S515 School Age Language: Comprehension

COMPREHENSION:

Comprehension process: the act of constructing meaning with oral or written text.

The listener or reader creates and modifies a mental representation of the meaning of the oral or written text using multiple interacting factors. These interacting factors may include the text itself, the listener or reader (knowledgebase, views, skills, strategies...), and the context in which the communication occurs.

The process of comprehension ultimately refers to the listener's or reader’s understanding of the message expressed by the speaker or writer. The process is focused on accessing the meaning of a message communicated by someone else. Therefore, listeners/readers and speakers/writers are all involved within the process.

Comprehension is a “growth construct,” meaning that it continues to develop across the lifespan (contrast: “mastery construct” which implies an ability to develop that skill to completion)
Develops through both conscious and unconscious strategies and skills

overtime, it becomes a more unconscious process but even skilled comprehenders still use conscious strategies at time

There are “multiple paths” in the development of reading comprehension; students may score similarly on a test of comprehension but exhibit very different sets of skills and weaknesses
Reading comprehension is a complex process and is dependent upon on various factors and the development of many underlying skills:

Cognition: including inferencing, monitoring and other executive skills
Oral language: development of written and oral language comprehension are inextricably linked and mutually reinforce one another (i.e. larger oral vocabulary increases written comprehension, written comprehension increases oral vocabulary)
Metalinguistic skills
Home and school environment: including exposure to literature, oral and written discourse styles, instructional practices and strategies taught
Cultural factors and world knowledge

3. Stage of reading impacted (required) - KL

Essentially, every stage of reading development (emergent - advanced) is impacted by comprehension skills.

“The roots of reading comprehension are laid very early” (p. 220); “Children’s innate characteristics affect the development of comprehension” (p. 220).
Foundations of comprehension are laid in the first years of life, as infants extract meaning from facial expressions, vocal patterns, and speech.

As the child develops cognitively, more complex message become easier to understand when listening and reading.

Can cause more evident problems later on in reading development (intermediate - advanced) when children are expected to be able to understand, apply, and expand. Without developed understanding, they cannot apply or expand.

Reading and writing are affected such that vocabulary may be underdeveloped and style may be rigid.

4. Connections to oral language? - KM

Comprehension is the process of deriving meaning from not only written, but also oral text (p. 200).

There are processes used to help derive meaning from written text (i.e. controlling rate, re-reading, skimming) that aren’t able to be used with oral text. Different demands are placed on an individual when he/she is the reader versus when the comprehension task revolves around oral language comprehension.

Research had found that oral language predicts later reading comprehension abilities (p. 204).

Overall language comprehension measures (including receptive and expressive language measures) are highly predictive of later reading comprehension skills (p. 205).

Listening comprehension has been found to predict later reading comprehension (p. 209)
Word comprehension and fluency, in particular, have shown strong implications for later reading comprehension (p. 217).

Be cautious when deciding whether to let predictors of reading comprehension (such as oral language) influence your intervention plan.

Participation in conversation aids in learning to read/write for communicative purposes (p. 207).
Comprehension of oral instruction and participation in social interaction helps prepare brain to develop reading comprehension skills.

5. Connections to bilingual or culturally/linguistically diverse? LL & JL

As expected, language interaction that occurs within the home impacts a child’s language development. As cited in Duke and Carlisle, a study conducted by Hart and Risley found that children’s vocabulary is correlated with the language that their parents directed at them.
Home factors, including the bilingual or cultural linguistic factors associated with a child’s home life and upbringing can certainly influence reading comprehension in the early elementary years and beyond. As cited in Duke and Carlisle, Snow et al. (1991) conducted a study on ethnically diverse, low-income students in the early elementary years (over a 2-year period) and identified several factors that influence reading comprehension. These factors included educational expectations for the child, parental involvement in schooling, family income/SES, amount of television watched in the home, exposure to outside experiences with a parent, ect... . (Pg. 210).
In regards to bilingual and culturally diverse populations, different students are likely to have had different experiences and opportunities to learn about “genre-influenced aspects of reading comprehension” (p. 216). Also, they are likely to have benefitted from these opportunities and experiences differently depending on their specific language or reading abilities.

Group Members: Lesa Lamb, Jessie Landmark, Kara Lillwitz, Kelsey Miller

S515 School Age Language