Chapter 5: Essentials of Reading Comprehension Difficulties

All of the following are possible reasons a child may do poorly in reading comprehension. However, which of the following is the most common?

• Poor instruction

• Poor attitude

• Poor word-level reading

• Poor motivation

Specific reading comprehension impairment is most likely the result of

• Poor instruction

• Poor motivation

• Weak language skills

• Poor word-level reading.

All of the following are identified as factors that affect a student’s reading comprehension except

• Vocabulary knowledge.

• Type of material a student selects to read (e.g., books, comic books, Internet).

• Background knowledge and specific topical knowledge

• Working memory

• All of the above

What seems to be the relationship between attention, reading compre- hension, and tests of listening comprehension?

• Inattentive students often do more poorly on tests of listening compre- hension than reading comprehension.

• Inattentive students often do more poorly on tests of reading comprehension than listening comprehension

• Inattentive students always do poorly on tests of both listening comprehension and reading comprehension

• Inattentive students typically do well on tests of both listening comprehension and reading comprehension.

What has research indicated about ELL students and reading comprehension?

• They typically do not display difficulties with reading comprehension.

• They have generally similar concerns as native speakers of English who have below-average language skills.

• Reading comprehension has not been studied in ELL students because the focus has been on word-level reading.

• Even following improvements in language comprehension and word-level reading, reading comprehension does not improve in ELL students.

What is a situation model?

• A mental picture students develop about what is going on in a text by integrating their vocabulary and background knowledge with the elements in the text.

• A character in a story being read that provides positive modeling to students.

• When teachers openly talk about the thinking process they use as they interpret text, which models for students how to comprehend the text

• A theoretical formulation of all of the key factors that influence reading comprehension.

Why would general background knowledge or specific topical knowledge be so important in understanding what is read?

• It is more fun to read about things you know about.

• Reading comprehension requires inferencing, and research shows you can make better inferences about things you know about.

• Background knowledge correlates with general intelligence and general intelligence correlates with reading comprehension, so the relation between background knowledge and reading comprehension is indirect

• None of the above.

Reading comprehension and word-level reading are similar in the sense that they can be boiled down to a few simple factors.

• True

• False

What might be the relationship between comprehension monitoring and reading comprehension?

• Students with poor reading comprehension may get accustomed to not understanding what they read, so they don’t check back and reread and, therefore, it appears they are not properly monitoring their comprehension.

• Poor monitoring of comprehension results in poor comprehension.

• Poor comprehension monitoring could simply be a reflection of execu- tive functioning skills, which, like attention and working memory, could influence reading comprehension.

• Given that researchers do not have a clear understanding of the relation- ship between comprehension monitoring and reading comprehension, any or all of the three above could be involved

Why are good inferencing skills needed for reading comprehension?

• Because not everything in the text is explicitly stated and some things need to be inferred.

• Because one needs a high degree of intelligence to comprehend text, and inferencing is a reflection of intelligence.

• Because tests specifically incorporate inferencing questions even if most of what one reads does not involve inferencing.

• Inferencing is actually problematic because it causes the reader to inter- pret things within her own framework rather than the author’s.