Reading Comprehension Dimensions
This document presents the core cognitive concepts and skills critical to reading comprehension that form the basis for the reading tutor's design and development. The following major categories are derived from the best research in reading comprehension. Our primary source is the anthology Handbook of Reading Research, Volume 2, specifically chapter 10: Expository Text by Charlese A. Weaver, III and Walter Kintsch.
Each section below begins with a direct quotation from this source followed by our application of the research findings into our reading comprehension product.
Building a Mental Map
"One type of mental representation that is formed in the process of comprehension is the textbase. It represents the memory for the text itself and controls the reader’s ability to reproduce the text in recognition, recall, and summarization." (p. 238)
The ability of a reader to build a mental map of the text is an important skill in accomplishing high-level goals and results in reading comprehension. A reader who has adequately assimilated a text can usually visualize where in the text specific important information can be found. The reading coach utilizes various activities to promote building a mental map of the article. Examples include
- Locating glossary terms within the passage
- Completing cloze activities from glossary terms into the passage
- Asking the reader to recall how many times he/she saw an important term within the passage.
Building Vocabulary
"Effective comprehension requires a balanced allotment of limited attentional resources. If normally automated components of the process begin to absorb too much of these resources, controlled attention-demanding subprocesses will suffer. Thus, it is not just a matter of whether a person can do something, but how easy it is: if all my attention goes to the vocabulary and syntax level … I may not be able to form a coherent macrostructure and hence be able to recall what I have read." (pp 236-237)
It is impossible to internalize concepts from an article without adequate vocabulary relevant to the topic at hand. While some unfamiliar terms can be inferred from the context of the article, inference must comprise a small percentage of the vocabulary task. An essential byproduct of reading is building vocabulary. The reading coach dynamically constructs various vocabulary activities from the passage glossary including
- Identifying true and false statements about the passage
- Selecting the correct vocabulary term for a definition
- Selecting the correct definition for a vocabulary term from a list, or within the passage
Organizing Information
"Understanding is impossible without a considerable amount of knowledge activation … and that comprehension is basically predictive and expectation driven. We understand because we have activated an appropriate knowledge structure which we then use to organize the new information and connect it with what we already know." (p. 237)
While much information can be gleaned from a targeted glossary of an article, isolated facts only come into focus within a larger, organized format. Structural mental organization is critical to retaining information that is read. Concept maps are one means of externalizing mental structures that we build from information. The reading coach dynamically generates concept map activities from the passage which have the reader
- Identify details relevant to a given topic
- Identify topics relevant to a set of details
- Fill in missing components of a concept map for the passage
- Construct a concept map for the passage
Retaining Information
"That the reader-text interaction is crucial in comprehension has been argued for a long time by educators and literary scholars." (p. 236)
We all experience the phenomenon of reading where we suddenly ‘come to’ and realize that we have not retained what we just read. Interest in the subject matter plays an important role, but we can’t always confine our reading to subjects that interest us. It is important to develop strategies for retaining information from text. This usually requires some form of “active reading” that involves combining new information with background knowledge and vocabulary we already have.
By engaging the reader in mindful, active reading, the reading coach promotes information retention of the passage at hand. In addition, the techniques the reading coach uses can be applied to reading tasks by the reader outside of the system.
Background Knowledge
"Discourse comprehension requires not only a large set of processing strategies, ranging from the perceptual level to the linguistic and discourse level, but also quite specific content knowledge in the domain of the text. The most sophisticated processing strategies will not be of much help if a text deals with a totally foreign domain." (p. 237)
It is difficult if not impossible to comprehend and retain information without connecting it to knowledge one already has. So an important component of improving reading comprehension lies in building a personal knowledge base that is relevant to future comprehension and retention tasks. In a general sense, articles about history and historical events provide a tremendous benefit because they do so without requiring an extensive scaffold of prior knowledge such as science, mathematics or complex technologies. The reading coach has an extensive catalog of over 1000 articles in history, art, music, science, technology and sports that are designed to engage young readers and help them build background knowledge that they can apply elsewhere. The articles are 300 to 700 words long with readability levels suitable for middle school readers.
Motivation
"When ratings of interestingness were compared with traditional readability measures it was found that interestingness accounted for greater than 25 times the variance that readability did." (p. 241)
Mastering any new skill has ups and downs. As teachers we strive to help students find motivation, but also to try to reduce anti-motivating factors. The reading coach offers students a large catalog of articles (over 1000) on various topics from different regions and time frames. Just a few of the topics include articles on art, music, science, sports, technology, empires and war. They span time frames from long before the fall of Rome, to the twentieth century, and cover virtually every continent in the world. Since there is no curriculum agenda, the student can go wherever his or her interests lie, placing control firmly in the student's hands.
Few people enjoy doing things they consistently fail at. As teachers we strive to help students approach new skills using various techniques to mitigate frustrations that students experience. This reading coach strives to make reading an active, rather than passive, experience for the reader. This is accomplished through various activities that are tied to the content of the article at hand. The level of challenge any given activity poses is governed by the recent feedback the system has received from the student. For students that appear to struggle, the system will break the article down into smaller pieces. This accomplishes two things. First, by presenting two or three paragraphs at a time the task appears less daunting. Activities are integrated into each segment of the article thus assisting the student in the task of comprehension. For students who need even more assistance, the student has the option of having each paragraph of the article read aloud. This can help students who need help phonically sounding out words, and can even serve as a tool to supplement English language learners.