Reading comprehension depends on both decoding skills and language comprehension, with neither being sufficient alone. Poor comprehenders can decode well yet struggle with understanding text due to language impairments or deficits in metacognitive skills. Effective assessment and targeted interventions, including vocabulary enhancement and comprehension strategies, are crucial for improving reading comprehension in children.

1. Reading Comprehension
Impairment

2. The Simple View of Reading
• Understanding what you
read depends upon 1
Comprehension
decoding skill and Fluent
language comprehension Reading
• Both skills are necessary 0
Decoding
1
• Neither skill is sufficient
for reading
0
R=DXC

3. What is decoding skill?
• Decoding refers to the ability to translate
letters into sounds
• It is sometimes called ‘phonics’
• If you can’t decode the words on a page, then
you can’t understand what is written
• So, poor decoding is a bottleneck to reading
comprehension

4. What is Language Comprehension?
• Language Comprehension refers to the processes used to
understand spoken language
• If you can’t understand spoken language then no matter how
well you can decode, you won’t understand what you read
• Poor language comprehension is an obstacle to reading
comprehension
• As the next slide shows, Language Comprehension is a
complex process

5. What is Language Comprehension?
• Basic processes
– Vocabulary (knowledge of word meanings)
– Sentence comprehension
• Higher level processes
– Pragmatics (going beyond literal meaning to understand
what is relevant)
– Inferencing – integrating sentences and background
knowledge
• Difficulties in any of these areas will affect a
child’s ability to understand text

6. Additional Issues
• Text Comprehension also depends upon higher level skills such as:
– Metacognitive strategies
• Understanding Story Structure
• Comprehension monitoring
• Cognitive control (executive) processes
– Working memory
» Because meanings have to be integrated across different
parts of the text
» Attentional capacity – sustained attention to keep on task
– Inhibition / suppression
» To ensure selective attention to the main theme of the text
and to avoid distracting details

7. ‘Poor comprehender’
• The term ‘poor comprehender’ is used to refer
to a child who can decode well but who has
below average reading comprehension for
their age
• In extreme cases, the term ‘hyperlexia’ has
been used when decoding exceeds mental age
and comprehension is poor
– Profile often associated with autism

8. Problems of Reading
Comprehension
• More generally, children with language
learning impairments often have reading
comprehension problems
– Some are ‘poor comprehenders’
– Others have problems of decoding AND
comprehension; it can be said that they have
‘dyslexia with poor reading comprehension’.

9. Cognitive Profile
• Nation, Clarke, Marshall and Durand, 2004 JSLHR
– Reported that 35% of poor comprehenders meet
criteria for specific language impairment
– They showed poor performance on measures of:
• Vocabulary
• Recalling sentences
• Use of past-tense forms
• Understanding of Grammar (TROG)
– All of these skills are important for understanding
what we read.

10. What causes reading
comprehension impairments?
• Need evidence from:
– Longitudinal studies
• Tracking children’s progress over time
– Training studies

11. Developmental Picture
Nation, Cocksey, Taylor & Bishop, 2010
• Longitudinal study of 242 children seen at 5, 6, 7, 8 years
• Age 8, 15 children were poor comprehenders; could read
accurately, but had poor understanding of what they read
• These children were compared with other children matched
on word-level reading accuracy
• PCs showed poor reading comprehension at each time point
and few gains between 6 and 8 years
• Phonological skills (analysing/remembering speech sounds)
normal throughout – very different from classic dyslexia
• Impairments of language and listening comprehension
throughout indicative of possible causes

12. Developmental Profile
Catts, Adlof & Ellis Weismer (2006)
Word Identification Word Attack
GORT
Passage Comprehension
Comprehension

13. How can poor reading
comprehension be identified?
• Informally, by asking a child to read a passage
– Ask questions such as
• Who was in the story?
• What did they do?
• Why did they do that?
• What do you think happens next?
• Can you re-tell the story?
– If the child had read the story accurately but has
trouble with these questions, then they may have
a reading comprehension problem

14. Formally Assessing Reading
Comprehension
• An objective test should go beyond decoding
• First, check that the child can decode adequately
(using a test of single word reading)
• Second, use a test which taps both literal
understanding and the ability to make inferences
• AVOID a group administered test – these depend too
strongly on decoding skills
• A suite of tests for assessment of children at primary
and secondary levels is the YARC
http://www.yarcsupport.co.uk/

15. Helping Poor Comprehenders
• Evidence suggests that promoting oral
language comprehension can help reading
comprehension
– Boosting vocabulary is particularly important
• Poor comprehenders can also be helped by
working on inferencing and other
metacognitive skills, such as comprehension
monitoring
http://readingformeaning.co.uk/

16. Conclusions
• Children with weak oral language skills often have
problems with reading comprehension
• In addition to their language difficulties they may have
impairments in making inferences, meta-cognitive skills
(eg use of story structure; comprehension monitoring)
and working memory
• Impairments in vocabulary (semantic) deficits appear to
be critical – training vocabulary can improve reading
comprehension
• Reading comprehension difficulties should be viewed
within the wider context of children’s cognitive and
linguistic skills

17. For References and Additional Information
see
http://www.slideshare.net/RALLICampaign/readi
ng-comprehension-reference-list