Chapter Eight

Comprehension

Comprehension is a creative, multifaceted thinking process in which students engage with the text. Comprehension involves different levels of thinking, from literal to inferential, critical and evaluative; which are the four distinct levels of comprehension.

1. Literal Comprehension: readers pick out main ideas, sequence details, notice similarities and differences, and identify explicitly stated reasons.
2. Inferential Comprehension: This (and levels 3 and 4) differ from literal comprehension because students use their own knowledge, along with information presented in the text. Readers use clues in the text, implied information, and their background knowledge to draw inferences.
3. Critical Comprehension: Readers analyze symbolic meanings, distinguish facts from opinions, and draw conclusions.
4. Evaluative Comprehension: Readers judge the value of a text using generally accepted criteria and personal standards.

Text Complexity

A new way of examining comprehension to determine the cognitive demands of books, more specifically, how well readers can complete an assigned task with a particular text. There are multiple factors that affect text complexity

• Qualitative dimensions: Teachers examine a book’s layout: structure, language features, and purpose and meaning; and the demands placed on readers background knowledge.
• Qualitative measures: Teachers use readability formulas or other sources to determine a books grade appropriateness by calculating word length, word frequency, word difficulty, sentence length, text length, and other qualitative features. they often rely on computer software to determine reading levels, such as Lexile scores.
• Reader and task considerations: Teachers reflect on how they expect students to interact with the book, and on students’ literacy knowledge and strategy use as well as their motivation and interests.

Reader and Text Factors (what readers think about when they read)

Readers are actively engaged with the text they’re reading; they think about many things as they comprehend the text. For example, they do the following:

• Activate prior knowledge
• Estimate the text to uncover its organization
• Make predictions
• Connect to their own experiences
• Create mental images
• Draw inferences
• Notice symbols and other literary devices
• Monitor their understanding

Comprehension Factors and Roles in Comprehension

Inferences

An inference is a conclusion that can be made, based on evidence and reasoning. Readers seem to “read between the lines” to draw inferences, but what they actual do is synthesize their background knowledge with the authors clues to ask questions that point toward inferences. Teachers begin by explaining what inferences are, why they’re important, and how inferential thinking differs from literal thinking. They then teach these four steps in drawing inferences:

Comprehension Skills

These skills are related to strategies, but the big difference is that skills involve literal thinking; like a question that has one correct answer. Some skills readers use include:

• Recognizing details
• Noticing similarities and differences
• Identifying the topic sentence
• Comparing and contrasting main ideas and details
• Matching causes with effect
• Sequencing details
• Paraphrasing ideas

Teachers teach these skills and students practice until they become automatic procedures that don’t require conscious thought or interpretation.

In contrast, this is how the comprehension strategies fit into the reading process.

• 

Creating an Expectation of Comprehension

Teachers can’t assume that students will learn to comprehend simply by doing lots of reading. Instead, students develop and understanding of comprehension through a combination of instruction and authentic reading activities. Teachers create an expectation of comprehension in these ways:

• 

Ways to Teach Comprehension Strategies

Teachers teach individual comprehension strategies and then show students how to integrate several strategies simultaneously. Listed below is a list of ways to teach comprehension strategies

• 

Reciprocal Teaching

An instructional activity in which students become the teacher in small group reading sessions. Teachers model, then help students learn to guide group discussions using four strategies: summarizing, question generating, clarifying, and predicting. Once students have learned the strategies, they take turns assuming the role of teacher in leading a discussion about what has been read.

Assessing Comprehension

Teachers use the integrated instruction-assessment cycle to ensure their students are growing in their ability to understand complex texts. Teachers use these informal assessments, along with diagnostic tests to track reader comprehension:

Factors Affecting Student Motivation

Classroom Application

I think it’s very important to understand what affects student motivation; so that we can identify if there is a lack of motivation and how we can intervene. On the other side, we also know what motivates our students and we can integrate those ideas into our lessons. This way we can be proactive in terms of student motivation; we can instill it and also notice if/why it isn’t present.