What does research say about reading comprehension, its synergistic relationship with word recognition instruction, the role of knowledge in comprehension, and effective practices for supporting students in building a body of knowledge? For answers, read this post, the eighth installment of our series Structured Literacy: Unpacking Nine Key Topics for Transforming Reading Instruction and Outcomes for Readers.
To catch up on this series, start with the introduction, “From Guided Reading to a Structured-Literacy Approach: My Journey as an Educator.”
Comprehension is at the heart of being a proficient reader. Despite this, it can seem like comprehension instruction is often shortchanged in public conversations about research-based reading instruction. The need for phonics instruction usually takes center stage.
Even as we wholeheartedly agree about the critical importance of explicit and systematic instruction in word recognition, we recognize the equally vital role that comprehension instruction plays in building readers. As literacy educators, we hold the respective importance of word recognition and language comprehension instruction in our minds as “both/and,” not “either/or.”
Reading Comprehension and Word Recognition Instruction: Equal and Intertwined
Acknowledging that equal importance is just the first step. According to Duke, Ward, and Pearson (2021), the relation between word recognition instruction and reading comprehension instruction is more synergistic than competitive.
The relation between word recognition instruction and reading comprehension instruction is more synergistic than competitive.
This synergy is apparent in commonly referenced models, such as Gough and Tunmer’s Simple View of Reading and Dr. Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope Model. Both models identify the interconnectedness of language comprehension and word recognition to build skilled readers. The work of language comprehension is not separate from that of word recognition (as illustrated by the Reading Rope model); instead, both strands simultaneously intertwine as readers become more skilled.
There is a body of evidence that helps us know which practices, figuratively speaking, “tighten the strands of the reading rope” and thereby build critical readers who comprehend what they read and build knowledge from their reading experiences. In this blog, we’ll consider what the research says and unpack key practices.
Don’t Hold Off on Comprehension: The Need for Simultaneous, not Sequential, Instruction
Let’s start by noting that research supports simultaneous instruction rather than sequential, meaning that students benefit from instruction in both word recognition and language comprehension (Duke, Ward, & Pearson, 2021). There’s our “both/and” mindset again!
This important point about the need for simultaneous instruction is often missed amid the not uncommon belief that we ought to “hold off on comprehension instruction” until students reach a certain point of development in the trajectory of word recognition. Instead, oral language development and listening comprehension should be significant parts of early literacy instruction, alongside foundational skills development.
Oral language development and listening comprehension should be significant parts of early literacy instruction, alongside foundational skills development.
In an earlier blog post in the Structured Literacy series, “What is Orthographic Mapping and How Does It Link to Comprehension,” we identified orthographic mapping as an overlapping skill—in other words, a skill with the means to support both word recognition and language comprehension. Orthographic mapping supports students in building their sight vocabulary, which frees up their working memory while reading and allows for greater attention to meaning and comprehension. For specific examples of the relationship between orthographic mapping and comprehension for emerging readers, read the blog post.
“Reading to Learn” Starts Right Away: The Role of Knowledge in Comprehension
Educators often hear the following saying: “In kindergarten through second grade, students ‘learn to read’ and from third grade on, students ‘read to learn.’” But it’s time to retire this idea.
In actuality, reading to learn—reading to build knowledge— can start immediately upon students’ exposure to text, assuming we give students the opportunity.
To successfully access this learning and build their bodies of knowledge, all students need comprehension instruction. The converse is true as well: without a body of knowledge, it’s infinitely harder for readers to make sense of text.
Controlling for other factors, knowledge plays the largest role in comprehension (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007; Ozuru, Dempsey, & McNamara, 2009). In other words, the more a reader knows about a topic, the more likely they are to successfully comprehend a text about it.
“For instruction to be truly liberatory and for learning to be sticky, it has to help students expand what they know, make deep connections across disciplines, and integrate new content into their existing funds of knowledge.”
Zaretta Hammond
In addition, the knowledge a student brings when they read a text for the first time supports their ability to add to their body of knowledge and retain that new learning. According to Hammond (2021), “For instruction to be truly liberatory and for learning to be sticky, it has to help students expand what they know, make deep connections across disciplines, and integrate new content into their existing funds of knowledge.”
Beyond Connected Text Sets: What Are Other Knowledge-Building Practices?
Connected text sets are often portrayed as the only way that knowledge building occurs. However, when we limit our thinking like this, students miss out on other powerful ways to add to their body of knowledge.
Connected text sets are often portrayed as the only way that knowledge building occurs. However, when we limit our thinking like this, students miss out on other powerful ways to add to their body of knowledge.
In fact, research indicates that there are multiple knowledge-building practices that both increase comprehension of the current text and build students’ knowledge base in order to positively impact comprehension (Cervetti & Heibert, 2019). Here are a few examples:
- Wide reading. Reading volume has long been associated with general world knowledge (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993). The more children read, the more they learn about the world (Sparks, Patton & Murdoch, 2014). Rather than rigidly prescribing the content that students read, educators need to encourage wide reading, leveraging students’ curiosity, cultural competencies, and intrinsic motivation to explore topics they care about.
- Read-alouds. Among multiple benefits, teacher read-alouds introduce students to new topics and vocabulary (e.g., Hennessy, 2020). They also afford students the ability to build their listening comprehension, a skill that is a critical stepping stone to the goal of reading comprehension. In addition, read-alouds are accessible: they allow every student to access grade-level text and sophisticated content they may not be able to decode themselves.
- Access to Complex Text. Exposure and access to engaging and conceptually rich texts, especially nonfiction, are essential for students to build knowledge of the world (Anderson & Guthrie, 1999) and support students in both a deeper and wider view of particular topics. Students who are exposed to informational texts through read-alouds are often more likely to choose those kinds of texts for their independent reading (Dreher & Dromsky, 2000). Narrative nonfiction and even some historical fiction also provide opportunities for students to add to funds of knowledge.
- Incorporate higher-level questions and dialogue. When students have regular and ample amounts of time to engage in both teacher-led and peer-to-peer discussions involving sophisticated texts and tasks, they deepen their knowledge and comprehension (Driver, Newton, & Osborne, 2000; Pappas, Varelas, Barry, & Rife, 2002). A recent study indicated a shockingly low amount of time devoted to students talking, listening, reading, and writing about text (Jeong, Gaffney, & Choi, 2010).
- Strategies. Explicit comprehension strategy instruction is clearly connected to building a body of knowledge. Research shows that students improve their comprehension when they experience effective instruction around proven strategies (Armbruster, Lerh, and Osborn, 2006; Hennessy, 2020; Duke et al., 2011).
While all of these knowledge-building practices are important, comprehension strategy instruction is often given short shrift. For that reason, we’ll explore it in more detail in the next section.
Remembering the “Why” Behind Comprehension Strategy Instruction
Some educators have expressed concern about how explicit comprehension strategy instruction has been implemented in classrooms—namely, that we mistakenly treat the use of strategies as the end goal, rather than remembering that strategies are simply tools in service of learning from text.
However, just as poor implementation of phonics instruction (e.g., Duke & Mesmer, 2018) does not justify not teaching phonics, poor implementation of comprehension strategy instruction does not justify a decision to abandon this important knowledge-building practice (Duke, Ward, & Pearson, 2021).
Just as poor implementation of phonics instruction (e.g., Duke & Mesmer, 2018) does not justify not teaching phonics, poor implementation of comprehension strategy instruction does not justify a decision to abandon this important knowledge-building practice (Duke, Ward, & Pearson, 2021).
How Does Comprehension Strategy Instruction Support Knowledge Building?
Readers use their knowledge of the world in many ways to comprehend text. A significant body of research links students’ knowledge with comprehension of text (Langer, 1984; Long, Winograd, & Bridget, 1989; Stevens, 1980). Strategies support students in making sense of the text as they read. Coupling the successful use of strategies with strong knowledge is further supportive of meaning making while reading. This also results in students’ ability to learn, or expand their knowledge base, as they read.
For example, the strategies of making connections and inferring rely on existing knowledge and integrating that knowledge with new information from a text to build deeper understandings. Teaching students to use their prior knowledge to make inferences about text can help them recall information.
Explicit strategy instruction teaches students how to deepen their comprehension by using their existing knowledge and marrying it with the text they are reading. The leveraging of a strategy is the difference between a surface-level understanding and a deeper understanding of the text a student is reading.
Visualizing—the direct action of making a mental image while reading—provides another example of how strategy use and knowledge are mutually supportive. Visualizations, or mental images, are supported by the prior knowledge the reader brings to the task. Students who visualize while reading are better able to make inferences about, predict, and recall both literal and implicit information from the text—which in turn serves their knowledge building.
Comprehension strategy instruction supports students in several important ways. It guides them in learning how to think about a text before, during, and after reading. It also helps students learn to monitor their understanding and notice when their meaning-making skills break down, and then figure out what to do about it (Duke, Ward, & Pearson, 2021). Some students may need minimal instruction in comprehension strategies; however, providing explicit strategy instruction is critical to the success of many readers.
In Conclusion: What Research Tells Us About Reading Comprehension
Comprehension instruction is integral to building strong readers. This instruction is synergistic, not competitive, with the equally important work of explicit, systematic instruction in word recognition. These strands are interconnected, intertwining as readers become more skilled, and we must not “hold off” on comprehension instruction for early readers. Oral language development and listening comprehension must be significant parts of early literacy instruction, occurring alongside foundational skills development.
The research base of comprehension instruction also tells us that students need to continually build a body of knowledge, and educators should support students in this work via multiple knowledge-building practices—not just the use of connected text sets. Finally, research shows that identifying the knowledge and integrating it with comprehension strategy instruction is a powerful part of comprehensive reading instruction. Knowledge and building on that knowledge using comprehension strategies are linked.
***
To catch up on earlier posts in the Structured Literacy blog series, start with the introduction, “From Guided Reading to a Structured-Literacy Approach: My Journey as an Educator.”
References
Anderson, E. & Guthrie, J. T. (1999, April). Motivating children to gain conceptual knowledge from text: The combination of science observation and interesting texts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Canada.
Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2006). A Child Becomes a Reader: Birth through Preschool. Proven Ideas from Research for Parents. National Institute for Literacy.
Cervetti, G.N., & Hiebert, E.H. (2019). Knowledge at the Center of English Language Arts Instruction. The Reading Teacher, 72( 4), 499–507. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.1758
Cromley, J. G., & Azevedo, R. (2007). Testing and refining the direct and inferential mediation model of reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(2), 311–325.
Dreher, M. J. & Dromsky, A. (2000, December). Increasing the diversity of young children’s independent reading. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona.
Driver, R., Newton, P., & Osborne, J. (2000). Establishing the Norms of Scientific Argumentation in Classrooms. Science Education, 84, 287-312.
Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Strachan, S. L., & Billman, A. K. (2011). Essential elements of fostering and teaching reading comprehension. In S. Jay Samuels and Alan E. Farstrup (Eds.),What Research Has to Say About Reading Instruction (4th ed., pp. 286–314). International Reading Association.
Duke, N. K., Ward, A. E., & Pearson, P. D. (2021). The science of reading comprehension instruction. The Reading Teacher, 74(6), 663–672.
Duke, N. K. & Mesmer, H. A. E. (Winter 2018-2019) Phonics Faux Pas: Avoiding Instructional Missteps in Teaching Letter-Sound Relationships. American Educator, 42 (4), 12–16. Retrieved from www.aft.org/ae/ winter2018-2019/duke_mesmer
Hammond (2021). Liberatory Education: Integrating the science of learning and culturally responsive practice. American Federation of Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2021/hammond.
Hennessy, N. (2020). The Reading Comprehension Blueprint. Brookes Publishing.
Jeong, J., Gaffney, J.S., & Choi, J. (2010). Availability and use of informational texts in second-, third-, and fourth-grade classrooms. Research in the Teaching of English, 44(4), 435–456
Langer, J. (1984). Examining background knowledge and text comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 19(4), 468–481.
Long, S. A., Winograd, P. N., & Bridget, C. A. (1989). The effects of reader and text characteristics on imagery reported during and after reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 24(3), 353–372.
Ozuru, Y., Dempsey, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2009). Prior knowledge, reading skill, and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts. Learning and Instruction, 19(3), 228–242.
Pappas, C. C., Varelas, M., Barry, A., & Rife, A. (2002). Dialogic Inquiry around Information Texts: The Role of Intertextuality in Constructing Scientific Understandings in Urban Primary Classrooms. Linguistics and Education, 13(4), 435–482.
Sparks, R. L., Patton, J., & Murdoch, A. (2014). Early reading success and its relationship to reading achievement and reading volume: Replication of ‘10 years later’. Reading and Writing, 27(1), 189–211.
Stanovich, K. E., & Cunningham, A. E. (1993). Where does knowledge come from? Specific associations between print exposure and information acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85(2), 211.
Stevens, K. (1980). The effect of background knowledge on the reading comprehension of ninth graders. Journal of Reading Behavior, 12(2), 151–154.