequent Ten Words in RT Corpus

Number Word Frequency

1 Students 40347

2 Reading 19919

3 Teachers 13117

4 Text 10975

5 Writing 9709

6 Literacy 8264

7 Words 8156

8 Use 8076

9 Children 7878

10 Texts 7417

Table 2 shows the most frequently used content (lexical)
words in the articles published in Reading Teacher in
the last decade. These words show which concepts
were focused intensively in the academic studies
published in RT in the last ten years. Based on this, it
can be said that the studies on reading in RT focused
on the following concepts of a) reader [students and
children] (marked with blue colour), b) reading and

writing ability (marked with gold colour), c) teacher (s)
(marked with green colour) and d) reading material
[ text, texts, and words] (Marked with orange colour)

A vast majority of the articles stress the important role
these elements in the teaching-learning activities
play an important role in the improvement of reading/
reading comprehension. The reason for the high
frequency of these words might be due to the fact
that the study area of the journal is directly related
to a) twelve-year-old children, b) teaching content-
reading skills for these children, and c) educators
providing this education.

Thus, it is reasonable to say that research efforts in the
field in the mentioned decade, considered the focus
on students, their reading and writing, their teachers
and the reading materials (texts and the vocabulary
the students encounter in the reading materials) as
important areas for reading research. One can raise
the question: Why so much emphasize on these
areas? We hope to discuss this question by the help of
our findings about reading collocations presented in
the following table:

In Table 3, the first twenty words that form a collocation
with the concept of reading are listed according to
their log-likelihood values. As one can see in the table
(Table 3) the concept of comprehension is the one that
collocates with reading most. Considering the log-
likelihood value of comprehension and the frequency
of its occurrence and collocation in the corpus, it can
be said that the last decade’s reading studies mostly
focus on understanding the content of the texts.

The findings also reveal that the content focus is on
sub-concepts such as reading practices/instructional
routines [guided, independent, close, oral, aloud and
share], intervention/support [recovery, specialist,
specialists], time of reading [during, while, after],
understanding and accuracy [achievement, fluency,
comprehension], standards [programs], relationship
[writing] and reader-based components [motivation,
difficulties] are the concepts frequently collocate with
the concept of reading.

We wanted to conduct a more detailed analysis of
these collocations during the last decade (2012-2021)
and see whether there is any difference between the
first five-year (2012-2016) and the last five-year period
(2017-2021). The following figure (Figure 1) presents the
results:

In Figure 1, the usage frequency of the concepts
collocating with reading within one million words in
the last ten years is shown according to years. The
results show the following: a) “reading comprehension,
reading, and writing relationship and reading
instruction” were frequently used within a million words
(f ≥= 100) almost every year in the last decade. b) “close

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March 2023, Volume 15, Issue 4, 357-369

Table 3.
Reading collocations

Word
Total no. in the
whole corpus

Expected collocate
frequency

Observed collocate
frequency

In no. of
texts

Log-likelihood
value

1 comprehension 3433 115.64 923 270 2440.065

2 close 915 30.822 532 86 2392.052

3 guided 931 31.361 484 126 2025.445

4 independent 927 31.226 442 141 1748.987

5 recovery 162 5.457 158 29 1034.431

6 oral 1100 37.053 344 92 1018.649

7 during 3866 130.226 611 286 994.173

8 fluency 1053 35.47 319 98 922.58

9 writing 9709 327.046 980 378 895.342

10 specialist 207 6.973 145 49 734.989

11 motivation 1206 40.624 294 55 717.169

12 specialists 277 9.331 159 33 708.613

13 achievement 723 24.354 232 103 699.896

14 aloud 1028 34.628 270 137 699.551

15 shared 1739 58.578 337 112 672.056

16 instruction 6771 228.08 669 256 590.058

17 while 2286 77.004 356 200 569.633

18 difficulties 295 9.937 125 41 457.377

19 programs 763 25.702 182 47 435.889

20 After 2524 85.021 327 210 422.374

Figure 1.
Distribution of collocations by years

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reading” and “independent reading” were used more
frequently in the first years, but their usage frequency
has decreased recently. c) The use of independent
reading in 2012 (f = 513.28) was the highest of the
most frequent collocations in the last ten years, but
the frequency of use (f = 111.31) in 2013 dropped by
about one-fifth, and this descending tendency
continued gradually after 2018. d) Independent
reading, reading comprehension, guided reading
and reading instruction were the most frequently
used collocations in 2012. e) The results show a clear
tendency: f) Reading comprehension has never fallen
off the agenda of RT, even with the least usage rate (f
= 161.39) in 2019 and in the following years. g) The year
of 2021 is the year in which reading comprehension
was used the most frequently (f = 415.78). h) In addition
to reading comprehension, mostly used collocations in
recent years were reading-writing (f = 226.79), reading
motivation (f = 141.11), shared reading (f = 201.59) and
reading instruction (f = 251.99).

These findings clearly show that understanding,
instruction, writing and instructional routines are
among the main concepts that collocate with
reading. Although they have different usage rates
according to years, they constitute the main areas
of reading research and practicing research-based
reading instruction. We wanted to go even further and
identify the kind of reading activities the researchers
emphasized during the period of 2012-2021. In order
to do this, we identified the most frequent reading
collocations predominantly with adjectives and

similar type of descriptive words. The following table
present the results:

In Table 4, the first twenty adjectives that collocate
with reading are listed according to their log-likelihood
values. These concepts, frequently used in RT Corpus,
can be categorized and discussed with focus on the
way they describe the nature of reading. The results
show the following: a) Adjectives that describe the
concept of reading mostly consist of instructional
routines [close reading, fluent reading, independent
reading, oral reading, repeated reading, shared
reading, silent reading, choral reading, dialogic
reading, take-home reading, wide reading]. b) The
log-likelihood value of take-home reading (programs)
is high, and it is likely to be used in future studies
considering the observed value and the number of
texts it is used. c) Some of the collocations in the table
are towards improving the basic reading skills [basal
reading, early reading and foundational reading].
d) Reading format/medium [online reading and
traditional reading] can be considered as another
category. e) The frequency of reading online is higher
than traditional (paper-based) reading. Among the
collocations, in spite of its observed value and being
mentioned in just one text during the last ten years,
the log-likelihood value of canine-assisted reading
is observed to be high. Canine-assisted reading is
usually found in programs for children with special
educational needs. This can be a topic for another
project.

Table 4.
The Most Frequent Reading Collocations with Adjectives

No. Word
Total no. in the
whole corpus

Expected collocate
frequency

Observed collocate
frequency

In no. of
texts

Log-likelihood
value

1 close 915 30.822 474 81 1979.048

2 independent 927 31.226 434 141 1696.99

3 oral 1100 37.053 331 89 952.506

4 repeated 407 13.71 106 44 272.687

5 fluent 181 6.097 67 52 223.625

6 shared 1739 58.578 198 74 215.518

7 silent 160 5.39 60 25 202.063

8 choral 47 1.583 34 23 176.035

9 online 1363 45.912 157 33 173.643

10 take-home 33 1.112 23 1 116.177

11 early 1810 60.97 158 84 112.408

12 informational 1798 60.565 157 73 111.758

13 dialogic 238 8.017 47 12 95.31

14 wide 366 12.329 57 33 91.119

15 voluntary 32 1.078 19 8 86.511

16 basal 129 4.345 33 9 83.666

17 canine-assisted 15 0.505 13 1 76.515

18 informal 220 7.411 38 23 67.693

19 traditional 701 23.613 71 36 64.965

20 foundational 225 7.579 35 24 55.875

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In Figure 2, the frequency of the use of adjectives that
collocate with reading in one million words in the last
decade is shown by years. The displayed results clearly
show the following: a) independent, close and oral are
the adjectives that frequently describe the concept of
reading. b) Independent reading is the most frequently
used collocation with its usage rate in 2012 (f=500.99).
The usage rate of this collocation shows a descending
tendency after 2018 (f=160.78). Close reading, on the
other hand, shows an ascending tendency in 2012,
2013 and in 2014 its collocation reached the highest
usage rate (f=332.54). In the following years its usage
rate decreased to its lowest level in 2019 (f=65.12).
c) Although the usage rate of shared reading, early
reading, traditional reading, and informal reading in
research studies varies from year to year, there is an
ascending tendency in their usage in recent years. d)
The usage rates of fluent reading, silent reading and
wide reading varies from year to year, their usage
shows a descending trend in recent years. e) In the
following section, we went further and tried to find
the most frequent reading collocations with verbs. By
doing so, we expect to identify the expected activities
related to reading and/purposes of reading activities.
The following table show the results.

In Table 5, the first twenty verbs collocating with
reading are listed according to their log-likelihood
values. In our view, the verbs that form collocations
with reading can be classified under five different

groups considering their usage: a) Action verbs to
achieve a goal or solve a problem about reading
[implement, deliver, adjust, monitor, facilitate] b)
Improvement verbs to make reading better or more
effective [improve, enhance, stimulate, raise] c)
Goal-oriented verbs to achieve a specific outcome
or objective for reading [persist, increase, achieve,
promote] d) Problem-solving verbs to address a
challenge [differentiate, prevent, solve] e) Impact
verbs to influence or affect reading [affect, promote,
deliver and monitor].

Some of the collections may fit into more than
one group, depending on their context. The above
mentioned reading related activities and purposes
reminds us of the importance of teaching-learning
related activities that usually are incorporated or
expected to be incorporated in reading. They remind
us about the necessary activities and purposes when
educationists are targeting improvement of the
students’ reading comprehension. The following figure
shows the distribution of reading collocations with the
above mentioned verbs by year.

As one can see in Figure 3, the frequency of the use of
verbs that collocate with reading in the last decade
of RT varies from year to year. The results can be
summarised as follow: a) The verb improve is the most
frequently used one. Although its usage was low in 2013
(f = 3.18) and 2018 (f = 2.59), its usage rate is quite high in

Figure 2.
Distribution of reading collocations with adjectives

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Table 5.
The Most Frequent Reading collocations with verbs

No. Word
Total no. in the
whole corpus

Expected collocate
frequency

Observed collocate
frequency

In no. of
texts

Log-likelihood
value

1 improve 554 18.661 83 60 127.157

2 enjoy 261 8.792 28 24 27.958

3 persist 49 1.651 10 9 20.898

4 increase 623 20.986 43 36 18.484

5 enhance 474 15.967 35 30 17.678

6 affect 295 9.937 25 16 16.817

7 promote 537 18.089 32 27 9.064

8 differentiate 117 3.941 11 10 8.914

9 prevent 63 2.122 7 3 7.355

10 solve 365 12.295 22 14 6.462

11 stimulate 59 1.987 6 4 5.523

12 achieve 252 8.489 15 14 4.233

13 implement 395 13.306 21 18 3.934

14 reduce 97 3.267 7 3 3.352

15 deliver 61 2.055 5 3 3.152

16 keep 573 19.301 27 21 2.836

17 monitor 208 7.006 11 10 2.016

18 facilitate 380 12.8 18 16 1.947

19 adjust 123 4.143 7 6 1.698

20 raise 147 4.952 8 7 1.645

Figure 3.
Distribution of reading collocations with verbs by year

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March 2023, Volume 15, Issue 4, 357-369

other years. The usage rate of improve in 2012 (f = 46.1),
2015 (f = 29.57), 2016 (f = 28.69), 2017 (f = 50.71), and 2021
(f = 27.72) is higher than all other verbs. b) The usage
rate of the verb improve in 2017 is the highest one
among the first twenty verbs that form a collocation
with reading. c) Improve reading is generally used to
improve reading comprehension, reading abilities,
achievement, reading fluency, reading outcomes,
reading rate. Similarly, it is seen that increase and
enhance are used to improve and increase students'
reading level, reading comprehension, reading
motivation, reading fluency, automatic, reading
development skills frequently in recent years.

These findings show that the studies published in RT
focused more on the development of reading-related
skills in the last decade. The verb prevent - used only
in 2016 (f=18.26) in the last ten years - is among the first
twenty actions with the observed collocate frequency,
in number of texts and log-likelihood values, and it is
observed that it is used with the concepts of reading
difficulties, reading problems and reading failure.

The frequency of the words, adjectives and verbs that
are collocated with reading in research articles tells us
not only the main focus in the studies of reading, they
also gives readers an important information about
what to be aware of when one work with reading

and what and how the educationists must target to
improve the skills that contribute to the improvement
of good readers i.e. readers who possess the necessary
skills and strategies necessary to comprehend a
written text at an age appropriate level. We mean
that the keywords in the scientific research articles
have a similar function. In the following section, we
present the results of our corpus study in which we
looked at the frequency of the keywords in the first
five years (2012-2016) compared to the last five years
(2017-2021):

The data in Table 6 is based on the two sub-corpora
of RT Corpus. The first sub-corpora shows the period
of 2012-2016 (Freq 1) and the second one for 2017-
2021 (Freq 2). Based on this, the first five years and the
last five years were compared, and the frequently
used concepts and their usage were presented. The
results indicate the following: a) When the frequency
values are compared, children, Common Core State
Standards (CCSS) reading, e-books, picture, child,
e-book and read were used more in the first five years
compared to the last five. b) In the last five years, the
concepts of literacy, multilingual, translanguaging,
linguistic, coaching, bilingual, preservice, languages,
Spanish, practices and running were used more than
the first five years.

Table 6.
Keywords first five years (2012-2016, Freq 1) compared to last five years (2017-2021, Freq 2)

No Word Freq 1 Freq 1 (per mill) Freq 2 Freq 2 (per mill) +/- Log-Likelihood

1 children 5287 3152.42 2591 1384.91 + 1262.58

2 CCSS (*) 655 390.55 28 14.97 + 783.84

3 literacy 3018 1799.51 5246 2804.03 - 390.17

4 multilingual 56 33.39 520 277.94 - 382.14

5 reading 10723 6393.68 9196 4915.33 + 345.56

6 translanguaging 23 13.71 350 187.08 - 309.77

7 e-books 247 147.28 15 8.02 + 274.44

8 standards 1222 728.63 628 335.67 + 264.75

9 linguistic 159 94.81 603 322.31 - 229.58

10 coaching 149 88.84 576 307.88 - 224.05

11 bilingual 143 85.26 556 297.19 - 217.65

12 preservice 54 32.2 356 190.28 - 217.12

13 languages 270 160.99 757 404.62 - 190.35

14 picture 1449 863.98 916 489.61 + 186.62

15 child 902 537.82 476 254.43 + 184.64

16 e-book 164 97.79 10 5.35 + 182.04

17 Spanish 247 147.28 698 373.09 - 177.82

18 practices 962 573.6 1796 959.98 - 173.38

19 read 4029 2402.32 3317 1772.96 + 169.25

20 running 92 54.86 388 207.39 - 165.43

(*) CCSS: Common Core State Standards in the USA.

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The Agenda of The Reading Teacher / Temur & Sezer

One of the two important findings in this table is that a)
the frequency rates or usage situations of the concepts
e-book and e-books decreased by 1/6 in the last five
years. It is noteworthy that although technological
possibilities develop day by day and offer different
applications and systems related to reading, they
occupy less space in studies on reading. b) Linguistic
diversity related concepts such as multilingual,
translanguaging, bilingual and languages became
more prominent in the last five years.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this study, we investigated concepts that collocate
frequently with the concept of "reading" in RT journal in
the last ten years, the distribution of these collocations
by years, which concepts have come to the fore in
RT recently, and which concepts have decreased in
their usage rate. The corpus-based findings in the
research show that "comprehension" is one of the
most important components of reading. Besides being
one of the most frequently used concepts on its own
in RT Corpus, comprehension is the most likely concept
to be seen collocating with reading. In the corpus, it
was also observed with different components such as
techniques, skills, strategies, activities, scores, attitudes
and abilities.

Concepts such as close, independent, fluency, which
often collocate with reading, are comprehension-
oriented concepts. It is reasonable to conclude that
research on reading during the last decade stress the
importance of reading comprehension by identifying
the following:

a. the factors, the skills and the reading
strategies that are necessary for reading
comprehension, and

b. the instructional methods and strategies
that help the students to improve their skills
for reading comprehension.

Although there is a limitation in this study due to the
fact that it is based only on corpus data from 2012 thru
2021, our research is based on peer-reviewed research
952 articles published in a journal, the Reading Teacher,
which is one of the world’s well-known journals with a
special focus on reading.

The findings reveal that the main goal of reading
studies is to highlight the elements of reading
comprehension and the methods, techniques, skills,
strategies, activities and attitudes necessary to
achieve the ability of reading comprehension. Our
findings are consistent with the earlier studies which
were done through content analysis (Jerrolds, 1992;
Stahl & Fisher, 1992; Pearson, 1992; Dillon, et al., 1992 and
Mohr, et al., 2017).

From the past to present, reading comprehension has
been one of the main subjects of academic studies
and it has maintained its importance almost in most
of the reading-focused publications. Our study also
shows that reading and reading comprehension
are multidimensional and complex processes and
there are different components that need to be
investigated further. However, in the aforementioned
studies, RT was examined by content analysis and
generally through keywords. The main difference of
the current study is to make direct word frequencies
and collocation analyses on the words used in the
article content. While content analysis makes it easier
to look at studies in the field of reading from a wider
perspective and to understand reading based on
it, this corpus-based study has given the chance to
present more detailed results.

Considering the usage rates in RT Corpus in the
last ten years, two more concepts are also worth
mentioning. One of them is writing and the other is
instruction. These concepts frequently collocated
with reading in RT in the last decade, and their usage
rates were quite high compared to other concepts
almost every year. For example, independent reading
is a quite frequent concept, but it has either a very
high (2012) or a very low (2021) usage rate according
to the years of use. However, writing and instruction
are intensely used concepts every year in the last
decade. This finding is very important to argue that
reading as an important and lifelong-needed skill
cannot be considered independently of writing skill. In
addition, when the verbs and adjectives are forming
collocations with reading, our study shows that
instructional routines and actions that support and
improve reading are always necessary. Furthermore,
we can say that a tendency towards frequently used
concepts related to reading sends the educators an
important message: The students’ and the teachers’
learning and development are interrelated.

Another remarkable finding is that the concept of
reading difficulties was frequently examined only
in 2016 (f= 174.76) and used quite few in other years,
compared the use of elements to improve reading
process and reading comprehension, such as
"comprehension, fluency, recovery, while and after
reading". Reading problems was the eighth most
frequent article topic in the study conducted by Dillon,
et al., (1992), and the twenty-first in Mohr, et al., (2017). It
seems that researchers, educators and editors of the
journal preferred to focus on comprehension rather
than focusing directly on “difficulties or problems”
during the last decade.

Finally, we want to underline the influences of the
national contexts and the debates on the researchers’
agendas. There is a likelihood that several national

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March 2023, Volume 15, Issue 4, 357-369

events and expert-panel publications in the USA have
had some impact on the research topics that the
researchers and journal editors have given priority in
the last decade.

With these reflections in mind, we hope the following
conclusions from our study presents an important
contribution to the field of reading:

1. The ten most frequently used concepts in RT
journal consisted of reader, teacher, reading
material and reading-writing related concepts.
Reading, the main subject of this study, was the
second most frequently used concept.

2. Regardless of the part of speech, it was
seen that the most frequently used concepts
collocating with reading are the collocations
for reading practices or instructional routines.
Among these collocations, the most frequently
used ones in the last ten years are independent
reading and reading comprehension. Reading
comprehension, reading-writing and reading
instruction are the two most common
collocations in the publications from 2012 to
2021.

3. When the collocations with reading formed
by adjectives are examined, it is seen that
the concepts that often describe reading are
instructional routines, basic reading skills, and
reading medium. It is also observed that the
most frequently used concepts in the last ten
years among the adjectives collocating with
reading are close, independent, oral reading.
Independent reading was the most frequently
used collocation last year, but its usage rate
had decreased after 2018. Close reading,
shared reading, online reading, early reading
and informational reading collocations, had
different usage rates till 2021, but their usage
have increased since then.

4. The verbs forming collocation with reading
consist of action, improvement, effective, goal-
oriented, problem solving, and impact verbs for
reading skills. In the last ten years, the strongest
verb collocating with reading is “improve”.
Although the usage situations have changed
over the years, the verbs whose usage rate
increased in 2021 compared to previous years
are improve, enhance, solve, implement.

5. In the RT corpus, children, Common Core
State Standards (CCSS) reading, e-books,
picture, child, e-book and read were used
frequently between 2012 and 2016 but less in
2017-2021. Concepts with higher usage rates
between 2017-2021 compared to 2012-2016 were
literacy, multilingual, translanguaging, linguistic,
coaching, bilingual, preservice, languages,
Spanish, practices, and running. This tendency
can be related to national reading-related
debates, technological developments, and the
increased awareness of linguistic diversity in the
American schools.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Dr. Abdullah Kaldirim and Hasan Er for their
great help in organizing the article data and reviewers
for outstanding suggestions.

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