language comprehension and presentation skills

language comprehension and presentation skills (URCE-5102)

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION AND PRESENTATION SKILLS

Introduction:

This course provides enhanced competency for language. This course would explain techniques and key fetures like phonemes, syllables, intonations, stress,and language comprehension skills for understanding and learning any language, especially English language. 

Objectives:

The course aims at developing linguistic competence by focusing on basic language skills in integration to make the use of language in context. The course objectives are to enhance student's language skill management capacity, comprehend text in context, respond to language in context and write structured responses.

Course Contents:

1. Listening skills

Recognizing phonemes.

Recognizing syllables.

Listening to small speech extracts.

Expressing opinions.

Oral synthesis of thoughts and ideas.

2. Pronunciation Skills

Pronouncing English Phonemes.

Recognizing phonemic symbols.

Practicing intonation patterns in simple sentences.

Conflict resolution through Panel Discussion.

3. Comprehension Skills

Reading Strategies

Critical Reading.

Comparing and Contrasting.

Drawing conclusion.

Self- Questioning.

Relating Background Knowledge.

Distinguishing between fact and opinion

Finding the main idea

Comprehending the text patterns

Investigating implied ideas in a text

Purpose and tone of the text.

4. Presentation skills.

1.  Listening process, function and competency  2nd edition by Worthington, D., and Fitcher- Hauser, M. 2018.

2.  The Complete Presentation Handbook.  Kogan Page Ltd, 2008. by Siddons, S.

Course Evaluation:

1. Midterm: 30 marks

2. Sessional: 20 marks

• Assignment  5 marks
• Tasks           10 marks
• Participation  3 marks
• Attendance    2 marks

Time Table:

Class (BS2 SS1)

 Wednesday 2:00 pm- 3:30 pm

Thursday 3:30 pm-5 pm

Class (BS2 SS2)

Thursday 2:00 pm-3:30 pm

Friday 3:30 pm-5:00 pm

Course Material

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• Total Lessons 18
• Department Mathematics
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Other Courses by Muhammad Maaroof Iqbal

• Introduction to English Literature (URCE-5104)
• Communication Skills I
• Academic Writing
• Interpersonal Skills
• Communication and presentation skills, ENGL-102

50 Essential Comprehension Skills

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

Comprehension skills refer to skills that help you to interpret and understand information. This can include comprehending written texts, multimodal texts (such as film), and language.

In basic education, we tend to use this term to refer to reading comprehension . The term is also extensively used in language learning to refer to language comprehension .

Separately, in media and literature studies, the term is often used to refer to a person’s ability to comprehend and infer underling meanings in cultural texts such as films and novels.

The Most Important Comprehension Skills

1. summarizing.

To summarize is to give a brief but accurate overview of a text. A strong summary will present the most important points about a text without going into unnecessary detail.

We often assess people’s comprehension by asking them to summarize a text using test methods like asking students to write a book report , give a 5-minute presentation, or give complete a close passage.

2. Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is akin to summarizing, but requires you to demonstrate your understanding of a text in your own words .

When I teach my students to paraphrase, I usually ask them to close the book then tell me what they read about. Simply by not directly reading then parroting the text, your brain regurgitates the information in your own language, not the original language of the text. In these situations, you can tell that someone has actually understood what they’ve read, not just repeated the words.

3. Drawing Conclusions

Drawing conclusions refers to the ability to evaluate a text. It’s considered a comprehension skill because you don’t just do a surface reading of the text, but also use the text to inform your beliefs and views.

When drawing conclusions, you might read a text and then, based on the information within the text, make a decision or evaluation about the information within the text. Take, for example, a person who reads an election pamphlet that summarizes the policies of two different candidates for mayor. Once reading the text, they make a decision and can justify their decision with reference to the text. Here, this person would have sufficiently comprehended the text to the point that they could draw a valid conclusion.

4. Sequencing Events

We can also assess someone’s comprehension by asking them to sequence events in chronological order.

Take, for example, a teacher who asks their students to explain the sequence of events in a film they watched in class. The students might have to come together and discuss what happened first, second, third. Throughout this task, the students are demonstrating their comprehension (and, likely, memory) skills.

5. Ranking Information

As an extension of sequencing, we could also order events not just chronologically but also in order of importance or any other ranking factor.

The benefit of ranking is that the person isn’t just trying to remember what they heard or read. They’re also analyzing it.

Take, for example, students in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class who are asked to listen to someone talking about their siblings. At the end of the talk, the students have to rank the siblings from oldest to youngest.

6. Recognizing Author Purpose

Identifying the author’s purpose involves deducing why the writer chose to create a particular text. Inherent in this is seeing if the author has biases or underlying intentions that you probably should know about.

This skill requires a deep understanding of the text, and often, you also need to know about different text genres.

You, as the reader, must identify whether the writer’s intention was to inform, persuade, entertain, or provoke thought.

Consider a high school English language arts class, where students are studying persuasive texts. The teacher assigns an article on climate change. Based on the language, arguments, and style of each article, the students determine the authors’ purposes were to persuade readers to take action against climate change.

This Skill is also Vital in Media Literacy

7. Interpreting Figurative Language

Interpreting figurative language requires understanding that the writer has intentionally deviated from the norms of literal language to enhance the text’s meaning, effect, or impact.

The figurative language that you’re looking for can include metaphors, similes, personification, irony, and symbolism.

For instance, in a literature class, students read the classic novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The title itself becomes a discussion point for interpreting figurative language, with students using context from the story to decode its symbolic meaning.

8. Identifying Cause and Effect

Identifying cause and effect refers to pinpointing actions or events (the causes) and the outcomes that occur as a result (the effects).

This can be a way of assessing comprehension. After someone has read, viewed, or listened to a text, we can ask them what caused what in the story they have read.

Let’s take an example. You’re reading a history book on World War II. By closely analyzing the events leading up to the war, you can infer that the effects of the Treaty of Versailles were instrumental causes of the conflict.

See Also: Cause and Effect Examples

9. Making Connections (Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text, Text-to-World)

Making connections involves relating the text to personal experiences, other texts, or broader world issues. This could be text-to-self, text-to-text, or text-to-world connections.

Consider a scenario where you’re reading a novel about a character dealing with the loss of a loved one. You remember your own experiences of grief, creating a text-to-self connection. In the process, you draw parallels between your feelings and those expressed by the character in the book.

If you can make connections between things outside of the text (‘the metatext’) and the text, then you can demonstrate your comprehension skills.

10. Identifying Key Themes

Understanding key themes entails recognizing the overarching messages or central topics that recur throughout a text. This skill allows you to extract more profound meaning and realize the author’s larger point.

For example, in an examination of the novel “Brave New World,” a student identifies the pervading themes of technology versus nature, the dehumanizing effects of conditioning, and the conflict between individuality and societal expectation. These insights deepen their understanding of the book and facilitate a more enriching discussion on the author’s viewpoint.

List of Additional Comprehension Skills

• Main Idea Identification
• Supporting Details Recognition
• Drawing Conclusions
• Making Inferences
• Predicting Outcomes
• Summarizing
• Paraphrasing
• Identifying Cause and Effect
• Comparing and Contrasting
• Sequencing Events
• Recognizing Author’s Purpose
• Distinguishing Fact from Opinion
• Understanding Chronology
• Recognizing Problem and Solution
• Identifying Themes and Lessons
• Making Connections (Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text, Text-to-World)
• Visualizing
• Determining Importance
• Recognizing Plot Elements
• Identifying Setting
• Recognizing Character Traits
• Understanding Point of View
• Interpreting Figurative Language
• Recognizing Literary Devices
• Analyzing Text Structure
• Decoding Vocabulary in Context
• Recognizing Tone and Mood
• Evaluating Arguments and Claims
• Synthesizing Information
• Asking Questions
• Recognizing Bias and Perspective
• Analyzing Dialogue
• Interpreting Symbols
• Recognizing Flashbacks and Foreshadowing
• Identifying Genre Characteristics
• Analyzing Author’s Craft
• Recognizing Irony
• Evaluating Evidence
• Understanding Text Features (e.g., headings, captions, etc.)
• Recognizing Rhetorical Devices
• Analyzing Multiple Texts
• Understanding Non-linear Texts
• Recognizing Satire and Parody
• Evaluating Credibility of Sources
• Recognizing Propaganda Techniques
• Interpreting Charts and Graphs
• Understanding Allusions
• Recognizing Archetypes
• Analyzing Poetry Structure
• Identifying the Moral or Message

Read Also: A List of Writing Skills

Comprehension skills stretch far beyond the simple act of reading. They involve understanding and interpreting texts, making connections, and extracting deeper meanings. Developing these skills can enhance your critical thinking , cognitive efficiency, and overall learning. Remember, the more you practice these skills, the more adept you’ll become at comprehending a broad range of texts and making the most out of your reading experiences.

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Number Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Word Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Outdoor Games for Kids
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 50 Incentives to Give to Students

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WHAT IS LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION?

Communication Awareness

• Communication awareness includes knowing (1) that spoken language has meaning and purpose, (2) that spoken words, the organization of the words, their intonation, loudness, and stress patterns, gestures, facial expression, proximity, and posture all contribute to meaning, (3) that context factors need to be taken into consideration in interpreting what people mean to communicate, (4) that it is easy to misinterpret another’s communication, and (5) that it often requires effort to correctly interpret another person’s intended meaning and that correct interpretation is worth the effort!

Hearing and Auditory Processing

• Understanding a spoken utterance assumes that the listener’s hearing is adequate and that the spoken sounds are correctly perceived as phonemes of English (or whatever language is spoken). Phonemes are the smallest units of spoken language that make a difference to meaning – corresponding roughly to the letters in a word (e.g., the sounds that ‘t’, ‘a’, and ‘n’ make in the word ‘tan’). Auditory processing of language also includes the ability to integrate the separate sounds of a word into the perception of a meaningful word and of sequences of meaningful words.

Word Knowledge and World Knowledge

• Word knowledge includes knowing the meaning of words (e.g., understanding them when they are spoken), including multiple meanings of ambiguous words. Knowing the meaning of a word is more than knowing what (if anything) that word refers to. Rather it is possession of a large set of meaning associations that comprise the word’s full meaning. For example knowing the meaning of the word “horse” includes knowing that horses are animals, that they engage in specific types of activities, that they have many uses, that they have specific parts, that they have a certain size, shape, and other attributes, that they are characteristically found in specific places, and the like. Understanding spoken language requires an adequate vocabulary, which is a critical component of the semantics of a language. Word meanings may be concrete (e.g., “ball” refers to round objects that bounce) or abstract (e.g., “justice” refers to fairness in the pursuit or distribution of various types of goods and services).
• World knowledge includes understanding the realities in the world – objects and their attributes, actions and their attributes, people, relationships, and the like – that words refer to and describe. For example, if a student has no knowledge of computers, then it is impossible to fully understand the word ‘computer’.

Knowledge of Word Organization

• Syntax (or grammar) refers to the rules that govern the organization of words in a sentence or utterance. Comprehending an utterance requires an ability to decipher the meaning implicit in the organization of words. For example, “Tom fed the dog” and “The dog fed Tom” have different meanings despite containing exactly the same words.
• Morphology (a component of grammar) refers to rules that govern meaning contained in the structure of the words themselves. Changes within words (e.g., adding an ‘s’ to ‘dog’ to get ‘dogs’, or adding an ‘ed’ to ‘kick’ to get ‘kicked’) affects meaning. Comprehending an utterance requires an ability to decipher the meaning associated with such modifications of the words.
• Just as there are rules that govern how speakers put words together in a sentence to communicate their intended meaning, there are also rules that govern how sentences (or thoughts) are organized to effectively tell stories, describe objects and people, give directions, explain complex concepts or events, influence people’s beliefs and actions, and the like. These are called rules of discourse . Effective comprehension of extended language (e.g., listening to a story or a lecture) assumes that the listener has some idea of what to listen for and in what order that information might come.

Social Knowledge and Pragmatics Pragmatics refers to the rules governing the use of language in context (including social context) for purposes of sending and receiving varied types of messages, maintaining a flow of conversation, and adhering to social rules that apply to specific contexts of interaction. On the comprehension side of communication, the first of these three types of rules is most critical. For example, comprehending the sentence, “I will do it” requires deciding whether the speaker intends to make a promise, a prediction, or a threat. Similarly “We’d love to have you over for dinner” could be an invitation, a statement of an abstract desire, or an empty social nicety. Or “Johnny, I see you’ve been working hard at cleaning your room” could be a description of hard work or a mother’s ironic criticism of Johnny for not working on his room. In each case, correct interpretation of the utterance requires consideration of context information, knowledge of the speaker, understanding of events that preceded the interaction, and general social knowledge. (See also the Tutorials on Social Competence ; Social Perception .) Indirect Meanings include metaphor (e.g., “He’s a real spitfire”), sarcasm and irony (e.g., “You look terrific” said to a person who appears to be very sick), idioms or other figures of speech (e.g., “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”), hyperbole (e.g., “The story I wrote is about a million pages long!”), and personification (e.g., “Careful! Not studying for a test can jump up and bite you!”). Comprehending indirect meanings often requires abstract thinking and consideration of context cues. Students with brain injury often have significant difficulty deciphering the meaning of such indirect communication unless the specific use of words was familiar before the injury. Understanding new metaphors, figures of speech and the like makes significant demands on cognitive processing (e.g., working memory, reasoning), discussed next. Cognitive Functions that Support Language Comprehension

• Attention: Comprehending spoken language requires the ability to focus attention simultaneously on the speaker’s words and nonverbal behavior (e.g., gesture, facial expression, body posture), to maintain that focus over time, to focus simultaneously on ones own response, and to flexibly shift attentional focus as topics change.
• Working Memory: Comprehending spoken language requires the ability to hold several pieces of information in mind at the same time, possibly including the words that the speaker just uttered, previous turns in the conversation, other information about the speaker, the topic, and the context, and the like.
• Speed of Processing: Because the units of spoken language arrive in rapid succession, comprehension requires the ability to process information quickly.
• Organization: Comprehending spoken language requires that the listener put together (i.e., organize) the various comments that the speaker makes, together with the listener’s own comments, background information, and the like. This assumes considerable organizational skill.
• Reasoning: Comprehending a speaker’s intended meaning is often a reasoning process. For example, if a speaker says, “I’m really busy today” and later in the conversation says, “I can’t come over to your house after school today,” the listener should be able to reason that the speaker is not being rude in rejecting an invitation, but rather is unable to come over because of his busy schedule.
• Abstract thinking ability: Comprehending abstract language, metaphors, figures of speech, and the like often requires a reasonable level of abstract thinking ability. (See Indirect Meanings, above.)
• Perspective Taking: Comprehending the intent underlying a speaker’s message critically relies on the ability to take that person’s perspective. For example, when a speaker says, “Don’t worry; it’s not a problem,” he just might intend to communicate that it is a huge problem! Correctly interpreting this message requires “mind reading” – getting inside the speaker’s frame of reference and understanding the issues and the words from that person’s perspective.
• Comprehension Monitoring and Strategic Behavior: Effective comprehension of spoken language requires routine monitoring of comprehension, detection of possible comprehension failures, a desire to fix breakdowns, and a strategic ability to repair the breakdown, for example by saying things like, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean; could you explain?”

In light of the wide variety of skills, knowledge, and dispositions that come together to support language comprehension, it is not surprising that language comprehension is a communication difficulty for many students, including many students with TBI. WHY IS LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION IMPORTANT FOR MANY STUDENTS AFTER TBI? Depending on age and location and severity of the brain injury, students with TBI can have varied profiles of strengths and weaknesses with components of language comprehension and language expression. Often, basic language knowledge and skills acquired before the injury, including word meanings, are recovered after the injury. However, children are commonly impaired in areas that are developing rapidly at the time of injury. For example, at ages 6, 7, and 8, children are learning vocabulary related to success in the classroom (e.g., the words that teachers use in giving instructions) and success in social life (e.g., the language of peer interaction, compliments, teasing, and the like). The transition into adolescence is similarly a time when new and abstract vocabulary and a new and complex social code are being learned. Therefore, an injury at those times may disrupt the process of learning and cause persisting problems with language comprehension in school and social life. More generally, students with TBI often have problems with memory and new learning, related to damage to the vulnerable hippocampus and also to the frontal lobes. (See Tutorials on Memory , Retrieval .) Therefore, students injured at a relatively young age may have difficulty learning new words, rules of grammar, rules for organizing discourse, and pragmatic/social rules typically learned at older ages. The student may appear increasingly delayed in these areas over time. This gap between language knowledge and developmental expectations may become increasingly obvious in adolescence. Adolescents are expected to comprehend increasingly abstract and academic language, and also to comprehend increasingly subtle social language and nonverbal cues. A student injured before adolescence or in the early adolescent years may have difficulty in these domains and may therefore require intensive teaching and considerable support to meet these later developmental expectations as effectively as possible. (See Tutorials on Concrete versus Abstract Thinking ; Social Perception , Social Competence .) Because procedural learning tends to be better preserved after TBI than declarative memory, learning rules of grammar is often less problematic than learning new and abstract word meanings, and considerably less problematic than succeeding in the discourse and social pragmatic domains. (See Tutorial on Memory .) Both discourse and social pragmatic competence presuppose effective organization, reasoning, social perception and cognition, and working memory. Each of these cognitive domains is vulnerable following TBI. Students with TBI also frequently have difficulties with other components of cognition and self-regulation that influence language comprehension. These include problems in the areas of attention, organization, reasoning, abstract thinking, perspective taking, and comprehension monitoring. (See Tutorials on Attention; Organization ; Concrete versus Abstract Thinking ; Egocentrism; Self-monitoring .) Each of these areas of difficulty is associated with damage to the vulnerable frontal lobes. It is also extremely common for students with TBI to process information slowly. Slow processing can be caused by damage to the structure that connects the two halves of the brain (i.e., the corpus callosum), to the long axons that connect nerve cells (neurons) and networks of neurons throughout the brain, or to the frontal lobes themselves. (See the Tutorial on Slow Processing .) Comprehending spoken language might not seem to be an organizational task, but consider what needs to be done to understand the following little story: “I went to a game yesterday with my dad. I caught a foul ball. I’m really happy to have the ball, but my hands still sting!” Understanding this story requires bringing to bear some background understanding of baseball. It also requires perceiving the relations among the sentences. For example the happiness and pain referred to in the third sentence relate to catching the ball referred to in the second sentence. Language comprehension is an ongoing process of “making connections” of this sort, connecting ideas to one another as the speaker expresses them and also to background knowledge of the world. Making these connections is difficult for students with organizational, memory, and reasoning impairments, common after TBI. (See Tutorials on Organization ; Memory .) Difficulty with the social aspects of language and language pragmatics, for effective expression and comprehension alike, is also common after TBI. In some cases this is due to the fact that the child was injured at a young age and may not have matured sufficiently to engage in effective social interaction with peers later in development. In other cases, difficulty with the social and pragmatic aspects of language is a direct result of damage to parts of the brain that facilitate processing of social information. Damage to vulnerable prefrontal areas, in association with the amygdala, parietal lobes, insula, anterior cingulate gyrus, and basal ganglia (possibly right hemisphere more than left) results in difficulty interpreting the emotional states of others and “reading” the non-literal aspects of their communication. (See Tutorials on Social Perception ; Social Competence ; Cognitive Egocentrism/Theory of Mind .) WHAT ARE THE MAIN FEATURES OF INTERVENTION AND SUPPORT THAT ARE IMPORTANT FOR STUDENTS WITH LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS AFTER TBI? Understanding the Problem As always, step one in helping students with complex disability is understanding the problem. For example, difficulty with comprehension of language could be a consequence of weakness in any of the domains (outlined above) that contribute to successful comprehension. The problem exploration steps on this web site should help staff and family identify the factors associated with the student’s difficulties. Intervention and support can then be targeted to the set of problems known to contribute to the student’s difficulty with language comprehension Environmental Compensations Students with language comprehension problems should receive some combination of the intervention strategies outlined later in this tutorial to improve their comprehension. However, there are also compensatory environmental procedures or accommodations that might be useful in addition to more direct teaching strategies. Understanding: Parents, teachers, other relevant adults, and possibly even peers should understand the nature of the student’s language comprehension weakness so that they will be in a position to make appropriate adjustments as they speak to the student, without speaking in a condescending or infantilizing manner. Adjustments in the rate of speech: For students who process information (including language) slowly, adjustments should be made. This does not mean speaking each word slowly in a drone-like manner. Rather it means speaking clearly and allowing greater than normal pause time (processing time) between meaningful units of information (phrases or short sentences). However, for students with a significantly reduced attention span, slowing the rate of speech input may be counter-productive; the student’s attention may be lost. Lengthy instructions should be accompanied by simple written instructions or possibly picture cues to which the student can refer when necessary (assuming adequate reading ability for written instructions). If lecture notes are available in advance, the student can be “primed” for the content of the lecture in order to comprehend more effectively. Adjustments in the amount of speech: For students who process information slowly or have difficulty organizing information, reasonable limits should be placed on the amount of information given at one time. After a few units of information, it may be useful to have the student summarize what she has understood of the information already given. Then the speaker can proceed. Lengthy instructions should be broken into parts and also accompanied by simple written instructions that the student can refer to when needed (assuming adequate reading ability), or pictured instructions. High school or college students who are required to take lecture courses may need condensed versions of the lectures – organized summaries – in written form or notes taken by an assistant teacher. Adjustments in the abstractness of language: For students who are concrete thinkers and who have difficulty processing abstract meanings and abstract or indirect forms of language (e.g., metaphor, sarcasm), reasonable adjustments should be made. This does not mean eliminating abstract and indirect language from the speech directed to the student. Rather it means some combination of the following adjustments: (1) Use metaphors and figures of speech that you know the student understands, or accompany an unfamiliar metaphor or figure of speech with a simple embedded explanation (e.g., “John, you’re going to fall flat on your face if you don’t study... you know what I mean... you’ll fail and then be very unhappy”). (2) Similarly, words with abstract meanings should be accompanied by simple definitions built into the speech directed to the student (e.g., “The judicial branch of government is responsible for interpreting the laws, that is, judges and courts must decide exactly what a law means and whether a person or organization has broken the law”). Supports for understanding social interaction: As explained in the tutorial on Social Perception, students who have difficulty understanding the intent of a speaker’s message may need to have that intent made explicit. For example, a communication partner may need to say “Let me tell you a joke...” rather than just telling the joke; or the communication partner may routinely add “Just kidding” after a tease rather than leaving it up to the student with social perception impairment to figure out that it is teasing. In these and other ways, communication partners can make their mental states known to the student with social perception and comprehension deficits. Visual supports: Visual supports are useful for students with impaired comprehension of spoken language. These supports can range from visual schedules and ample gestural support for young students to written instructions and lecture summaries for older students. Some experimentation may be required to determine the appropriate mix of spoken language and visual supports. Instructional Procedures Teaching Word Knowledge and World Knowledge Critical to comprehending the language that one hears is an understanding of the words that are spoken and at least a general understanding of the topics included in that language directed to the child. Students with TBI often retain their word knowledge (vocabulary) and general knowledge of the world acquired before the injury. Knowledge of this sort is stored in posterior brain regions, which are not especially vulnerable in TBI (closed head injury). However, because of problems with new learning, the student may fall progressively further behind in vocabulary knowledge and world knowledge over the years after the injury. Therefore attention to both types of knowledge may be a component of the student’s comprehensive language and reading comprehension programs. What follows are some common suggestions regarding vocabulary acquisition and acquisition of world knowledge. Vocabulary Practice: Words from the Curriculum: Given the many thousands of words that exist in any language, teaching vocabulary can seem to be a daunting task. For example, during the preschool years, typically developing children learn on average 8 to 10 words per day! The most reasonable way to simplify and organize the task of teaching vocabulary is to select words from the student’s academic and social curricula. Thus the words to be focused on by teachers, speech-language pathologists, special educators, and parents should be words that the student needs to learn in order to comprehend the language used in the classroom, on the playground, and at home. These include words that teachers use in giving instructions, words that peers use in play and other social interaction, and words from reading books and from science, social studies, and other content classes. Teaching the meaning of a word includes exploring the many associations that comprise the word’s meaning. (See below for principles of vocabulary teaching.) In the case of a noun, for example, it is not sufficient for the student to point to a picture of the item when named. She should know what category the item falls into, what it does (if anything), what it is used for, what parts it has, what features it has, what it is made of, where it is commonly found, and other common associations. This broad and deep understanding is true knowledge of a word’s meaning. Thus teachers and therapists should teach word meaning in this organized associative manner. Furthermore, context is important in the teaching. Students should have exposure to a variety of contexts in which the word can be used, especially contexts relevant to the classroom curriculum. Parents can use and explore targeted words and their meanings during dinner time, car time, and other relaxed conversational times. Teaching word meaning at home need not be a boring “school-like” activity, but rather conversational use and exploration of the word, using language at the student’s level of comprehension and connected as much as possible to the student’s interests. Home-school communication should include lists of words that are currently focused on in school. However, these lists should not be so long that the student and family are overwhelmed! In addition, the more students read, the faster their vocabularies grow. Therefore there is a strong rationale for encouraging students to read as much as they can. Homes should have interesting and engaging reading materials at an appropriate reading level for the student. For example, topically interesting magazines are available at many reading levels, including sports, current events, and popular culture magazines. And students should be encouraged to request a definition when they encounter words they do not understand. World Knowledge: Themes from the Curriculum: Given the infinite extent of possible knowledge of things, places, events, and people in the world, teaching world knowledge is a genuinely daunting task. Again, the most reasonable way to simplify and organize the task is to select themes from the student’s academic curriculum. General education teachers, special educators, therapists, and parents can focus on and discuss themes and issues that are found in reading texts or in the student’s content classes. As in the case of word meanings, parents can help the child acquire relevant world knowledge by knowing what is being taught at school and then weaving those curricular themes into dinner time, car time, and other relaxed conversations. In addition, discussion of daily events presented in the newspaper or on TV can help the student broaden her horizons and learn about events occurring in the world. Furthermore, the more the student reads, the more she learns about the world; therefore fun reading beyond school assignments should be encouraged. Principles of Vocabulary Instruction: The following eight principles of vocabulary instruction are paraphrases of principles of vocabulary instruction published by Roth (2002). These principles capture the best evidence-based practices known to language specialists at that time for teaching vocabulary to children who have language-learning difficulties, regardless of the cause of that difficulty. However, it may be that effectiveness of specific vocabulary teaching procedures is more dependent on the student’s age, nature of the impairment, and specific vocabulary objectives than this general list of procedures suggests. Principle 1: Teach organized systems of word associations (i.e., semantic knowledge). Common word associations for a noun include what category the item falls into, what it does (if anything), what it is used for, what parts it has, what features it has, what it is made of, where it is commonly found, and other common associations. (See the Tutorial on Graphic Organizers for a description of an organizer used in teaching word meanings.) Principle 2: Teach the student word-learning strategies. For a young student, this may mean asking “What’s that?” when encountering something unfamiliar. For a somewhat older student, this may mean getting into the habit of asking “What does _____ mean?” when encountering an unfamiliar word. For an older student, routine use of a dictionary should be added to these strategies. Principle 3: Teaching vocabulary should include direct and explicit instruction as well as everyday incidental word learning. Principle 4: Teaching vocabulary should involve relevant context associations and active child engagement with the to-be-learned meanings. A variety of activities and examples of the meaning should be included in the teaching. Principle 5: Students need to learn the meanings of both common (high frequency) words and rare (low frequency) words. Principle 6: Students need to learn both core definitions and also relevant context information. For example, when learning that “weird” means strange or unconventional, a student should also learn that it is offensive to apply the word to people. Principle 7: To fully understand a word’s meaning, students should be given both examples and non-examples of that word’s meaning. For example, to understand the meaning of “red”, students should know what shades of color are called red and what shades are not called red; similarly, to understand the meaning of “legislative responsibilities”, students should know what the legislative branch of government is responsible for (e.g., writing laws), but also what it is not responsible for (e.g., interpreting the laws and determining their constitutionality). Principle 8: Students typically learn most efficiently from a multidimensional approach, appealing to all of their senses and to their activity as they learn the word’s meaning. For example color words can be learned while finger painting; words related to government functions can be learned while having mock legislative and judicial sessions.

Roth also offers additional teaching suggestions: (1) Use adult-child shared book reading as a context for teaching vocabulary; (2) Incorporate new vocabulary into stories to heighten comprehension; (3) Use graphic organizers to facilitate comprehension; (4) With young children, focus on the physical action dimensions of meaning.

Improving Listening Comprehension By Teaching Strategies

The Tutorial on Reading Comprehension lists a number of strategies that students can use to improve their understanding of what they read. Some of these strategies can also be used by well selected students to improve their listening comprehension. However, teachers and clinicians should exercise caution in attempting to teach any of these listening comprehension strategies to students with restricted space in working memory. Thinking about strategies or using strategies may distract the student with brain injury, causing a reduction rather than an improvement in comprehension. Furthermore, some of the strategies, like requesting clarification, may be resisted by students who understandably do not want to call attention to their disability. Sensitive counseling may be a necessary component of this strategy instruction.

With these qualifications as background, listening comprehension strategies include:

• Clarifying the topic or theme in what the communication partner is saying. This is analogous to the reading comprehension strategy of doing a “book walk” or in other ways orienting to the topic before reading.
• Summarizing – out loud or silently – the main points in what the person is saying. This is analogous to the summarizing strategy in reading comprehension.
• Elaborating – out loud or silently – on what the person is saying. This is analogous to the elaboration or self-questioning strategy in reading comprehension.
• Creating a visual image to associate with the main point made by the person. This is analogous to the visual imagery strategy in reading comprehension.
• Requesting repetition or clarification of what the other person has said. This is analogous to the reading comprehension strategy of re-reading a passage or requesting help.
• Making a judgment about the meaningfulness or value of what the person has said. This is analogous to the parallel strategy in reading comprehension.

Teaching Rules of Grammar

In most cases of pediatric TBI, grammar is less problematic than vocabulary or the social/pragmatic domains of language. However, a child with TBI may also have a congenital language-learning disorder, or may be one of the few with specific language impairment (or aphasia) caused by the injury. Therefore we include in this tutorial the following principles of grammar instruction.

Principles of Grammar Instruction: The following ten principles of grammar instruction are paraphrases of principles published by Fey, Long, and Finestack (2003). These principles capture the best evidence-based practices known to language specialists at that time for teaching grammar to children who have language-learning difficulties, regardless of the cause of that difficulty. However, it may be that effectiveness of specific grammar teaching procedures is more dependent on the student’s age, nature of the impairment, and specific grammatical objectives than this general list of procedures suggests.

Principle 1: Make sure that the grammar being taught serves a communication purpose (e.g., in story telling, giving a description, and the like). Principle 2: Do not focus teaching sessions only on grammar. Principle 3: Choose a class of grammatical forms (e.g., past tense, rather than highly specific words) and ensure that there is environmental support for the meaning of the component of grammar being taught. For example, in teaching past tense, there should be meaningful conversation about events that took place in the past. Principle 4: Choose developmentally appropriate forms of grammar. This requires consultation with a speech-language pathologist who knows in what developmental order children typically acquire aspects of grammar. Principle 5: Create many natural opportunities throughout the day for supported practice. Principle 6: Use varied linguistic contexts for practice of grammar, including conversation, descriptions, and stories (spoken and written). Principle 7: Make the target aspect of grammar salient and meaningful. For example, in teaching helping verbs, create an argument like the following: “He is running” ... “No he isn’t” ... “Yes he is” ... “No he isn’t” and so on. Principle 8: Make sure that relevant adults know how to use systematic recast procedures . For example, if the child says, “He goed to school”, the adult follows that utterance by saying, “He went to school”. Principle 9: All adults should use grammatical language models , not “baby talk” or telegraphed models. Furthermore, relevant adults should know what specifically the child is working on so they can make a point of modeling those aspects of grammar. Principle 10: Adults should use the traditional “You say what I say” imitation procedure sparingly . That is, avoid over-use of the following teaching procedure, “John, say after me, ‘He kicked the ball’ ... John imitates ... the adult says “Good job! He kicked the ball.” And when this imitation procedures is used, it should be supplemented by more natural language teaching procedures.

EVIDENCE REGARDING INTERVENTION FOR CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE DISORDERS

This summary of evidence is written for teachers and others who may be required to support their intervention practices with evidence from the research literature or who may simply be curious about the state of the evidence. This summary was written in early 2008. Evidence continues to accumulate.

A search of the literature revealed no studies of the effectiveness of language intervention for students with a diagnosis of TBI, other than those that focus on the behavioral dimensions of language. The summaries of vocabulary and grammar teaching procedures presented earlier (Fey et al., 2003; Roth, 2002) are taken from general reviews of state-of-the-art professional practice, not based on systematic reviews of the experimental literature. Therefore these summaries represent a useful point of departure in choosing teaching procedures, but they cannot be considered evidence reviews.

Specific evidence supporting language intervention for students with TBI can, therefore, only be drawn – with great caution – from studies of other populations of students. Cirrin and Gillam (2008) identified 21 studies of language intervention for school-age children with primary spoken language disorders (versus disorders of reading and writing, and disorders of language secondary to other disabilities) published since 1985. Each study met high standards of experimental rigor. No studies of middle and high school students were found. Six studies focused on vocabulary, three on grammar, five on phonological awareness and metalinguistics, five on general language processing, and two on pragmatics. Effect sizes were moderate to high for the majority of studies. Therefore the authors conclude that there is an unfortunately small but solid body of evidence for language intervention for elementary-age students with primary language disorders.

Jitendra and colleagues (2004) systematically reviewed the evidence supporting specific procedures for teaching reading vocabulary to students with learning disabilities, grades 4 through 12. They found 19 articles that included 27 separate experimental studies. The following vocabulary teaching procedures were supported by experimental evidence: cognitive strategy instruction (e.g., semantic feature analysis), visual imagery, direct instruction, error-free learning (i.e., gradually increasing the time delay between presenting the word and requesting a definition)(only one study), and activity-based methods (only one study). Computer-assisted instruction yielded mixed results. The respected evidence review of the National Reading Panel (2000) summarized the results of a large number of successful experimental studies that support the use of explicit instruction in teaching both reading vocabulary and comprehension, with a focus on strategy intervention in the case of comprehension.

Other reviews of language intervention for specific populations of students with disability include Goldstein (2002, autism), and Sigafoos and Drasgow (2003, developmental disabilities). The Goldstein review is relevant in that it identified many successful experimental studies in which the social dimensions of language were targeted or positive communication alternatives to negative behavior were taught. Although there are differences in central tendencies between autism and TBI, those two dimensions of communication intervention are also important for many students with TBI. The systematic evidence review of Ylvisaker and colleagues (2007) summarized several studies in which social language and positive communication alternatives were successfully taught to children and adults with TBI.

Cirrin, F.M., & Gillam, R.B. (2008). Language intervention practices for school-age children with spoken language disorders: A systematic review. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in the Schools , 39, S110-S137.

Fey, M., Long, S.H., & Finestack, L.H. (2003). Ten principles of grammar facilitation for children with specific language impairments. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology , 12, 3-15.

Goldstein, H. (2002). Communication intervention for children with autism: A review of treatment efficacy. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders , 32(5), 373-396.

Jitendra, A., Edwards, L., Sacks, G., & Jacobson, L. (2004). What research says about vocabulary instruction for students with learning disabilities. Exceptional Children , 70(3), 299-322.

National Reading Panel (NRP) (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: national Institute of Child Health and Human Development and U.S. Department of Education.

Roth, F.P. (2002). Vocabulary instruction for young children with language impairments. Asha Division 1 (Language Learning and Education) Newsletter, October 2002.

Sigafoos, J. & Drasgow, E. (2003). Empirically validated strategies, evidence-based practice and basic principles in communication intervention for learners with developmental disabilities. Perspectives in Augmentative and Alternative Communication , 12, 7-10.

Ylvisaker, M., Turkstra, L., Coehlo, C., Yorkston, K., Kennedy, M., Sohlberg, M., & Avery, J. (2007). Behavioral interventions for individuals with behavior disorders after TBI: A systematic review of the evidence. Brain Injury , 21(8), 769-805.

Written by Mark Ylvisaker, Ph.D.

Last revised: April 2008

LEAR Net A program of the Brain Injury Association of New York State, and funded by the Developmental Disabilities Planning Council.

Copyright 2006, by The Brain Injury Association of New York State 10 Colvin Avenue, Albany, NY 12206 - Phone: (518) 459-7911 - Fax: (518) 482-5285

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4. Language Comprehension Ability: One of Two Essential Components of Reading Comprehension

Maria S. Murray

After a brief commentary on the overall importance of knowledge to language comprehension ability, learning, and memory, this chapter then goes on to describe in more detail the elements that contribute to language comprehension. Language comprehension is one of the two essential components for learning to read in the Simple View of Reading. The other is word recognition, which was covered in Chapter 3 . Similar to the previous chapter that emphasized word recognition, this chapter presents the skills, elements, and components of language comprehension using the framework of the Simple View of Reading. The Simple View is a representative model explaining that during reading both word recognition and language comprehension coordinate to produce skillful reading comprehension, and it also portrays the many elements that combine to build each component. Each element that ultimately contributes to strategic language comprehension is described, and an explanation of its importance along with suggested instructional activities is provided.

Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, readers will be able to

• discuss the importance of knowledge for language comprehension, learning, and memory;
• explain the underlying elements of language comprehension;
• identify instructional activities to provide and activate background knowledge, teach vocabulary, and teach language structures;
• discuss how the underlying elements of language comprehension contribute to successful reading comprehension.

Introduction

As noted in the previous chapter on word recognition’s contribution to reading comprehension, the Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) is a research-supported model of the reading process. It portrays skillful reading comprehension as a combination of two separate but equally important components—word recognition skills and language comprehension ability. In other words, to unlock comprehension of printed text (as opposed to other modes such as visual or audio that would not require a person to aim for reading comprehension), two keys are required: the ability to read the words on the page and the ability to understand the meaning of the words (Davis, 2006). The previous chapter ( Chapter 3 ) discussed the importance of improving word recognition and methods for doing so. This chapter will cover the other essential component of successful reading comprehension—language comprehension. As you will see, the elements required for language comprehension are all related to gaining meaning from what is being read.

The two essential components of the Simple View of Reading are represented by an illustration created by Scarborough (2002). In her illustration, seen in Figure 1, the two necessary braids that contribute to reading comprehension are themselves comprised of underlying skills and strands. Because the Simple View of Reading represents the progression toward proficient reading comprehension as requiring two components, it is termed “simple.” In actuality, each of the components is complex due to its underlying elements. In the case of language comprehension discussed in this chapter, students need to steadily accumulate a fundamental base of background knowledge, vocabulary, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge (see below for definitions and explanations of each), and the ability to strategically apply these elements during reading to comprehend texts. To apply strategically means that during the reading of text, readers must continually monitor how well they comprehend its meaning, and bring forth any knowledge they have about the topic, words, sayings, and more. This process is called “metacognition,” or thinking about thinking. After a brief commentary about language comprehension below, the importance of overall knowledge for three elements that lead to the strategic, metacognitive application of the skills and elements in the service of language comprehension will be presented, and instructional methods for each will be provided.

Language Comprehension and Its Connections to Knowledge

Davis (2006) wrote that “even the best phonics-based skills program will not transform a child into a strong reader if the child has limited knowledge of the language, impoverished vocabulary, and little knowledge of key subjects” (p. 15). Language comprehension consists of three elements that must be taught so that students apply them strategically (as opposed to automatically) during reading. As students interpret the meaning of texts, they must strategically apply their background knowledge, their knowledge of the vocabulary, and their understanding of the language structures that exist between words and within sentences.

First consider how reading comprehension is typically developed. Remember that in this textbook (see Chapter 1 ), reading comprehension includes “the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language” (Snow, 2002, xiii), as well as the “capacities, abilities, knowledge, and experiences” one brings to the reading situation (p. 11). In line with the first part of this definition, it is expected that once children have been taught sounds and letters, how to blend them together to decode so that they read text fluently, along with lessons in vocabulary, they will be on the way to successful reading comprehension. Reading instruction in schools focuses so heavily on developing reading comprehension because this ability is the ultimate goal of reading.

A surface skim through the teachers manuals from published reading programs will reveal that a multitude of comprehension skills and their corresponding strategies are often taught at each grade level (e.g., finding main idea, summarizing, using graphic organizers), but ultimately these skills and strategies do not necessarily transition students to successfully comprehending texts. Reading comprehension ability is complex and multifaceted; it is comprised of understanding a text’s vocabulary, knowledge of the particular topic, and comprehension of its language structures (see Cain & Oakhill, 2007). Recall from Chapter 1 that language comprehension includes the interaction among someone’s background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures like grammar, verbal reasoning abilities, and literary knowledge (e.g., genres). Language comprehension is a more general term than listening comprehension, which is the ability to understand and make sense of spoken language.

One of the many aspects of reading comprehension that is often overlooked during instruction is students’ language comprehension. For example, a student who has general difficulty with reading comprehension, may, in actuality, comprehend a text about sharks or reefs quite well if his/her parents are marine biologists because he or she has accumulated experiences with ocean-related “language”—its words, phrases, and facts. This same student may not comprehend the next text about ham radio operation or the Appalachian Trail. Successful reading comprehension, then, often depends on the language of a text because the more familiarity and knowledge students have with its language, the stronger comprehension will be. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds often struggle with reading comprehension, despite being able to decode accurately and read fluently. They are often believed to have poor reading comprehension ability when in actuality the snag is a lack of language comprehension stemming from less overall knowledge which in turn stems from fewer experiences aligning with the language encountered in school and school texts. Reading comprehension strategy instruction, which involves teaching children how to comprehend or remember written text using deliberate mental actions, entails instruction in questioning, visualization, and summarizing, for example. However, teaching children how to apply such strategies during reading simply cannot replace a lack of knowledge.

Not surprisingly, in the earliest grades, an important facilitator of reading comprehension is automatic word recognition (see Chapter 3 ), since comprehension of a text cannot take place if its words cannot be read or recognized. However, once students become more competent at word recognition, the dominant factor driving reading comprehension transforms to become language comprehension (Foorman, Francis, Shaywitz, Shaywitz, & Fletcher, 1997). The reason for this boils down to one word—knowledge. Once students can read the words, they extract meaning from texts using their overall knowledge and experiences (background knowledge), their knowledge of words (vocabulary), and their knowledge of how words go together to create meaning (language comprehension). This accumulation of knowledge can last a lifetime and really never be considered “finished.” In fact, knowledge is so important to consider, that a brief commentary on its contribution to reading comprehension is next, before going on to discuss the three elements in Scarborough’s (2002) braid that lead to language comprehension, and ultimately reading comprehension.

Subtle differences exist between the terms “knowledge” and “background knowledge.” In this chapter, “knowledge” is broadly defined as the total accumulation of facts and information a person has gained from previous experiences (it is also called general knowledge). Knowledge is composed of concepts, ideas and factual information, which eventually come together to contribute to understanding in various situations. One does need facts and concepts and ideas to perform a procedure (e.g., putting historical events on a timeline, editing a paper for mechanical errors, reading a map), but they are even more vital when partaking in situations or conditions that require synthesizing a lot of information (e.g., write a comprehensive essay on a topic, comprehend an author’s message while reading a book) (Marzano & Kendall, 2007). “Background knowledge,” on the other hand, is a term used in education for a specific subset of knowledge needed to comprehend a particular situation, lesson, or text (it is also called “prior knowledge”). When reading a text about dog training, readers are going to use their background (prior) knowledge of dog behavior, vocabulary related to dogs, aspects of training, and so on, to comprehend text. They will not need to apply any of their knowledge of outer space, photosynthesis, or baking (any of their general, overall knowledge) in this particular instance. It is not possible for educators to teach the required background knowledge for every text that students will encounter as they progress through their school years. They can, however, provide the next best thing—a wide base of general knowledge that can be drawn upon and applied as background knowledge to problem solve and create meaning.

General knowledge comes from years of exposure to books, newspapers, knowledge-rich school curricula, television programs, experiences, and conversations. Its value cannot be understated. Willingham (2006) summarizes the findings in cognitive science regarding the significance of knowledge in education this way:

Those with a rich base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more—the rich get richer. In addition, factual knowledge enhances cognitive processes like problem solving and reasoning. The richer the knowledge base, the more smoothly and effectively these cognitive processes—the very ones that teachers target—operate. So, the more knowledge students accumulate, the smarter they become. (p. 30)

Both the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, 2013) and the National Research Council’s Committee on Defining Deeper Learning and 21st Century Skills (NRC; 2012) call for an increase in rigorous content knowledge in order for today’s students to achieve college, career, and citizenship readiness. According to the CCSSO (2013), students must also be able to demonstrate “their ability to apply that knowledge through higher-order skills including but not limited to critical thinking and complex problem solving, working collaboratively, communicating effectively, and learning how to learn” (p. 6).

Difficulties comprehending complex texts encountered in college and careers have been attributed to a lack of general knowledge. To illustrate this difficulty, Schweizer (2009), a professor who taught freshman composition classes at Duke University, wrote about an eye-opening incident he experienced during his classes. After assigning both his remedial and advanced classes a four-page article on climate change from a popular college-level anthology of essays (see McKibben, 2006), he realized his students’ comprehension of the essay was “flat, anemic, and literal rather than deep, rich, and associative” (p. 53). Upon questioning his students on the general knowledge items within the text—general facts, figures, locations, words, and common expressions—he reached a sobering conclusion. In the remedial class, just one student could identify Gandhi, none knew Ernest Hemingway, and two knew that Job was a character in the Bible. In the more advanced class, four out of 15 students recognized Gandhi or Hemingway, none knew the word “quixotic,” and few could comprehend certain expressions within the text (e.g., “something is in the offing”) or its allusions (e.g., “the snows of Kilimanjaro are set to become the rocks of Kilimanjaro”). Reflecting on the literacy-related consequences of this lack of word and world knowledge, Schweizer noted that his students were “not only hampered by a lack of factual knowledge, but that this shortcoming translates into problems with diction and literacy as well” (p. 52). Interestingly, to have comprehended this paragraph alone, you need to be familiar with and comprehend the importance and meaning of these words and phrases: Duke University , attributed , “ eye-opening incident ,” remedial , anthology , “ sobering conclusion ,” and allusions . A lack of language comprehension related to these words will hamper your reading comprehension indeed!

Background Knowledge

One of the three elements necessary for language comprehension is background knowledge. As mentioned above, background knowledge is a particular subset of knowledge (e.g., facts about the world, events, people, sayings and phrases) that is needed to comprehend and learn from a particular situation, lesson, or text. Young readers learn to strategically apply their background knowledge in order to interpret a text’s meaning. As a small example, consider the following sentence: “Initially Richard was upset when police told him they found bugs in his office, but to avoid prosecution he agreed to let them remain until the investigation was completed.” To comprehend this sentence either in isolation or within the context of an entire text, one will need to have learned that “bugs” are spying devices, to understand that people might get upset when they discover they are being spied on, and to infer that Richard has created an arrangement of cooperation with the police. Without background knowledge, the author’s intended meaning may be misconstrued as having to do with insects.

Why background knowledge is important

Knowledge leads to more knowledge, making learning easier (Willingham, 2006). Consider another example in which students read a story about a boy who is angry that he was not selected to play on the football team. The boy insists, “I really didn’t want to play football anyway!” His mother responds, “Sounds like a case of sour grapes to me!” Students familiar with the Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Grapes” will understand the reference to “sour grapes” in this particular story and in all subsequent texts, and they will be able to interpret the subtle nuances of resentment that comes about after rejection. A student with no exposure to the fable may believe that the boy really did not want to play football and will not understand why the mother is talking about grapes. Meaning will be incomplete. Background knowledge allows readers to strategically infer the author’s meaning with a lot less effort. Drawing inferences from a text is so much easier when a reader is already familiar with what the author is talking about.

Willingham (2006) summarized some of the findings in cognitive science regarding how background knowledge helps students comprehend what they read and remember what they have learned. Most obvious, and as seen in the sour grapes example, background knowledge of a text makes it so that fewer instances are necessary of having to stop or reread for clarification. The author’s point is comprehended right away. Less obvious, background knowledge allows readers to arrange sequences of events in texts into connected, meaningful units or sequences that can be more easily analyzed, understood, and remembered. Without background knowledge, words and sentences in a text easily become disjointed, unrelated, random sequences. For instance, imagine a passenger in a small plane who has no background knowledge of mechanics or technical things. This passenger is asked by the pilot to read off the items from preflight checklists. Due to lack of background in technical things, the items seem arbitrary and unrelated. Dozens of unfamiliar words and terms are essentially meaningless (e.g., throttle 2000 RPM, magnetos max drop 175 RPM, press-to-test annunciator panel, electric fuel pump off, fuel pressure check), and if asked after the flight, it is unlikely that the passenger would be able to remember them. Conversely, if the next traveler possesses background knowledge related to how mechanical things work and is asked to read the same checklists, his or her comprehension and recall would be greater because the items on the list would be familiar and meaningful. It would be understood that some of the items were related to engine speed, while others had to do with the fuel system and they would be retained in memory because this passenger would assign them to meaningful categories and sequences. The background knowledge of the second passenger would not only create better comprehension of the experience, it would also enable greater storage and recall of most of the events. The second passenger would have learned more and would have remembered more.

A similar phenomenon related to how meaningful categories (or “chunks”) are related to memory and learning is the frequently cited experiments of DeGroot (1946/1978) and Chase and Simon (1973). Differences in background knowledge (via the experiences) between master and novice chess players were examined in both studies, as well as how this knowledge influenced their memories. Chess masters who had experienced thousands of chess matches, and thus, had more background knowledge were pitted against novices in a simple experiment. For just a few seconds, chess masters and novices were shown pictures of chessboards in which the pieces were configured in positions from advanced level matches. The pictured pieces were not arranged on the boards randomly; their positions were realistic. After momentarily viewing the pictures, players reconstructed the positions of each piece using a real board. Masters recreated the positions almost perfectly, while the novices placed about half of the pieces successfully. The accuracy of recall was attributed to the masters’ ability to categorize and chunk information, or, in the case of chess, to chunk together multiple, meaningful groups of pieces. The novices could only memorize positions of single pieces, whereas the masters memorized positions of sets of pieces that made sense to them in terms of familiar play-structures. They had background knowledge of similar set-ups.

A video recreating this experiment with chess grandmaster Patrick Wolff (Simons, 2012) reveals his strategy in recreating the board placements. Wolff states that he noticed where the pieces clustered and that he noted the logical connections between the pieces. He recognized the meaningful chunks. In a book about how practice and effort contribute to talent, Colvin (2008) comments on chess player experiments, noting that, “instead of seeing twenty-five pieces, they may see just five or six groups of pieces” (p. 100). In any realm, meaningful chunks can only be formed by those having the knowledge and background experiences to understand what belongs with what. In the case of chess players, certain pieces defend others in strategically particular positions. For skilled readers, certain letters chunk together within long words, enabling them to be read rapidly and accurately, and certain words and ideas chunk together meaningfully, enabling comprehension of an author’s message. An example of how words and ideas chunk together meaningfully to aid reading comprehension is provided by Meurer (1991), who wrote about reading schemata. Reading schemata are patterns that organize knowledge in our minds while we read. Meurer explained that readers have schema for various concepts, such as when something “breaks.” Along with this understanding, they may possess subcomponents and ideas having to do with “breaks”: items that can be broken, ways that things can cause things to be broken, and what it means for something to be broken, just to name a few. He then provided an example of a sentence: “The karate champion broke the cinder block.” The author of that sentence does not explicitly tell the reader what the champion used to break the cinder block. It is the reader’s schema for “break” and “karate champion” that allows him or her to successfully infer that what broke the cinder block was not a hammer or a chisel, but the karate champion’s hand. Without the ability to automatically chunk together and activate various words and ideas, reading comprehension will suffer.

In any field, setting, or circumstance, new material that has familiarity is more readily learned because it is easier to understand and because it is supported by and connected meaningfully to what is already known. The beauty and value of background knowledge is that it provides the familiarity that is crucial for connections that both create new learning and allow for the new learning to be remembered.

Background knowledge instruction

As educators, we cannot teach the “big umbrella” of background knowledge since it evolves from a multitude of life experiences. However, we can provide it or activate it, and suggestions for both are described below.

Providing background knowledge

Meaningful contexts from a content-rich curriculum spanning a wide variety of content areas are ideal for providing the background knowledge that will scaffold future learning. Many curricula are deliberately designed to provide an integrated sequence of rich, engaging, multicultural content spanning history, science, music, visual arts, mathematics, language arts, and more. Without such a curriculum, knowledge from each of these areas that is likely to appear in texts in subsequent grades can still be provided. In the earliest grades, before students can read books independently, the content and concepts that build background knowledge are usually developed through teacher read-alouds of a wide variety of texts, such as nursery rhymes, rhyming poems, fairy tales and fables from a variety of cultures, and engaging nonfiction texts, to name a few.

Children’s books and other written sources of information are an authentic and abundant source of knowledge about every imaginable subject (see Chapter 7 for further discussion about children’s literature), suitable for building knowledge at all grade levels (Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993). Children’s books feature rich concepts and a high percentage of unique and sophisticated words ( Cunningham & Stanovich , 1998; Hayes & Ahrens, 1988). Reading a number books or stories to students featuring similar themes or domains (e.g., farms, seasons, culturally diverse folklore, Egypt, music, currency, weather) provides a beneficial repetition of words and concepts that build valuable background knowledge. As students hear multiple versions of a similar theme or receive repeated instruction in a particular domain, newly developed background knowledge will lead to better comprehension of the material (Cervetti, Jaynes, & Hiebert, 2009). Davis (2006) recommends twenty to thirty read-alouds per domain (e.g., from a variety of children’s books, chapters, short pieces, poems) for developing background knowledge; just two short read-alouds a day can cover 10 to 15 domains in a school year (see also Hirsch , 2006). Although read-alouds are typically done in the elementary grades, there is likely to be benefit in building background knowledge at the older grades as well.

Activating background knowledge

In addition to providing background knowledge, we can also activate existing background knowledge. Activation of background knowledge that students already possess is frequently a focus of comprehension instruction. Teachers understand the value of activating background knowledge and as a result many tend to apply a series of strategies at the expense of providing knowledge. There is not a lot of research on teaching a multitude of comprehension strategies prior to third grade, primarily because beginning readers in the early grades are learning how to decode fluently. Also, too much of an emphasis on teaching strategies for reading comprehension may not be effective ( Stahl , 2004), particularly if the text is easy to understand. For young students, particularly when using complex text, comprehension strategies should still be worked on (see the Institute of Education Sciences’  practice guide (Shanahan et al., 2010) for a summary of recommendations on improving reading comprehension for children in grades K-3), but the decoding constraint may still stand in the way. In later grades, simply applying comprehension strategies such as visualizing or predicting will not automatically enable students to understand science. If we want students to comprehend science texts, they must know something about science. Students do better if they read and write about things they know about. While isolated facts are certainly important and necessary, they will not suffice to enable meaningful comprehension unless background knowledge is developed within meaningful contexts.

Activating background knowledge is under scrutiny since the introduction of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects ( CCSS ; National Governors Association & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA & CCSSO], 2010) because students are now expected to extract information from texts by focusing on what the author intended for them to understand, rather than relying too heavily on their prior knowledge, experiences, or opinions to construct meaning. Teachers are encouraged to downplay any lengthy, explicit focus on their students’ existing knowledge before reading, and in discussions about the CCSS, some propose that this may serve to equalize the outcomes for children who have varying degrees of knowledge about various topics. However, as Shanahan (2014) explains, avoiding discussion altogether of background knowledge will not serve to allow children to interpret and comprehend texts more equally, because it would be next to impossible for children who do possess background knowledge about a topic to avoid using it to construct meaning while they read. Those without the background knowledge will not have this advantage, and will be wrongly viewed as having poor comprehension, when in fact it is their lack of knowledge that is to blame. Shanahan (2014) provides some practical instructional suggestions for activating background knowledge before and during reading. An abridged and modified list appears below:

• When introducing texts, avoid lengthy introductions or potentially ineffective pre-reading strategies such as a “picture walks” and tedious contributions of students’ prior knowledge that could potentially impair comprehension. A simple statement such as “We’re going to read a story about how animals camouflage themselves” may suffice. The goal is to be brief and strategic (e.g., what is the purpose of the text, what will students bring to it, and what information absolutely needs to be provided; note all the other suggestions below for more clarification). Otherwise time spent during pre-reading activities may take time away from the actual reading, become boring or repetitive, and possibly steer children to the wrong focus, ruining the entire experience. See an additional blog post in which Shanahan (2012) speaks specifically about this topic http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/02/pre-reading-or-not-on-premature-demise.html
• When introducing a topic or genre that students will be reading, avoid revealing information that you will want them to extract from the text(s) on their own.
• Preteach necessary information students will need if it is not in the text (e.g., a text on climate change may not have been written for young students, so vital references to geography or technology may need explanation).
• Do not focus on activating background knowledge about topics in the text that are not needed for its comprehension (e.g., a text focusing on how an octopus camouflages itself does not require discussion or instruction about oceans).
• When using multiple texts to develop background knowledge, introduce them in an order that will support and reinforce those that may come before or after. Initial texts may cover a particular topic in a general manner, followed up by texts that cover the material in the initial texts and delve deeper into the topic.
• Attend to the differing background knowledge needs of students from diverse cultures by considering information you may need to pre-teach in order for them to comprehend particular texts.

Having just read about background knowledge, it is probably easy for you to imagine how vocabulary—the knowledge of the meaning of words in a text—adds significantly to the construction of the meaning of texts. Vocabulary knowledge is a prominent predictor of reading comprehension and is depicted as a central thread in the language comprehension component of the Simple View of Reading because of its connections to background knowledge and language structures (Scarborough, 2002).

The development of a child’s vocabulary begins at infancy, when a baby starts hearing speech and babbling. Oral language experiences, such as in-person conversations, dialogue heard on TV, or language heard during the reading of children’s books are primary means for accumulating vocabulary. By the age of two, children usually speak about 200 to 300 words and understand many more, and once in school, they learn approximately 3,000 words per year, and can comprehend many more than they can read (Nagy, 2009). To accomplish this rate of word learning, it is critical to ensure that students are learning new words each day. This is especially true for many students from less advantaged backgrounds, who are exposed to millions fewer words in their first three years of life than students who come from more privileged backgrounds (Hart & Risley, 1995). This disparity results in students from more affluent households knowing thousands more words upon entering school, which benefits their ability to understand, participate in, and profit from the language of instruction that is predominant in U.S. school settings.

Why vocabulary is important

As stated previously, the level of a child’s vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension (Duncan et al., 2007). This seems obvious since not knowing the meaning of words in a text makes it quite difficult to comprehend it. As Adams (2010) eloquently points out, “What makes vocabulary valuable and important is not the words themselves so much as the understandings they afford. The reason we need to know the meanings of words is that they point to the knowledge from which we are to construct, interpret, and reflect on the meaning of text” (p. 8).

Vocabulary instruction

Instruction in vocabulary should begin with thinking about the different levels of “knowing” a word. Upon hearing a word, we can say (a) we have never heard of it, (b) that we have heard of it but we do not know it, (c) that we know it, or (d) that we both know it and can use it (Nagy, 2009). The more deeply we know a word, the more likely we will be to understand it when we hear it or read it, and the more likely we will be to use it when we speak or write. Ideally, instruction makes it so that students reach the level of knowing and using words when they converse, write, or read. Vocabulary learning occurs either incidentally (words are learned through exposure and experiences) or intentionally (words are deliberately and directly taught). The majority of words in our vocabularies are learned incidentally, through conversations or independent reading (Adams, 2010). This means that most vocabulary learning will not occur through explicit instructional means but through opportunities available in the child’s environment to encounter and resolve meanings of new words. Children who have learned to read independently are at an advantage in terms of learning words incidentally because they are able to independently encounter new words and infer their meaning while reading.

Incidental vocabulary instruction is enhanced through rich and varied oral language dialogue and discourse experiences, and independent reading. Even though “incidental” learning occurs as a result of some activities that do not involve any deliberate teaching, incidental learning still often involves a level of intentionality on the part of teachers. Teachers should consciously fill their everyday classroom language with rich, unique words so that they can be learned incidentally. A classroom that is rich with words promotes awareness of new vocabulary and a curiosity for learning new words. Rather than simplifying language for students, conversations should be embedded with sophisticated words: “Jordan, why don’t you amble over here and let me glance at that,” “Please shut the door; those third graders are causing quite a commotion ! What a ruckus !” and “Oh my, Jake, the lion on your t-shirt has such sinister eyes! It terrifies me!” A resource for building language rich classrooms to promote oral language, vocabulary, and comprehension is Dodson’s (2011) 50 Nifty Speaking and Listening Activities. While it is not a scientifically based intervention, it provides a multitude of listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities that adhere to a sequence of language development for students ranging from kindergarten to fifth grade.

Many words, phrases, and sayings require intentional instruction. Vocabulary words that should be intentionally taught are those essential for understanding texts, those that are likely to be encountered across multiple texts, or those that are particularly difficult to understand (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 2002). Activities for directly teaching vocabulary include using graphic organizers (for a collection of free graphic organizers visit https://www.teachervision.com/graphic-organizers/printable/6293.html ), or analyzing words’ semantic features (i.e., listing their attributes—hard/soft, tall/short, exciting/dull).

Text Talk (Beck & McKeown, 2001) is an evidence-based vocabulary (and comprehension) building intervention that can be easily built into daily read-alouds. Teachers pre-read the selected text, choosing three to five vocabulary words that are “Tier 2” words. Tier 2 words are sophisticated, occur frequently in conversation and print, and are used across multiple domains and contexts. Examples of Tier 2 words are unique, convenient, remarkable, and misery (See Beck et al., 2002). Tier 1 words are those that are basic and, for speakers of English, do not require instruction in school (e.g., wall, water, fun) , and Tier 3 words are low-frequency words that are specific to domains or content areas (e.g., photosynthesis, Constantinople ). During a read-aloud that is done in Text Talk fashion, open-ended comprehension questions are asked. Open-ended questions require a meaningful interactive response rather than a one-word reply. Examples of an open-ended question are “How do you think that made the boy feel?” and “Why did the fox decide to share his food?” To answer each of these questions requires an extended, multiple-word response. Examples of close-ended questions requiring only a single word response include “Is the boy mad?” and “Which food did the fox share?” Interactive extended responses and dialogue promote oral language development and allow the teacher to monitor students’ vocabulary use and comprehension. After the read-aloud or during a second reading of the story, the preselected Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined by the teacher using simple, child-friendly definitions (e.g., “To coax someone means to use your words to get them to do something”). The meanings of the words are discussed within the context of the story (e.g., “The mother coaxed her daughter to take a bath, meaning she used words to convince her to get into the bathtub”), and the teacher provides examples of the words within other contexts (“When my mother got older, I had to coax her to join us on vacation”). Finally, the students are asked to apply their knowledge and use the words in a personal context to ensure that they have the correct understanding of their meanings (“Jared, can you share an example of a time when someone coaxed you to do something?”). Additionally, during the read-aloud, it is beneficial to read the text before showing the pictures so that the illustrations do not interfere with attention or comprehension. This procedure is effective in getting students to pay attention to the words being read, and thus, is helpful toward their comprehending the language of the story (Beck & McKeown, 2001). It fosters their ability to comprehend decontextualized language—language that is “outside the here and now” (p. 10)—and leads to comprehending the vocabulary and text without relying on pictures. Teachers typically read children’s books aloud on a daily basis. Modifying read-alouds a bit to include the suggestions here fosters rich Tier 2 vocabulary and language comprehension through open-ended questions and by drawing attention to the vocabulary and meaning in texts.

Language Structures

The final element contributing to language comprehension is language structure—the relationships between the words and sentences in a text. Looking back at the model of skilled reading in Figure 1, it is evident there are many facets to language structures, including knowledge of grammar, being able to make inferences, and having knowledge of literacy concepts, such as what reading strategies to use for different types of texts (e.g., poems versus informational texts). To simplify and streamline these for the purpose of this chapter, they will be categorized as having to do with the major components of language that are interconnected: form, content, and use (see Bloom & Lahey, 1978).

Why language form is important

Language form comprises the rules for how words are structured (see ‘morphology’ described below) as well as the rules for the arrangement of words within sentences and phrases (see ‘syntax’ described below). The act of constructing meaning while reading is complex, so it is not surprising that morphology and syntax also contribute to reading comprehension.

Morphology is the study of morphemes in a language. Not to be confused with phonemes, which are the smallest units of sound in spoken words, morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in words (to remember this, consider that “morphemes” and “meaning” both begin with the letter “m”). Words contain one or more morphemes, or units of meaning. For instance, “locate” is a word that is a freestanding morpheme because it has just one unit of meaning and can stand on its own. By attaching another morpheme, the suffix “-tion,” to create “location,” there are now two units of meaning: “locate” and the action or condition of locating, “tion.” “Tion” is a bound morpheme because its meaning depends on its connection to other words; it cannot stand on its own. A third morpheme, the prefix “dis,” changes the meaning of the word yet again— “ dislocation. ” In sum, the word “dislocation” is made up of three morphemes, each of which contributes its own meaning. Similarly, “cat” is a freestanding morpheme (a singular feline animal), but adding the bound morpheme—s—signals a change in meaning and the reader now pictures more than one cat.

Another aspect of language form, syntax, is commonly referred to as grammar. It is the combining and ordering of words in sentences and phrases that enables comprehension of a text. For example, in English, when the article “a” or “an” appears in a sentence, it is expected that a noun will follow. Syntax includes sentence construction elements like statements, commands, and combined sentences as well as particular sentence components such as nouns, adjectives, and prepositional phrases. These are important for future teachers to know, because effective use of these will allow students to comprehend text more successfully, and they will also allow students to demonstrate command of the conventions of the language in their writing pieces.

Language form instruction

Typically, rules of morphology and syntax are taught directly. For example, morphology instruction includes root words, prefixes, and suffixes along with derivations of Greek and Latin roots (e.g., “chron” is the Greek root for “time” in chronicle, synchronize, and “cred” is the Latin root for “believe” in creed, incredible, credulous). Morphology charts of root words, prefixes, and suffixes can be compiled over time and displayed on a wall so that students can refer to them while reading or writing. Charts could feature a list of suffixes that indicate people nouns (e.g., -er, -or, -cian, -ist), suffixes that create verbs (e.g., -ize, ify), or base words that change spelling and pronunciation (e.g., sign/signature/design, deep/depth). Incidental exposure to such morphology elements enhances word awareness (the act of noticing and attending to features of words), vocabulary, and, of course, language comprehension.

Why language content is important

Language content that is comprised of the meaning of the relationships that exist between words, phrases, and sentences is known as semantics. Semantics is different from vocabulary because it extends beyond the individual meaning of words. Note that once again, there is an “m” in this “semantics,” but it is in the middle of the word, which may help you to remember it has to do with the meaning that ties words (and sentences) together. Understanding the semantics of language enables comprehension because it clarifies the content—the network of events and relationships that exists in texts. For example, reading a sentence about a jug breaking and glass being scattered all over the floor might cause confusion, since jugs are typically not thought of as being made of glass.

Language content instruction

Semantics requires knowledge of vocabulary (a word’s meaning, and perhaps its synonyms and antonyms), as well as syntax. Just as important is background knowledge in order to form correct judgments about the context being read. Part of this knowledge includes the meaning of humor, slang, idioms (i.e., combinations of words having a figurative meaning as in “it’s raining cats and dogs” or “he was feeling blue”), metaphors (a comparison of two things as in “she is my sunshine”) and similes (comparisons of two things using “like” or “as” as in “her laughter is like sunshine”). Languages have thousands of common and often subtle semantic attributes that involve analogy, exaggeration, sarcasm, puns, and parables to convey world knowledge. Teachers can explicitly teach these attributes so that they are recognized more readily, explicitly define particular sayings and expressions, and demonstrate examples and nonexamples. For example, a teacher could demonstrate examples and nonexamples of exaggeration (“I have a million papers to grade!” vs. “I have three papers to grade”). As soon as schooling begins, semantic conventions should be taught, such as in the way that “once upon a time” signals the beginning of a fairy tale. Like vocabulary, the majority of semantic knowledge is derived from previous experiences and background knowledge. Teaching students phrases through exposure to discussions, reading, and other venues like television, movies, and online videos does a lot to promote this language comprehension element.

Why language use is important

Language use is termed pragmatics. Pragmatics are the rules of language that lead to appropriate use in assorted settings and contexts. Each setting (e.g., school, home, restaurant, job interview, playground) or context (e.g., greeting, inquiry, negotiation, explanation) has a particular purpose. To communicate appropriately, students must learn patterns of conversation and dialogue that occur in assorted settings. For example, use of language can vary according to a person’s status, so whether talking at home to a parent (a more casual use of language) or talking to a teacher at school, (a more formal use of language), the setting and the status differ, and language use must adapt accordingly. Understanding the nuances of pragmatics contributes to language comprehension, which in turn enables a reader to recognize its uses in written text, leading to more successful reading comprehension.

Language use instruction

The pragmatics of language use in school requires students to comprehend academic language. Students, especially English language learners and students with social difficulties, must comprehend the differences between conversation and academic language. Students’ language use in assorted settings (e.g., playground conversations, discussions with teachers) often requires teachers to provide clarification and elaboration. Students can perform enjoyable skits demonstrating the differences in language use in various situations and teachers can monitor and model language use as students tell stories, describe events, or recount personal experiences.

To help students develop language comprehension, the underlying meaning-based elements of reading—background knowledge, vocabulary, and language structures—must be taught and monitored. Unlike teaching students to recognize words accurately and automatically so that they become fluent readers, teaching the elements of language comprehension must be done so that students become increasingly strategic about extracting the meaning from texts they read. This is an incremental, ongoing, developmental process that lasts a lifetime. With each new bit of background knowledge, each new vocabulary word, and each new understanding of language use, students can integrate this knowledge strategically to comprehend text.

The two essential components of the Simple View of Reading, automatic word recognition and strategic language comprehension, contribute to the ultimate goal of teaching reading: skilled reading comprehension. Once students become proficient decoders and can automatically identify words, the role of language comprehension becomes increasingly important as students shift from paying attention to the words to paying attention to meaning.

Teachers must be ever mindful of the presence or absence of background knowledge that students bring to the task. As important as it is for students to monitor their comprehension, it is equally important for teachers to continually monitor each student’s background knowledge and comprehension so that they can step in to build and supply what is missing in their understanding. The value of the knowledge that students bring to their reading should never be sacrificed for the sake of comprehension strategy instruction. They must go hand in hand.

Questions and Activities

• What are the three underlying elements of language comprehension? How does each contribute to successful reading comprehension?
• Which instructional activities are helpful for providing and activating background knowledge, teaching vocabulary, and promoting language use?
• Consider a student that you have worked with who has difficulty with reading comprehension. Which of the underlying element(s) of language comprehension (i.e., background knowledge, vocabulary, language use) do you believe may be at the root of this student’s difficulties? How might you develop a new instructional plan to address these difficulties?
• Select an informational text that you might use with students. Identify the facts, phrases, vocabulary or other knowledge items that readers would need in order to comprehend the text. Next, consider discussing which facts, phrases, vocabulary, or other knowledge items would a reader NOT necessarily need in order for comprehension to still occur.

Adams, M. J. (2010). Advancing our students’ language and literacy: The challenge of complex texts. American Educator, 34, 3-11, 53. Retrieved from https://www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/Adams.pdf

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G. (2001). Text talk: Capturing the benefits of read aloud experiences for young children. The Reading Teacher, 55, 10-20. Retrieved from  http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/texttalk/pdfs/Capturing_the_benefits.pdf

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life: Robust vocabulary  instruction. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Bloom, L., & Lahey, M. (1978). Language development and language disorders. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. V. (Eds.). (2007 ). C hildren’s c omprehension problems in oral and written language: A cognitive perspective . New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Cervetti, G. N., Jaynes, C. A., & Hiebert, E. H. (2009). Increasing opportunities to acquire knowledge through reading. In E. H. Hiebert (Ed.), Reading more, reading better (pp. 79-100). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Chase, W. G., & H. A. Simon. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology , 4 , 55-81. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(73)90004-2

Colvin, G. (2008). Talent is overrated: Wh at really separates world-class performers  from everybody else. New York, NY: Penguin.

Council of Chief State School Officers (2013). Knowledge, skills, and d ispositions: The  Innovation L ab Network state framework for college, career, and c i tizenship readiness,  and implications for state p olicy . Retrieved December 15, 2014, from http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Publications/ILN_CCR_Framework.html

Cunningham, A.E., & Stanovich, K. E. (1998). What reading does for the mind. American  Educator, 22 (1), 8-15. Retrieved from  https://www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/cunningham.pdf

Davis, M. (2006). Reading instruction: The two keys . Charlottesville, VA: Core Knowledge Foundation.

DeGroot, A. D. (1946/1978). Thought and choice in chess (2nd ed.). The Hague: Mouton.

Duncan, G. J., Claessens, A., Huston, A. C., Pagani, L. S., Engel, M., Sexton, H., et al. (2007). School readiness and later achievement. Developmental Psychology, 43, 1428-1446. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.43.6.1428

Foorman, B. R., Francis, D. J., Shaywitz, S. E., Shaywitz, B. A., & Fletcher, J. M. (1997). The case for early reading intervention. In B. Blachman (Ed.), Foundations of reading  acquisition and dyslexia: Implications for early intervention (pp. 243-264). Baltimore,  MD: Paul Brookes.

Gough, P. B., & Tunmer, W. E. (1986). Decoding, reading, and reading disability. Remedial and  Special Education, 7, 6-10. doi:10.1177/074193258600700104

Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young  American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul Brookes.

Hayes, D., & Ahrens, M. (1988). Vocabulary simplification for children: A special case of “motherese”? Journal of Child Language , 15 , 395-410. doi:10.1017/S0305000900012411

Hirsch, E. D. (2006). Building knowledge: The case for bringing content into the language artsblock and for a knowledge-rich curriculum core for all children. American Educator, 30,  8-21, 28-29. Retrieved from http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/spring-2006/building-knowledge

Hoover, W. A., & Gough, P. B. (1990). The simple view of reading. Reading and Writing: An  Interdisciplinary Journal, 2 , 127-160. doi:10.1007/BF00401799

Marzano, R. J., & Kendall, J. S. (2007). The new taxonomy of educational perspectives (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

McKibben, B. (2006). Worried? Us? In D. McQuade & R. Atwan (Eds.), The writer’s presence:  A pool of readings (pp. 763-768). New York, NY: Bedford.

Meurer, J. L. (1991). Schemata and reading comprehension. Ilha do Desterro, 25/26 , 167-184.

Nagy, W. (2009). Understanding words and word learning: Putting research on vocabulary intoclassroom practice. In S. Rosenfield & V. Berninger (Eds.), Implementing evidence- based academic interventions in school settings (pp. 479-500). New York, NY: Oxford  University Press.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards for English l anguage a rts & l iteracy in h istory/ s ocial s tudies, s cience, and t echnical Subjects . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/ELA_Standards.pdf

National Research Council. (2012). Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable  Knowledge and Skills in the 21st Century . Retrieved December 15, 2014 from  http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13398/education-for-life-and-work-developing-transferable-knowledge-and-skills

Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Scarborough, H. S. (2002). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97-110). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Schweizer, B. (2009). Cultural literacy: Is it time to revisit the debate? Thought and Action, 25,  51-56. Retrieved from https://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/TA09CulturalLiteracy.pdf

Shanahan, T. (2012, February 21). Special Needs Activities . Retrieved from  http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2012/02/pre-reading-or-not-on-premature-demise.html

Shanahan, T. (2014, November 17). Prior Knowledge Part 2 . Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2014/11/prior-knowledge-part-2.html

Shanahan, T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D., Schatschneider, C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade: A practice guide (NCEE 2010-4038). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/14 .

Simons, D. (2012, January 12). Memory for chess positions [ Video file ]. Retrieved from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWuJqCwfjjc

Snow, C. E. (Chair), (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R & D program in reading comprehension . Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Retrieved from  http://www.prgs.edu/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1465.pdf

Stahl, K. (2004). Proof, practice, and promise: Comprehension strategy instruction in the primarygrades. The Reading Teacher, 57, 598-609. Retrieved from  https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/006/713/StahlpppRT.pdf

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 , 211-229. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.2.211

Willingham, D. T. (2006). How knowledge helps: It speeds and strengthens reading comprehension, learning—and thinking . American Educator, 30, 30-37. Retrieved from  http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/spring-2006/how-knowledge-helps

Steps to Success: Crossing the Bridge Between Literacy Research and Practice Copyright © 2016 by Maria S. Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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text Comprehension

What is it.

Comprehension—the ability to make meaning—is the ultimate goal of reading. It is much more than a collection of skills and strategies that students apply to text. It  requires metacognitive skills, vocabulary, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning ability.

Frequently asked questions

What is the relationship between language and reading comprehension.

Teachers must first build students’ language comprehension skills, best developed early through interactive read-alouds and dialogic reading. This instruction has the added benefit of increasing students’ background knowledge, vocabulary, and text structure knowledge as well as their verbal reasoning skills.

What is Academic Language and how do I teach my students to use it in my classroom?

When and how should i begin comprehension instruction.

Comprehension can’t wait for beginning readers to master decoding. Instruction that focuses on a variety of language processing abilities needs to occur concurrently with code-breaking instruction. Five big ideas shape Literacy How’s focus on reading comprehension instruction: text structure, background knowledge, text cohesion, inference, and the reading/writing connection. Each big idea emphasizes the development of students’ ability to understand text. Arranged by Chall’s Stages of Reading Development, see Comprehension: Knowledge to Practice to learn more.

Teacher tip: Analyze and Prep Texts

Prepare the text befor teaching it. Be sure to analyze the text so that it can be used effectively to meet your students’ needs. This analytic process involves identifying possible skills within the domain suited to a particular text, and then tailoring language processing activities based on the text.

Teacher tip: text selection matters

When selecting a text to use for comprehension instruction, be sure to consider your instructional objectives for the lesson. All texts are not created equal!

Teacher tip: Keep Questioning

Be sure to build in adequate time to ask open-ended questions before, during, and after reading the text to/with your students. These types of questions promote your students’ metacognition–thinking about their thinking!

tips for principals: Support Language Comprehension

Teachers need to understand the language underpinnings of reading comprehension in order to teach children how to “read text closely” (a Common Core State Standard buzz phrase).  Students who struggle with language for any reason (i.e., English Language Learners, unfamiliarity with academic language, reading or language learning disabilities) must have highly skilled, well trained teachers!

Read More to Learn More

• Akhondi, M., Malayeri, F. A., & Samad, A. A. (February 2011).  How to teach expository text structure to facilitate reading comprehension.   The Reading Teacher 64  (5), 368-372.
• American Educator.  American Federation of Teachers. ( Spring 2003. Entire issue ).  The fourth grade plunge.  The cause. The cure.  
• Cain, K. & Oakhill, J. (2014).  Reading comprehension and vocabulary: Is vocabulary more important for some aspects if comprehension?    L’Année Psychologique 114,  647-662.
• Dymock, S. (2007).  Comprehension strategy instruction. Teaching narrative text structure awareness.   The Reading Teacher 61 (2), 161-167.
• Hogan, T., Sittner Bridges, M., et al. (2011).   Increasing higher level language skills to improve reading comprehension.   Focus on Exceptional Children 44  (3), 1-20.
• Institute of Education Science’s 2010 Practice Guide,   “Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade”.
• Recht, D. R. & Leslie, L. (1988).  Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text .  Journal of Education Psychology 80  (1) 16-20.
• RAND Reading Study Group. (2002).   Reading for understanding. Toward an R & D program in reading comprehension.
• Wexler, N. (January 2019).  Why we’re teaching comprehension in a way that doesn’t work. Forbes.  Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliewexler/2019/01/23/why-were-teaching-reading-comprehension-in-a-way-that-doesnt-work/#582f6d5637e0.
• Willingham, Daniel T. (Winter 2006/2007).  The usefulness of brief instruction in reading comprehension strategies.  American Educator 30 , 39.

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Comprehension is the goal of reading—even for beginning readers!

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14 Practical Tips to Improve Your Presentation Skills

• The Speaker Lab
• May 11, 2024

Table of Contents

Ever felt complete dread and fear at the thought of stepping up to deliver a presentation? If so, you’re not alone. The fear of public speaking is more common than you might think, but with the right presentation skills , it’s a hurdle that can be overcome.

In this article, we’ll help you master basic confidence-building techniques and conquer advanced communication strategies for engaging presentations. We’ll explore how body language and eye contact can make or break your connection with your audience; delve into preparation techniques like dealing with filler words and nervous habits; discuss tailoring content for different audiences; and much more.

Whether you’re prepping for job interviews or gearing up for big presentations, being prepared is key. With adequate practice and the proper attitude, you can crush your speech or presentation!

Mastering the Basics of Presentation Skills

Presentation skills are not just about speaking in front of a crowd. It’s also about effective communication, audience engagement, and clarity. Mastering these skills can be transformative for everyone, from students to corporate trainers.

Building Confidence in Presentations

Becoming confident when presenting is no small feat. But fear not. Even those who feel jittery at the mere thought of public speaking can become masters with practice and patience. Just remember: stage fright is common and overcoming it is part of the process towards becoming an effective presenter.

Taking deep breaths before you start helps calm nerves while visualizing success aids in building confidence. Also, know that nobody minds if you take a moment to gather your thoughts during your presentation—everybody minds more if they cannot understand what you’re saying because you’re rushing.

The Role of Practice in Enhancing Presentation Skills

In line with old wisdom, practice indeed makes perfect, especially when improving presentation skills. Consistent rehearsals allow us to fine-tune our delivery methods like maintaining eye contact or controlling body language effectively.

You’ll learn better control over filler words through repeated drills. Plus, the extra practice can help you troubleshoot any technical glitches beforehand, saving you the sudden panic during your actual presentations.

Remember that great presenters were once beginners too. Continuous effort will get you there sooner rather than later.

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Body Language and Eye Contact in Presentations

The effectiveness of your presentation can hinge on more than just the words you say. Just as important is your body language .

Impact of Posture on Presentations

Your posture speaks volumes before you utter a word. Standing tall exudes confidence while slouching could signal nervousness or lack of preparation.

If there’s one lesson to take away from our YouTube channel , it’s this: good presenters know their message but great ones feel it through every fiber (or muscle) of their being. The audience can sense that energy when they see open body language rather than crossed arms.

Maintaining Eye Contact During Your Presentation

Eyes are often called windows to the soul for a reason. They’re communication powerhouses. Making eye contact helps build trust with your audience members and keeps them engaged throughout your speech.

Avoid staring at note cards or visual aids too much as this might give an impression that you’re unprepared or uncertain about your chosen topic. Instead, aim to maintain eye contact between 50% of the time during presentations. This commonly accepted “50/70 rule” will help you exhibit adequate confidence to your audience.

If stage fright has gotten a hold on you, take deep breaths before you start speaking in order to stay calm. Make sure that fear doesn’t disrupt your ability to maintain eye-contact during presentations.

If body language and eye contact still feel like a lot to manage during your big presentation, remember our golden rule: nobody minds small mistakes. It’s how you handle questions or mishaps that truly makes a difference—so stay positive and enthusiastic.

Preparation Techniques for Successful Presentations

Presentation skills are like a craft that requires meticulous preparation and practice. Aspects like visual aids and time management contribute to the overall effectiveness of your delivery.

The first step towards delivering an impactful presentation is research and organization. The content should be well-researched, structured logically, and presented in simple language. This will make sure you deliver clear messages without any room for misinterpretation.

Dealing with Filler Words and Nervous Habits

Nervous habits such as excessive use of filler words can distract from your message. Luckily, there are plenty of strategies that can address these issues. For instance, try taking deep breaths before speaking or using note cards until fluency is achieved. In addition, practice regularly to work on eliminating these verbal stumbling blocks.

Avoiding Distractions During Presentations

In a digital age where distractions abound, maintaining focus during presentations has become an even more crucial part of the preparation process. This video by motivational speaker Brain Tracy provides insights on how one could achieve this level of focus required for effective presentations.

Maintaining Confidence Throughout Your Presentation

Confidence comes from thorough understanding of the chosen topic combined with regular practice sessions before the big day arrives. Make use of note cards or cue cards as needed but avoid reading from them verbatim.

Taking control over stage fright starts by arriving early at the venue so that you familiarize yourself with the surroundings, which generally calms nerves down considerably. So next time you feel nervous before a big presentation, remember—thorough preparation can make all the difference.

Engaging Your Audience During Presentations

Connecting with your audience during presentations is an art, and mastering it can take your presentation skills to the next level. Making the message conveyed reach an emotional level is essential, not just conveying facts.

Understanding Your Target Audience

The first step towards engaging your audience is understanding them. Tailor the content of your presentation to their needs and interests. Speak in their language—whether that be professional jargon or everyday slang—to establish rapport and ensure comprehension.

An effective presenter understands who they’re speaking to, what those individuals care about, and how best to communicate complex ideas understandably.

Making Complex Information Understandable

Dense data or complicated concepts can lose even the most interested listener if presented ineffectively. Breaking your key points down into manageable chunks helps maintain attention while promoting retention. Analogies are especially useful for this purpose as they make unfamiliar topics more relatable.

Audience Participation & Questions: A Two-Way Street

Incorporating opportunities for audience participation encourages engagement at another level. It allows listeners to become active participants rather than passive receivers of knowledge.

Consider techniques like live polls or interactive Q&A sessions where you invite questions from attendees mid-presentation instead of saving all queries until the end.

This gives you a chance not only engage but also address any misunderstandings right on spot.

• Treat each question asked as an opportunity—it’s evidence someone has been paying attention. Even challenging questions should be welcomed as they demonstrate an engaged, thoughtful audience.
• Encourage participation. It can be as simple as a show of hands or the use of interactive technologies for live polling during your presentation. This keeps your audience active and invested in the content.

Remember, your presentation isn’t just about putting on a show—it’s about meaningful interaction.

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Presentation Skills in Specific Contexts

Whether you’re nailing your next job interview, presenting an exciting marketing campaign, or delivering insightful educational content, the context matters. Let’s take a look.

The Art of Job Interviews

A successful job interview often hinges on effective communication and confidence. Here, the target audience is usually small but holds significant influence over your future prospects. Body language plays a crucial role; maintain eye contact to show sincerity and interest while open body language communicates approachability.

Bullet points summarizing key experiences are also helpful for quick recall under pressure. This allows you to present your chosen topic with clarity and positive enthusiasm without relying heavily on note or cue cards.

Pitching in Public Relations & Marketing

In public relations (PR) and marketing contexts, presentations need to capture attention quickly yet hold it long enough to deliver key messages effectively. Visual aids are valuable tools here—they help emphasize points while keeping the audience engaged.

Your aim should be highlighting presentation benefits that resonate with potential clients or partners, making them feel as though ignoring such opportunities would mean missing out big time.

Educational Presentations

An educational setting demands its own unique set of presentation skills where deep understanding trumps flashy visuals. You must make complex information understandable without oversimplifying essential details—the use of analogies can be beneficial here.

Keeping the audience’s attention is critical. Encourage questions and participation to foster a more interactive environment, enhancing learning outcomes for all audience members.

Tips for Becoming a Great Presenter

No single method is suitable for everyone when it comes to speaking in public. However, incorporating continuous improvement and practice into your routine can make you an exceptional presenter.

Tailor Your Presentation to Your Audience

Becoming an excellent speaker isn’t just about delivering information; it’s also about making a connection with the audience. So make sure that you’re taking setting, audience, and topic into consideration when crafting your presentation. What works for one audience may not work for another, so be sure to adapt your presentation styles according to the occasion in order to be truly effective.

The Power of Practice

The art of mastering public speaking skills requires practice —and lots of it . To become a great presenter, focus on improving communication skills through practice and feedback from peers or mentors. Try to seek feedback on every speech delivered and incorporate those pointers in your future presentations. Over time, this cycle of delivery-feedback-improvement significantly enhances your ability to connect with audiences and convey ideas effectively.

If you’re looking for examples of good speakers, our speech breakdowns on YouTube provide excellent examples of experienced presenters who masterfully utilize speaking techniques. Analyzing their strategies could give you great ideas for enhancing your own style.

Finding Your Style

A crucial part of captivating any audience lies in how you deliver the message rather than the message itself. Developing a unique presentation style lets you stand out as an engaging speaker who commands attention throughout their talk. Through — you guessed it — practice, you can develop a personal presentation style that resonates with listeners while showcasing your expertise on the chosen topic.

Your body language plays a pivotal role here: open gestures communicate confidence and enthusiasm towards your subject matter, two qualities essential for keeping audiences hooked. Similarly, using vocal variety adds dynamism to speeches by emphasizing points when needed or creating suspense during storytelling parts of your talk.

Cultivating Passion & Enthusiasm

Showcasing genuine passion for the subject helps keep listeners engaged throughout even lengthy presentations. Sharing stories related to the topic or expressing excitement about sharing knowledge tends to draw people in more than mere data recitation ever could.

Recognize that everybody is distinctive; don’t expect identical results from every speaker. The path to becoming a great presenter involves recognizing your strengths and working tirelessly on areas that need improvement.

FAQs on Presentation Skills

What are good presentation skills.

Good presentation skills include a clear message, confident delivery, engaging body language, audience understanding, and interaction. They also involve effective preparation and practice.

What are the 5 steps of presentation skills?

The five steps of presenting include: planning your content, preparing visual aids if needed, practicing the delivery aloud, performing it with confidence, and finally post-presentation reflection for improvements.

What are the 5 P’s of presentation skills?

The five P’s stand for Preparation (researching your topic), Practice (rehearsing your talk), Performance (delivering with confidence), Posture (standing tall), and Projection (using a strong voice).

What are your presentation skills?

Your personal set of abilities to deliver information effectively is what we call your presentation skill. It can encompass public speaking ability, clarity in speech or writing as well as visual communication talent.

Mastering presentation skills isn’t an overnight process, but practice and perseverance will put you well on your way to becoming an effective speaker.

You’ve learned that confidence plays a crucial role in effective presentations, so take deep breaths, make eye contact, and keep your body language open. As always, preparation is key. Tackle filler words head-on and get comfortable with visual aids for impactful storytelling.

Remember the importance of audience engagement — it’s all about understanding their needs and tailoring your content accordingly. This way, complex information turns into digestible insights.

Above all else: practice! After all, nothing beats experience when it comes to improving public speaking abilities.

• Last Updated: May 9, 2024

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Because differences are our greatest strength

6 essential skills for reading comprehension

By Andrew M.I. Lee, JD

Expert reviewed by Margie Gillis, EdD

At a glance

Reading comprehension can be challenging for kids.

Kids must master a number of key skills, like decoding, to fully understand what they’re reading.

There are ways to help struggling readers build these skills at home and at school.

Some people think of the act of reading as a straightforward task that’s easy to master. In reality, reading is a complex process that draws on many different skills. Together, these skills lead to the ultimate goal of reading: reading comprehension, or understanding what’s been read.

Reading comprehension can be challenging for lots of reasons. Whatever the cause, knowing the skills involved, and which ones your child struggles with, can help you get the right support.

Here are six essential skills needed for reading comprehension , and tips on what can help kids improve this skill.

1. Decoding

Decoding is a vital step in the reading process. Kids use this skill to sound out words they’ve heard before but haven’t seen written out. The ability to do that is the foundation for other reading skills.

Decoding relies on an early language skill called phonemic awareness . (This skill is part of an even broader skill called phonological awareness .) Phonemic awareness lets kids hear individual sounds in words (known as phonemes ). It also allows them to “play” with sounds at the word and syllable level.

Decoding also relies on connecting individual sounds to letters. For instance, to read the word sun , kids must know that the letter s makes the /s/ sound. Grasping the connection between a letter (or group of letters) and the sounds they typically make is an important step toward “sounding out” words.

What can help: Most kids pick up the broad skill of phonological awareness naturally, by being exposed to books, songs, and rhymes . But some kids don’t. In fact, one of the early signs of reading difficulties is trouble with rhyming, counting syllables, or identifying the first sound in a word.

The best way to help kids with these skills is through specific instruction and practice. Kids have to be taught how to identify and work with sounds. You can also build phonological awareness at home through activities like word games and reading to your child.

To read fluently, kids need to instantly recognize words, including words they can’t sound out . Fluency speeds up the rate at which they can read and understand text. It’s also important when kids encounter irregular words, like of and the , which can’t be sounded out.

Sounding out or decoding every word can take a lot of effort. Word recognition is the ability to recognize whole words instantly by sight, without sounding them out.

When kids can read quickly and without making too many errors, they are “fluent” readers.

Fluent readers read smoothly at a good pace. They group words together to help with meaning, and they use the proper tone in their voice when reading aloud. Reading fluency is essential for good reading comprehension.

What can help: Word recognition can be a big obstacle for struggling readers. Average readers need to see a word four to 14 times before it becomes a “ sight word ” they automatically recognize. Kids with dyslexia, for instance, may need to see it up to 40 times.

Lots of kids struggle with reading fluency. As with other reading skills, kids need lots of specific instruction and practice to improve word recognition.

The main way to help build fluency is through practice reading books. It’s important to pick out books that are at the right level of difficulty for kids.

3. Vocabulary

To understand what you’re reading, you need to understand most of the words in the text. Having a strong vocabulary is a key component of reading comprehension. Students can learn vocabulary through instruction. But they typically learn the meaning of words through everyday experience and also by reading.

What can help: The more words kids are exposed to, the richer their vocabulary becomes. You can help build your child’s vocabulary by having frequent conversations on a variety of topics. Try to include new words and ideas. Telling jokes and playing word games is a fun way to build this skill.

Reading together every day also helps improve vocabulary. When reading aloud, stop at new words and define them. But also encourage your child to read alone. Even without hearing a definition of a new word, your child can use context to help figure it out.

Teachers can help, too. They can carefully choose interesting words to teach and then give explicit instruction (instruction that is specialized and direct). They can engage students in conversation. And they can make learning vocabulary fun by playing word games in class.

For more ideas, watch as an expert explains how to help struggling readers build their vocabulary .

4. Sentence construction and cohesion

Understanding how sentences are built might seem like a writing skill . So might connecting ideas within and between sentences, which is called cohesion . But these skills are important for reading comprehension as well.

Knowing how ideas link up at the sentence level helps kids get meaning from passages and entire texts. It also leads to something called coherence , or the ability to connect ideas to other ideas in an overall piece of writing.

What can help: Explicit instruction can teach kids the basics of sentence construction. For example, teachers can work with students on connecting two or more thoughts, through both writing and reading.

5. Reasoning and background knowledge

Most readers relate what they’ve read to what they know. So it’s important for kids to have background or prior knowledge about the world when they read. They also need to be able to “read between the lines” and pull out meaning even when it’s not literally spelled out.

Take this example: A child is reading a story about a poor family in the 1930s. Having knowledge about the Great Depression can provide insight into what’s happening in the story. The child can use that background knowledge to make inferences and draw conclusions.

What can help: Your child can build knowledge through reading, conversations, movies and TV shows, and art. Life experience and hands-on activities also build knowledge .

Expose your child to as much as possible, and talk about what you’ve learned from experiences you’ve had together and separately. Help your child make connections between new knowledge and existing knowledge. And ask open-ended questions that require thinking and explanations.

You can also read a teacher tip on using animated videos to help your child make inferences .

6. Working memory and attention

These two skills are both part of a group of abilities known as executive function . They’re different but closely related .

When kids read, attention allows them to take in information from the text. Working memory allows them to hold on to that information and use it to gain meaning and build knowledge from what they’re reading.

The ability to self-monitor while reading is also tied to that. Kids need to be able to recognize when they don’t understand something. Then they need to stop, go back, and re-read to clear up any confusion they may have.

What can help: There are many ways you can help improve your child’s working memory. Skillbuilders don’t have to feel like work, either. There are a number of games and everyday activities that can build working memory without kids even knowing it.

To help increase your child’s attention, look for reading material that’s interesting or motivating. For example, some kids may like graphic novels . Encourage your child to stop and re-read when something isn’t clear. And demonstrate how you “think aloud” when you read to make sure what you’re reading makes sense.

More ways to help with reading comprehension

When kids struggle with one or more of these skills, they can have trouble fully understanding what they read. Find out how to tell if your child has difficulty with reading comprehension .

Learn about what can cause trouble with reading in kids . Keep in mind that having reading difficulties doesn’t mean a child isn’t smart. But some kids need extra support and encouragement to make progress.

Key takeaways

Decoding, fluency, and vocabulary skills are key to reading comprehension.

Being able to connect ideas within and between sentences helps kids understand the whole text.

Reading aloud and talking about experiences can help kids build reading skills.

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The Reading Rope: Breaking it all down

The Science of Reading reveals the complexity of how the brain learns to read. The Reading Rope simplifies it all, helping us visualize and understand that exceptional process. Here, we’ll unravel and explain all the strands and show you how they come together as students become readers.

What do pipe cleaners have to do with learning to read? 

In the late 1990s, reading and literacy expert Dr. Hollis Scarborough used pipe cleaners to create a model of the intertwined skills that make up the process of learning to read. 

That model is the iconic Reading Rope, the visualization that helps us understand the essential strands of reading and how they work together.

In this post, we’ll examine the components of the Rope both individually and together, then explore how the Rope aligns with the Science of Reading and the five foundational reading skills. 

What is the Reading Rope?

The human brain is wired to do many things, but reading is not one of them. The brain does not automatically know that certain marks on a page or screen are designed to represent sounds, or meaning. That’s why we have to teach reading, explicitly and systematically. 

And when we teach reading using what science—the Science of Reading—tells us, the brain wires itself to start recognizing and understanding those letters, syllables, and words.  

The Reading Rope provides a visual representation of that process and all its essential, interrelated components.

Why is the Reading Rope important for the Science of Reading?

The Reading Rope emphasizes the need for a comprehensive, deliberate approach to reading instruction. It recognizes that reading is not a singular skill, but rather a set of interwoven processes.

By understanding and addressing each of these processes (known in the Rope as strands), educators can provide the targeted instruction that helps readers succeed. 

How does the Simple View of Reading connect to the Reading Rope?

One of the research-based frameworks used in the Science of Reading is the Simple View of Reading . 

According to the Simple View, two cognitive capacities are required for proficient reading: (1) word recognition and (2) language comprehension. 

“Reading comprehension is the product, not the sum, of those two components. If one of them is zero, then overall reading ability is going to be zero,” says Dr. Jane Oakhill, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex.

Those two skills make up the two meta-strands of the Rope. But as Dr. Oakhill explains further on Science of Reading: The Podcast , each strand contains its own subset of distinct skills and processes. 

What are the strands of the Reading Rope? 

Let’s take a look: 

• Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) within spoken words. It includes skills such as identifying rhymes, segmenting words into syllables, and manipulating sounds within words. Phonological awareness provides the foundation for phonics instruction.
• Phonics involves the systematic relationship between letters and the sounds they represent. It includes understanding letter-sound correspondences, decoding unfamiliar words by applying sound-symbol relationships, and blending sounds to form words. Phonics instruction gives students the tools to decode printed words.
• Sight word recognition involves the ability to recognize high-frequency words by sight, without decoding. These words don’t follow regular phonetic patterns and appear frequently in written texts. Building a repertoire of sight words boosts fluency.
• Vocabulary refers to the words one knows and understands, both orally and in writing. A robust vocabulary enhances comprehension and communication.
• Grammar and syntax are the rules and structures that govern language. Understanding and applying grammatical rules helps students comprehend and construct sentences, enhancing their ability to make meaning from text.
• Inference and conclusion skills involve the ability to draw conclusions, make predictions, and derive implicit meaning. They require readers to combine their background knowledge with information in the text to make guesses and reach conclusions.

How do the strands combine to form a process? 

These strands are interconnected and mutually supportive. Strong word recognition skills enable efficient decoding, which frees up cognitive resources for language comprehension. Similarly, robust language comprehension skills facilitate deeper word understanding and contextualized reading.

That’s how the Rope represents not just the elements of learning to read, but also the process toward fluency. As students progress, their word recognition becomes increasingly automatic, and their language comprehension becomes increasingly strategic.

• In the word recognition strand , readers focus on decoding individual words, relying on phonological awareness and phonics. With practice and instruction, word recognition becomes more efficient and effortless. This automaticity frees up cognitive resources for comprehension and higher-level thinking.
• In the l anguage comprehension strand , readers learn to engage actively with the text, ask questions, make connections and predictions, and monitor understanding. Strategic readers use comprehension strategies—summarizing, visualizing, self-questioning, and more—to deepen their understanding of what’s on the page. 

Those two processes are intertwined and interdependent. The Rope shows that as readers progress, they get better at combining automatic word recognition with strategic reading skills.

They can effortlessly recognize words, allowing them to focus on comprehending the text and performing higher-level thinking. By strategically applying language comprehension skills, readers construct meaning, make connections, and analyze the text.

This combination of automatic and strategic skills supports reading and facilitates engagement with more complex and challenging texts.

How does the Rope relate to the five foundational skills of reading? 

The Rope is made of a lot more than five skills. How does it all add up? 

While the Reading Rope does not explicitly mention the five foundational reading skills as a distinct set, the strands do align with those skills. Here’s how: 

• Phonological awareness (and phonemic awareness ) is r epresented in the Rope’s word recognition strand. 
• Phonics is a lso a critical aspect of word recognition.
• Fluency —often considered a combination of accuracy, rate, and prosody—is not represented as its own strand, but it’s closely related to the word recognition strand. As students develop automaticity in word recognition, their reading fluency improves. 
• Vocabulary aligns with the language comprehension strand. The development of a robust vocabulary enhances reading comprehension by allowing students to understand and infer the meaning of words encountered in the text.
• Comprehension is built into the language comprehension strand. It includes skills such as understanding sentence structure, making inferences, drawing conclusions, and connecting prior knowledge. These skills help the reader get meaning from the text and connect to higher-level thinking.

The Reading Rope is a game-changing tool, clarifying a complex process and helping teachers target instruction. When the strands come together, they weave the strongest possible foundation for student reading success. 

Show your love for the Science of Reading with this FREE digital poster!

Related resources.

Science of Reading: The Podcast

Science of Reading: The Podcast delivers the latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading.

What is the Science of Reading anyway?

An overview of the simple view of reading

Resource site

Science of Reading resource site

Now’s your chance—move your district to Science of Reading instruction and change lives forever. We’ll show you how.

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How to Improve Reading Comprehension in Early Ed

By andy minshew.

• November 20, 2023

Reading Comprehension Strategies Informed by the Science of Reading

Join Waterford’s Science of Reading virtual summit to explore how the brain learns to read and get strategies for effective, research-based instruction from literacy expert and Vice President of Curriculum Julie Christensen. Guidance for teachers and administrators included!

Plus, find upcoming and on-demand video series led by early education experts through the Webinar Library , featuring topics chosen with administrators in mind, like:

• Impactful Family Engagement Made Easy
• Understanding the Six Instructional Strands for Literacy
• Professional Learning: Teaching the Science of Reading

Read on to examine the key building blocks for reading comprehension. Then, learn several practical and research-based strategies to help students in your school build reading comprehension skills—with two free books and accompanying resources available in English and Spanish!

What is Reading Comprehension?

Reading comprehension as a part of literacy development

How do the other aspects of literacy development support reading comprehension? Phonological awareness skills , in combination with phonics skills , help students connect the sounds and symbols of language to break the reading code and begin decoding words.

With plenty of practice decoding words by linking letters and sounds, students build a large bank of words that they recognize automatically. This large bank of sight words makes reading fluency possible.

In turn, fluency supports reading comprehension by allowing students to focus their attention on the meaning of what they read rather than using their cognitive energy to decode many of the words.

The building blocks of reading comprehension

A student’s range of vocabulary and background knowledge are the foundational building blocks for reading comprehension. Children who are engaged in frequent, rich conversations that help build vocabulary and background knowledge are at an advantage when learning to read.

The early years are vital to a child’s long-term achievement in reading. Embedding activities throughout the school day to foster language development and the exploration of new ideas and information is crucial.

Oral language development and, in particular, listening comprehension skills, are strongly linked to reading comprehension. As children acquire the reading skills to match their listening ability, this connection grows. By fifth grade, according to Waterford’s VP of Curriculum, Julie Christensen, listening comprehension and reading comprehension are even more closely related than for younger students.

Strategies for Building Reading Comprehension Skills

It can also be helpful for educators to teach comprehension strategies, like how to make predictions before and during reading, and how to summarize a text. Students can be guided to reflect on the questions that arise in their minds as they read to assess their own comprehension. Graphic organizers can provide effective frameworks for understanding text structure and arranging ideas conveyed in the text.

However, as stated by educational researcher David A. Kilpatrick in his book Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties , focusing only on comprehension strategies cannot be a substitute for broad vocabulary and content knowledge. Instead, comprehension strategies can serve as useful tools for students who already have the requisite vocabulary and background knowledge.

Free Children’s Books for Building Vocabulary Skills and Background Knowledge

Share these downloadable books and accompanying resources with teachers in your school or district to strengthen vocabulary

skills and develop background knowledge as the building blocks of reading comprehension.

The books are written to be accessible to K-2 students on relatable topics for young readers, and all are available in English and Spanish.

1. Violeta ( click here for Spanish): Violeta likes to read, but sometimes she feels a little shy. With the help of her family and her love of books, can she gain newfound confidence? Use this classroom activity guide to extend reading and build comprehension.

2. Defying Gravity: The Story of Mae Jemison (Spanish: Desafiando la gravedad: La historia de Mae Jemison ): Mae Jemison follows her love of art and science and becomes the first Black woman to travel into space. Continue the journey with this classroom activity guide and family activity guide ( Spanish ).

In addition to the books above, share this Reading Together bookmark ( Spanish ) with families as a guide for making the most of shared reading experiences at home.

Read Waterford’s full Foundations of the Science of Reading article series and learn how to support your teachers with research-driven strategies as they plan for classroom instruction. Continue learning with the next three articles:

• How to Teach Language Concepts
• Ways to Teach Communication Skills
• How the Science of Reading Informs Waterford.org Curriculum

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Language: Comprehension

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2016
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Allison A. Steen 2 &
• Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow 2  

1282 Accesses

Discourse memory ; Language understanding ; Text memory ; Text processing

The comprehension of language in the domains of both written and spoken communication requires the decoding of print or acoustic features of speech to create mental representations of meaning, events, and situations. In spite of the apparent ease with which it accomplished, language comprehension is a complex process requiring the synchronization of a variety of cognitive components (e.g., recognizing letters and words, accessing and integrating word meanings to represent ideas, and using existing knowledge to develop a representation of implied situations). As such, language comprehension is interwoven with core cognitive mechanisms, which show multidirectional patterns of change as a function of both primary aging processes and experience.

Introduction

Successful execution of language processing components depends to some extent on both mental mechanics, which are vulnerable with aging, and...

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Steen, A.A., Stine-Morrow, E.A.L. (2016). Language: Comprehension. In: Pachana, N. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geropsychology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_220-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-080-3_220-1

Received : 03 June 2015

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Language, Comprehension, and the Aging Brain

Why our ability to communicate can be impacted as we age..

Posted July 8, 2021 | Reviewed by Davia Sills

• How Do We Age?
• Take our Positive Aging Test
• Find a therapist specialized in aging concerns
• It is well-established that cognitive skills like memory and processing speed often decline with age.
• A recent research review suggests such declines can also have consequences for how quickly and how well we understand what someone is saying.
• Research suggests there are some steps we can take to offset the linguistic impact of poor working memory.

As if wrinkled skin and stiff joints were not enough reason to dread getting older, research also indicates that our cognitive skills decline with age, with potential deficits including less efficient processing and reduced memory capacity. This may not be very surprising for those who can’t ever remember where they put their car keys, but what might be surprising is that such declines may also be affecting how well older adults are able to communicate with and understand those around them.

In their recently published review article, psycholinguists Willem van Boxtel and Laurel Lawyer survey research on the linguistic effects of aging. Most of their reviewed research indicates that decreased cognitive skills as we age can create difficulties in our understanding of longer and more difficult sentences. On the bright side, some research also suggests that this decline can be offset by relying more on semantics (e.g., word meaning) than on memory.

The effect of aging on memory

One of the most common complaints heard as people age is that their memory is not what it used to be, and research backs this up. Elderly adults have less ability to form short-term and episodic memories and are less efficient at things like discriminating between similar memories or at performing such tasks quickly. While these issues affect more than just language, they do impact how quickly people are able to come up with correct word meanings as well as unpack complex sentence structures.

In particular, older adults appear to experience greater loss of what is called working memory (WM). Working memory is our ability to remember and manipulate a small chunk of information in an immediate context, as opposed to committing something to our longer-term memory (e.g., to remember that information at some later point) or even just holding information while we jot it down but don’t alter it (our short-term memory ).

Of course, working memory is vital in helping to perform daily tasks, such as following directions, performing mathematical operations (like addition or subtraction), or working out where we parked in the car lot. But even more crucial, WM is extremely important in processing what someone is saying in real-time because we have to keep previous words in mind (as we see how a sentence plays out) to understand its meaning. In other words, when a speaker is talking, listeners use their working memory to store parts of the sentence, like who the subject is and information about the verb, in order to understand what is coming next.

In a sentence like, "The cat the dog chased ran up a tree," you have to hold in working memory both "the cat" and "the dog" as you work out, based on what follows, which is the subject of the main clause in order to understand who ran up the tree. You also have to be able to manipulate and put together the entire sentence structure in working memory to unpack the fact that the cat is also the entity chased by the dog .

The example above puts a greater demand on working memory than a sentence like, "The cat ran up the tree," as there is no embedded clause in this sentence as there was in the previous one ("the dog chased"). In short, the more syntactically complex a sentence, the more it taxes our working memory. This, of course, only becomes a problem if our working memory is not up to snuff.

How declines in working memory hinder language comprehension

As mentioned just above, figuring out who is doing what to whom when hearing a sentence relies greatly on our working memory, so WM impairment would be expected to have some effect on both how fast and how well we understand what someone is saying.

As an example of how such declines interfere with how language is processed, the authors cite a study that found older adults performed worse on questions about the content of advertising campaigns as sentences got longer. When sentences were short (less demand on WM), there was no difference in accuracy between the older and younger adults.

In other studies that were reviewed, participants who performed worse on working memory tests also performed worse on comprehension tasks when the assigned reading passages had more complicated sentence structures.

For instance, a sentence where a lot of information was put in an initial clause, such as "If he doesn’t pass this test, the student will fail the semester," requires more working memory than back-loaded sentences like, "The student will fail the semester if he doesn’t pass this test."

In the first example, you have to keep the initial clause in working memory while waiting to see how it will fit in with the verb in the larger sentence structure. In contrast, in the second sentence, the verb comes near the start of the sentence, and the rest just fits into the frame the verb provides since we understand that the verb "to fail" requires something to be failed and that there is usually something causing it. So here, there is less demand on our working memory, and our knowledge about the semantics of the verb helps us unpack the meaning of the sentence.

While everyone, young and old, with lower working memory scores performed worse on such sentences, the fact is that older adults will tend to be on the lower end in working memory scores as an aspect of aging. In addition, older adults have been shown to have more difficulty with inhibition control, which interferes with things like blocking out irrelevant information or suppressing incorrect responses, which might also hinder sentence processing, especially in situations when there is greater complexity.

It’s not only about our memory.

Besides working memory deficits, other factors might also be at work in the slower uptake and error rates found in aging populations. Another area that differs between older and younger adults is in the domain of what is called "verbal fluency." For instance, when asked to come up with as many names as they can for a given category (e.g., plants or animals), a task requiring them to search through word meanings that have been cognitively stored, older adults generate fewer terms overall and have less range in terms of the terms they come up with.

While this might point to a potential impairment, it may also be that living longer just gives you a larger vocabulary, which takes longer to work through when searching for a specific type of word. So, while such results support an argument that semantic access is slower in older adults, it does not suggest that older adults are worse at such semantic recall.

In fact, this richer vocabulary and semantic knowledge might be one of the compensatory strategies that older adults lean on when facing difficulties in other aspects of sentence (syntactic) processing, such as detecting grammatical errors.

Van Boxtel and Lawyer discuss a 2019 study that examined how well adults performed on identifying correct subject/verb agreement on made-up verbs ( I spuffs ) in contrast to real verbs ( I cooks ). Younger speakers were better and faster at detecting agreement errors, but particularly when evaluating the pseudo-verbs, a finding that suggested older adults’ larger semantic storage might be what’s helping them when presented with the real verb cases.

This research also suggests that our ability to interpret syntactic structures is affected in aging brains but that older adults were able to make up for this by relying on their knowledge of word meaning when performing syntactic tasks. In other words, their increased linguistic experience may help make up for age-related declines by providing a rich store of information to draw from—but only when semantic content is available to be tapped to provide clues.

The upside?

The silver lining to the litany of cognitive declines adults face as they age is that in healthy older adults, getting a lot of exposure to reading (or being read to) and prior linguistic experience gives them a larger vocabulary size that appears to offset some of these losses. A study by Payne et al. (2012) suggests that "print exposure," i.e., reading experience, not only helps by providing another source of information to draw upon when making semantic or syntactic decisions but also might even compensate for declines in those with poor working memory. So, whether it's hardback or audible, that summer read may provide much more than just a way to pass a lazy day in a hammock.

van Boxtel, W, Lawyer, L. Sentence comprehension in ageing and Alzheimer's disease. Lang Linguist Compass . 2021;e12430.

Payne, B. R., Gao, X., Noh, S. R., Anderson, C. J., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. (2012). The effects of print exposure on sentence processing and memory in older adults: Evidence for efficiency and reserve. Aging, Neuropsychology and Cognition, 19(1–2), 122–149.

Valerie Fridland, Ph.D., is a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada, Reno, and the author of Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good and Bad English.

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