Reading With Understanding: Effectively Teaching Reading Comprehension

Language comprehension is an essential strand in Dr. Hollis Scarborough’s famous Reading Rope. Dr. Scarborough was a senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories, and a leading early literacy development researcher. She also served on the boards of the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR). She first published the Reading Rope model in 2001 in the Handbook of Early Literacy Research (Neuman/Dickinson).  

Within the Reading Rope, there is an upper and lower strand. Each of these is made up of smaller, individual strands. The three small lower strands consist of the skills essential to word recognition, while the five upper strands correspond to language comprehension. These are:

• Background knowledge
• Vocabulary
• Language structures
• Verbal reasoning 
• Literacy knowledge

How are Reading Comprehension and Language Comprehension Related?

While they sound similar, there is a key difference between reading comprehension and language comprehension. Language comprehension can occur as soon as a child can understand words and meaning when spoken to, even if the child can’t decode words or text. 

However, reading comprehension only occurs when the child can derive meaning from words and text in print, making it a skill dependent on their ability to decode. In short, language comprehension eventually becomes reading comprehension when the child can understand written text. 

Teaching Language Comprehension and Word Recognition Together

Structured Literacy practices for word reading are becoming commonplace, and language comprehension is sometimes left out of discussions about research-backed literacy teaching and tutoring. But both sides of the rope can be worked on simultaneously. Besides improving understanding, explicit language comprehension instruction builds a student’s vocabulary, helps them to make meaning-spelling connections, and facilitates learning across all subject areas through strategic knowledge-building work. 

In the reading intervention space, it’s often thought that language comprehension can be made a priority after a student is sufficiently proficient at decoding. Still, for students who are not reading near grade level, and especially for students who are learning English as an additional language, we should not have to choose between foundational word reading skills and building language skills. A study on characteristics of learners in emergent literacy development states:

“Children in the emergent stage of literacy development are developing the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that form the foundation for mature reading and writing. They are not yet reading in the traditional sense, but are acquiring the developmental precursors needed for early reading including, language development and verbal reasoning, listening comprehension, phonological and phonemic awareness, alphabet knowledge, and understanding the forms and functions of print.”² (Gehsmann/Mesmer)

Explicit language comprehension instruction must coincide with decoding, both in core literacy instruction and in reading intervention, for a variety of reasons:

• Many skills in language comprehension, such as developing vocabulary and background knowledge, begin before children begin decoding. We must continue to add to these banks of words and knowledge so students can understand various texts across topics once they learn how to read.
• Teaching comprehension 
  • and decoding together helps the student map words and phrases to meaning early in the reading process. 
  • Language Comprehension instruction can also be a tool to engage and motivate older students working on foundational word reading skills. Interacting with complex texts on a subject the student is interested in is encouraging and motivating, which is crucial for reading intervention success.

How Hoot Reading Literacy Tutoring Helps Students Become Skilled Readers

Hoot Reading uses a structured literacy approach for word recognition and language comprehension, meaning that instruction is systematic, explicit, and individualized. Our five comprehension instructional focuses are designed to coincide with language comprehension skills: text-based knowledge, vocabulary, sentence analysis, text structure, and verbal reasoning. 

Language comprehension is part of every lesson at Hoot. When students are still working on decoding, language comprehension is a secondary focus. Our tutors read to the students and choose an instructional focus for comprehension to prioritize for the lesson. Reading comprehension becomes the primary focus for tutoring when students have mastered all our Word Reading units. Students will then read grade-level texts to their tutor, who instructs in one or more of the five prioritized skills.  Our assessments help us know exactly which ratio of word reading to language comprehension work is right for every student we meet in tutoring. 

In the coming weeks, we will investigate these five focuses and share more about our approach. 

Have questions about Hoot Reading? Contact us to find out more about our approach to literacy tutoring. 

Sources

¹ Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research, Vol. 1, pp. 97–110. Guilford Press.

²Gehsmann, K. M., & Mesmer, H. A. (2023). The alphabetic principle and concept of word in text: Two priorities for learners in the emergent stage of literacy development. The Reading Teacher, 77(2), 156–166. https://doi.org/10.1002/trtr.2225