CHAPTER 8 DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGES IN READING COMPREHENSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTION AUTHORS: SUZANNE M. ADLOF, CHARLES A. PERFETTI, AND HUGH W. CATTS PRESENTED BY MARIA DANIELA GARCIA

WHAT IS COMPREHENSION? Basically, comprehension is the art of understanding LANGUAGE whether delivered orally or in writing… (Adlof, Perfetti, Catts, 2011)

COMPONENTS Word Reading and Language Comprehension. Both are necessary Neither is sufficient for successful reading comprehension. Usually highly correlated. Also dissociable.

LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION/PERFORMANCE

CHANGES IN READING COMPREHENSION OVERTIME Early Elementary grades Primary factor associated with reading comprehension: WORD READING Upper Elementary Grades Primary factor associated with reading comprehension: LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION This information was obtain from a set of longitudinal studies conducted by Adlof in 2006 in which 604 children from the Iowa state were followed from kindergarten through eight grade, with assessments on word reading, language comprehension, and reading comprehension occurring at second, fourth, and eight grades.

CONCURRENT WORD READING AND LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION SKILLS

WHY DOES THIS SHIFT OCCUR? Children in early grades are “learning to read”. They begin to learn how to decode print, and their spoken language knowledge far exceeds their decoding abilities, whereas in upper grades word reading accounts for more variance because most students know how to read most words “reading to learn”. Nature of the materials to be comprehended changes across grades.

BASIC PROFILES OF READERS Specific Decoding Difficulty—in spite of relatively good language skills. Good Readers—good skills in both word reading and language comprehension Mixed Difficulties— this group displays the most common profile of reading difficulties. These are the poor readers. Specific Comprehension Difficulty—language comprehension is low relative to their word reading ability. Readers can vary along dimensions of word reading and language comprehension. There are four basic profiles of readers predicted. These profiles indicate relative strength and weaknesses. Language Comprehension Word Reading

LATE EMERGENT POOR READERS Who are they? Children who appear to be good readers in the early grades but show reading difficulties around 4 th grade and beyond. Why does this happen? This usually happens to children with specific comprehension deficits. Early assessments of reading comprehension are explained by word reading skills which makes them appear like good readers. When comprehension demands on reading assessments increase after 3 rd or 2 nd grade children’s comprehension difficulties may emerge as a surprise to parents and teachers. There is also evidence that some specific decoding deficits can be late to emerge.

PERFETTI’S SIMPLE VIEW In Perfetti’s (1977) conception, reading comprehension was modeled as the sum of word reading, language comprehension and X (with X being open to an “everything else” interpretation.

POTENTIAL ADDITIONS TO THE SIMPLE VIEW OF READING COMPREHENSION Vocabulary BackgroundKnowledge NonverbalCognitiveAbilities

Adolf’s study of 2006 concluded that children who were accurate but slow readers ALWAYS had good reading comprehension ‘if’ their language comprehension was also good. These findings suggest that fluency develops as an OUTCOME of good word reading and language skills. Fluency is important, however, speed itself does not appear to be an independent source of comprehension difficulty.

There is substantial evidence that vocabulary knowledge does influence word reading for both skilled and unskilled readers. However, is not necessarily to propose that vocabulary needs to be added to the simple view model, but rather to highlight the pivotal role of vocabulary knowledge as the link between word reading and comprehension.

There is a strong relationship between background knowledge and vocabulary: the more one knows about a topic, the more likely one is to be familiar with vocabulary specific to that topic. The relationship between background knowledge and reading comprehension is logically reciprocal. The more one knows the more one can comprehend—and the more one learns.

Some evidence suggests that cognitive skills that go beyond language processing may be involved in reading comprehension. Catts and Compton found that late emerging poor readers are as likely to have had deficits in nonverbal IQ as in oral language skills.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTION The goal of assessment in the preschool and kindergarten years is to typically to determine a child’s risk for having reading difficulties later on. Measures that are predictive of skills in word reading are phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, rapid automatic naming, as well as demographic risk factors such as a family history of reading difficulties.

EARLY SCHOOL YEARS The purpose of assessment during the primary grades (when formal reading instruction has begun) is to monitor progress in reading, as well as to identify risk for later difficulties. A throughout assessment will include: measurements of children’s decoding skills and their ability to recognize both regularly and irregularly spelled real words. Reading comprehension measures in the early grades are RELIANT on assessment of word reading abilities, and these alone may not be sufficient to identify children who will have comprehension difficulties later on…

MIDDLE GRADES AND BEYOND The purpose of reading assessment in the middle grades and beyond is to identify children with current problems. For students who earn low scores in a standardized assessment of reading comprehension (which are used precisely to confirm whether general reading skills are progressing normally) must have follow-up assessments of word reading (decoding and sight words) and language comprehension (vocabulary, grammar, discourse) in order to determine the source of difficulty and addressing them.

THE EARLY GRADE READING ASSESSMENT: APPLICATIONS AND INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE BASIC LITERACY

QUESTION How can this information help you to become a better teacher?