Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension can be defined as the level of understanding of a passage or text. For normal reading rates (around 200-220 words per minute) an acceptable level of comprehension is above 75%.

Reading comprehension can be improved by: Training the ability to self assess comprehension, actively test comprehension using questionnaires, and by improving metacognition. Teaching conceptual and linguistic knowledge is also advantageous.

Self assessment can be conducted by summarizing, and elaborative interrogation, and those skills will gradually become more automatic through practice.

For children in K-12 public schools in the United States, building reading comprehension skills to pass the high-stake tests mandated by the No Child Left Behind Laws is a top priority. Many parents when informed that their children need to build comprehension skills do not know where to start. Effective reading comprehension is the culmination of mastering vocabulary, phonics, fluency, and reading comprehension skills. The reading skills pyramid illustrates how these skills are expected to be built in most public schools.

Reading comprehension skills separates the "passive" unskilled reader from the "active" readers. Skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. To help a beginning reader understand this concept, you might make them privy to the dialogue readers have with themselves while reading.

Skilled readers, for instance:

• Predict what will happen next in a story using clues presented in text
• Create questions about the main idea, message, or plot of the text
• Monitor understanding of the sequence, context, or characters
• Clarify parts of the text which have confused them
• Connect the events in the text to prior knowledge or experience

Reading Comprehension Testing

Comprehension testing is very useful in improving reading comprehension, not only because it gives the teacher a measure of progress, but it supplements the reader's perception of his or her own ability. Learning readers commonly fail to accurately assess their own comprehension. A comprehension test can accelerate their ability to self assess their own comprehension levels as they progress. However, a poorly constructed reading comprehension test can deceive the learner and disturb progress. Indeed, it has been found that poorly constructed tests often train the reader to mis-assess their own reading performance.

Reading comprehension is best tested using carefully constructed questions which quiz natural, or non-concocted passages of text. The questions themselves can be requests to summarize, open ended questions, Cloze formats, and carefully constructed multiple choice questions.

The multiple choice format must use questions that quiz the overall meanings of the text, the details and the most important meaning of the words. The background of the reader must be taken into account. For example, if an answer is general knowledge, then it will not measure the comprehension of the passage, but the memory of that knowledge. Likewise, the questions should not give clues to the answers of other questions. In this way it makes the multiple choice format hard to devise. Speed reading courses and books generally design their comprehension tests using the antithesis of these factors in order to mislead the reader into believing that their reading comprehension has improved with increased speed.

Reading Comprehension Instruction: Mental Modeling Accelerates Improvement of Reading Comprehension

Definition and Value

     Mental modeling is thinking aloud to demonstrate inner scripts such as a proficient reader/thinker might use to “strategize” complex cognitive operations and  in ways that entice a learner to imitate and improvise such scripts for use in analogous situations. It also is known as “cognitive apprenticeship,” a term that conveys the historical origins of mental modeling in teaching crafts, though now recognized for its robust value in conveying habits of mind. Mental modeling is efficient and effective because students tend to emulate (copy and personalize) broader characteristics of the model, such as social poise, language and demeanor, as well as more narrowly defined objectives of traditional teaching

Intuitive, But Elusive Concept

   Mental modeling is the fundamental process of natural language acquisition. Parents incidentally use mental modeling because they intuitively realize that it imparts culture and values by becoming part of inner-speech which mediates and self-regulates attitudes and behavior. Nonetheless, its use in formal education had been delayed until recent times due to pragmatic and theoretical problems. At a practical level, the challenges were in how to get and hold student attention, and in reducing the social consequences of early and awkward learning in the social setting of the classroom. At a theory level, there was the issue of whether invisible mental processes could be adequately displayed for emulation and refinement as thinking/learning strategies. Lev Vygotsky wrote with considerable insight into the interactions of the two competing constructs of the time, behaviorism and social-imitation learning theory. Importantly, neither theory held a sound explanation for two other intuitively evident aspects of cognitive growth; vicarious and self-regulated learning. Vygotsky, and others, such as Jerome Bruner, wrote plaintively for discovery and social collaboration and more holistic, top-down teaching, - or, what today would be called constructivism. However, neither was able to define teaching methods that concretely captured these qualities.

Proof-of-Principle

   A proof-of-principle emerged in the form of a method for improving reading comprehension based on mental modeling. This was notable since there was an unspoken belief that comprehension and intellectual capacity, which had been found to be highly correlated, were nearly one and therefore that each was relatively immutable. Using a customized form of mental modeling, the Reciprocal Questioning (ReQuest) Procedure was shown to significantly improve reading comprehension with remedial level readers (Manzo, 1968; 1969). ReQuest is a relatively simple procedure that has the teacher and students take turns asking questions about the first few sentences of a reading selection. The teacher models this comprehension, problem-solving strategy in the form of questions for independently setting a purpose for reading, and in think aloud reflections in answer to student questions. Students quickly began to imitate both the teacher’s questions and  question “answering” strategies; they imitated and emulated the mental operations of models. Mental modeling appeared efficient, non-sequential,  and holistic, but it also seemed to require certain supportive conditions..

Conditions for Effective Mental Modeling

Mental modeling seems to require an opposable thumb.  Reciprocity appears to play this role. It permits teacher and students to pick-up on one another’s “language of thinking” in an admittedly unnatural, but robust instructional, conversation. The procedure requires “rotation” away from the teacher’s natural tendency to control talk, and inadvertent, repressive power over student talk. It also creates a diagnostic dialogue from which the teacher can further identify particular student needs and coach students in specifically prescribed strategic scripts: Reciprocal mental modeling reveals but does not publicly expose student needs. It also offers students scaffold opportunities to try-out thinking strategies in a low-risk environment in which they can vicariously learn by observing others until they are ready to venture out into the instructional conversation. There is a foreboding: reciprocal modeling can mirror back a teacher’s quirks of language and thought as well as proficiencies. However, the reciprocal dialogue informs and shapes teacher question asking and answering as well as that of students.

Mental Modeling is broadly Applicable Reciprocal Mental Modeling is a paradigm that can be applied in a variety of cognitive enrichment formats such as in teaching phonics and in language development through reciprocal inquiry over pictures. These uses are less well known, and probably in need of further specification.

References Manzo, A.V. Improving reading comprehension through reciprocal questioning (Doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 1968). Manzo, A.V. (1969) ReQuest: a method for improving reading comprehension through reciprocal questioning. Journal ¬of ¬Reading, 13, 123-126. Manzo, A. V., Manzo, U.C. in Mental Modeling in Literacy in America: an encyclopedia of History, theory and practice (Ed. B. Guzzetti) Santa Barbara: California, ABC CLIO publisher. (2002), I, p. 344.

References

• Harris and Sipay (1990) How to Increase Reading Ability. Longman

• Perfetti (1995) Reading Ability New York:Oxford University Press

See also

• Reading comprehension for special needs