Effective Strategies for Developing Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This chapter focuses on instructional strategies for improving reading comprehension of students with learning disabilities (LD). It discusses the nature of reading comprehension and highlights comprehension diffi culties experienced by students with LD. This discussion is followed by a selective overview of the research on cognitive and metacognitive strategies, with a focus on components of effective instruction gleaned from the research on reading comprehension. Keywords Reading comprehension • Reading strategies • Cognitive strategy instruction • Metacognition • Learning disabilities Effective Strategies for Developing Reading ComprehensionReading comprehension has been defi ned as "the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language" (Shanahan et al., 2010 , p. 5). Considered as the "essence of reading" (Durkin, 1993 ), reading comprehension is a complex task that involves processing at multiple levels. To comprehend text, readers must interact with the words, sentences, paragraphs, and larger discourse units (e.g., whole text). They must do more than simply interpret what is explicitly stated in the text. In order to learn in the content areas and achieve academic success, it is critical that students be purposeful in their reading. Purposeful reading entails planning, selecting, and using appropriate strategies to effectively engage with the text, connecting prior knowledge to new information, and simultaneously monitoring understanding. Many students with LD consistently experience problems in comprehending text. Although the group of students with diffi culties in reading comprehension is diverse, some general characteristics of this group include problems in identifying main ideas and supporting details, asking questions, paraphrasing text, predicting information, drawing inferences, and recalling textual ideas (Gajria, Jitendra, Sood, & Sacks, 2007 ;Gersten, Fuchs, Williams, & Baker, 2001 ). Creating a summary or gist of the main ideas of a text is also diffi cult for many students as they struggle to differentiate important ideas from unimportant details and have trouble ignoring extraneous information (Gajria & Salvia, 1992 ). Moreover, they experience difficulty in understanding expository text patterns and using text structure knowledge to guide encoding and retrieval of academic concepts (Williams & Pao, 2013 ).These challenges are not necessarily rooted in discrepant language experiences or decoding skills that are not automatic, but may be infl uenced by insuffi cient prior knowledge. Students may lack the requisite schema or background knowledge to draw inferences essential to comprehending a text (Kendeou & van den Broek, 2007 ), or in some cases may fail to activate it despite having the relevant schema (Elbro & Buch-Iversen, 2013 ). Working memory capacity is also critical for reading comprehension as it holds new information and allows the reader to connect it with prior knowledge to construct a representation ...

Teaching English home language to foundation phase learners from diverse backgrounds

“…Some authors support the position that there is an association between contextual knowledge and the comprehension skills of EHL (Gajria & Jitendra 2016;Kendeou & O'Brien 2018). In this study, the teachers' responses gave a clear picture of the positive impact of the activities, which they engaged their learners in, as making a major contribution.…”

“…In this study, the teachers' responses gave a clear picture of the positive impact of the activities, which they engaged their learners in, as making a major contribution. Furthermore, it was acknowledged that the technique of incorporating context knowledge using games, puzzles and songs while teaching words helped adapt the teaching style to the comprehension skills of EHL -especially with respect to learners from diverse language backgrounds (Gajria & Jitendra 2016;Kendeou & O'Brien 2018). Participants alluded to the fact that music was also a powerful way to influence school learners' emotional behaviour, as they saw singing as a calming game or practice, not as an educational process.…”

The Impact of a Tier 1 Intervention on Fifth and Sixth Graders’ Reading Comprehension, Reading Strategy Use, and Reading Motivation

“…Furthermore, in Flanders (Belgium), the present study's context, there is a decreasing trend in diagnosing learning disabilities, and in particular diagnosing dyslexia, as this certificate is no longer a prerequisite to receive supplementary educational support (Ghesquière, 2014). Previous research has found that struggling readers lack appropriate and consistent reading comprehension strategies, a factor correlating with effective reading comprehension (Gajria & Jitendra, 2016). Additionally, due to frequent reading failure experiences, struggling readers often show low reading motivation, which is also correlated with effective comprehension (Gambrell et al, 2018;Vaknin-Nusbaum et al, 2018).…”

Examining Metacognitive Strategy Preferences of Students at Different Reading Proficiency Levels

“…In addition, metacognitive strategies enable readers to participate actively in the reading process by developing critical thinking skills (Hong-Nam et al, 2014;Sencibaugh, 2007). These skills help readers to evaluate the effectiveness of the reading strategy they use and make changes when they detect a problem in understanding (Gajria, & Jitendra, 2016). However, insufficiency of metacognitive strategy knowledge can prevent students from realizing misunderstandings in the reading process (Michalsky et al, 2009).…”