About the author: Julie Tollefson is editor of the Stratenotes and Strategram publications at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. This article originally appeared in the December 1997 issue of Strategram, a newsletter for SIM teachers.
Technological advances have made an ever-increasing volume of information available in many easily accessible forms. Yet, despite the audio and visual components central to many new methods of receiving information, reading remains an essential way of gathering information. Even broadcast news and computer games often include on-screen text vital to viewer or participant understanding.
For most people, being able to read and being able to understand what they are reading are key to their ability to creatively and effectively process information and live successful lives.
"Children are taught to read so that they can understand what is in text. Thus...reading instruction matters because ultimately it affects whether the student develops into a reader who can comprehend what is in text," Michael Pressley writes in his chapter, "What Should Comprehension Instruction be the Instruction of?" in the Handbook of Reading Research (in press).
Pressley, of Notre Dame University, embraces an approach to instruction that mixes word-level processes such as decoding with a broader perspective encompassing building background knowledge and using strategies to increase reading comprehension. During a keynote address at a Strategic Instruction Model Trainers' national conference in July, Pressley recommended the following elements as essential for good reading programs:
Regrettably, he noted that seldom do reading programs incorporate appropriate instruction in each of these areas.
Teaching students the skills necessary to recognize words increases the chances students will succeed in reading. These skills include the ability to sound out words and to recognize word chunks (prefixes and suffixes, for example). The ability to understand a reading passage is greater when the reader can easily recognize or decode words.
Still, Pressley believes emphasizing decoding to the exclusion of other instructional elements stops short of the final goal.
"For some," he said of decoding, "it's the end of everything. I'm going to argue that it's just the beginning, that ultimately what we're interested in is kids being able to understand."
As such, Pressley cautions against placing too much emphasis on such activities as sounding out words.
"As it turns out, that kind of decoding is a killer with respect to comprehension," Pressley said. "If you spend all your capacity sounding a word out, you are much less certain to understand it."
That's because the processes of recognizing and understanding words both occur in short-term memory, essentially competing for shares of the brain's processing power. To minimize the limitations created by this competition, teachers can develop other tactics, including encouraging the development of sight words.
When students are able to recognize words automatically, they are much more likely to understand what they are reading. Drills focusing on common words can help students build a repertoire of words that they recognize as soon as they see them.
Pressley described a study in which one group of children engaged in such drills until they were able to recognize a set of words rapidly. Their instructors paid very little attention to the meaning of the words during this acquisition phase. A second group of children never saw the words but spent a lot of time talking with researchers about the meanings of the words.
The study results indicated that the first group of students--those who had learned to recognize the words automatically--had a better understanding of reading passages containing these words than did the children who had focused on the meaning of the words rather than recognition.
Teachers who want to encourage students to recognize common words on sight need look no further than their local bookstores or libraries for help. The reference sections of many bookstores or libraries contain resources listing the most common words.
"There aren't that many," Pressley said. "It is well within imagination that you can develop automaticity with respect to most of these words."
After a reader recognizes a word, how does the reader know he or she has figured out the right word? Semantic contextual processing is very important at this point in the overall reading comprehension process, Pressley said.
"Attending to semantic contextual cues is in fact critical," Pressley said. "It's not critical at the recognition stage. It's critical once you have recognized and think you know what the word is."
One of the things that good readers do and not-so-good readers don't do, he said, is they follow up their decoding efforts by examining whether the word's meaning fits into the context of the reading passage. This practice should be encouraged to improve understanding.
Another important element supported by reading comprehension research is vocabulary development.
"Good readers always have big vocabularies in the sense of knowing the meanings of lots and lots of words," Pressley said, "and they know them so well that they're sort of immediately accessible."
Using the same list of common words identified for sight recognition drills, teachers can devise vocabulary building exercises for students. Vocabulary instruction that incorporates many opportunities for students to use the words in many ways over a long period will be most effective.
Although students can increase their knowledge of word meanings through targeted vocabulary instruction, the most common way of adding words to a vocabulary is through encountering new words in reading passages or speaking contexts multiple times. Words learned in this way are going to stick in a person's vocabulary better than words learned through specific instruction. Teachers can help students build their vocabularies, and improve their reading comprehension, by encouraging extensive reading.
"You can't knock this," Pressley said. "It's a very good thing to do."
In addition to increasing vocabulary, extensive reading contributes to building a wide store of background knowledge and developing a better understanding of the structure of language. Extensive reading also increases the chances a reader will develop fluent, automatic recognition of words because of the number of times the reader sees each word in text. Pressley reminds teachers that these benefits are not restricted by age or ability.
"Encouraging extensive reading is possible throughout elementary schooling and for all students, for even the youngest and most immature readers can 'read' picture books," he writes in the Handbook of Reading Research.
When readers can relate new information in text to something they already know, they are much more likely to understand and remember what they are reading. To help them build these relationships, encourage students to ask themselves why a fact is true and to figure out the answer to the question based on what they already know.
"All theories of comprehension deal with this business of prior knowledge," Pressley said.
Good readers automatically relate relevant prior knowledge to a passage they are reading, he said. Weaker readers, however, have trouble relating prior knowledge and may make irrelevant connections that impede their understanding.
Pressley advocates exerting conscious control over processes--using strategies--to improve comprehension. Among the strategies he recommends are ensuring that readers know why they are reading a passage, associating prior knowledge explicitly, underlining important information, and taking notes.
"Very good readers do these things," Pressley said. "Lots of kids don't do these things."
Studies have found all of Pressley's recommendations to be effective for improving reading comprehension. To this point, however, research has focused on only one element at a time.
"We have no idea what would happen if we actually tried to do all of these things," Pressley said. "One of the things that we do know is that elementary classrooms are complex enough with enough things going on that you could do all of these things."
It is interesting to note how various Learning Strategies and Content Enhancement Routines from the Strategic Instruction Model can be used to address several of the factors in Pressley's reading framework. Clearly, the Word Identification Strategy can be used to teach students to decode words. The Vocabulary Strategy (LINCS) and the Clarifying Routine can be used to teach students vocabulary meanings. To bolster comprehension and to assist students in making sense of the text, the Paraphrasing Strategy, the Self-Questioning Strategy, the Visual Imagery Strategy, and the Survey Routine can all be used to the student's advantage. Hence, many of the strategies and routines included in SIM can become part of an overall reading program that, of necessity, must consist of many factors.
Consistently, the research findings of the Center for Research on Learning have underscored how very important it is for at-risk students to be provided with instruction that is well designed and comprehensive in nature. These students generally do not benefit from instruction that is sporadic or uncoordinated. Pressley has very convincingly argued that fluent readers are best developed when the instruction they receive is balanced and takes into account the array of factors described in this article. As SIM instruction is offered to students with reading problems, it is important to consider all of the factors in Pressley's framework and not just the ones that a specific SIM strategy is designed to address.
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