What is reading
comprehension and what are the factors that affect comprehension? Based on the
book Comprehension First written by Claudia Cornett.
Reading comprehension
involves a complex set of acts and abilities demanded from the reader. Many
factors get into action when we talk about achieving reading comprehension
success. We cannot understand comprehension as a matter of all or nothing.
There are many degrees and levels of comprehension. For a certain purpose to
locate and information could be considered comprehension. In other occasions
being critical about the ideas that someone presents in a text can be what we
consider comprehension.
What Cornett argues in
her text is that emphasizing and practicing only phonics aspects of the reading
process as well as some other abilities required on standard tests will not
make the students became good readers because it would not involve having them
comprehend what they are reading.
In order to really
understand what they are reading, students need ‘to connect textual information
to their lives and feelings’ (Cornett, 2010, p.4). They also need to become
‘mindful` learners, by knowing how to use reading strategies flexibly, and
being able to create their own understandings of what they read.
One important concept
defined by Cornett (2010) is literacy. According to her literacy “is the
ability to communicate thoughts, ideas, feelings, and emotions effectively
through comprehension (understanding) and composition (expression)”. In Brazil
there is a widely accepted concept of literacy that can be added to the one
Cornett uses. Literacy as proposed by Soares (2003) is “the state or condition
of those who not only know how to read and write, but also cultivate the social
practices that require writing and reading”. Also according to her, not being
alphabetized has deep consequences: an illiterate person is the one that cannot
fully exercise his rights as a citizen, is the one that the society
marginalize, it is the one that do not have access to the cultural goods of
literate societies” (SOARES, 1999, p. 19-20).
When we think of all
the cultural goods available in your society, we go back to other two important
concepts mentioned by Cornett: reading and text. We need to think about reading
and ‘making meaning’ from different kinds of word-based and non-word-based
texts. Nowadays we have multimedia hypertexts available and waiting to be read.
Although the idea of
`big ideas’ might be tricky, because we can ask what exactly is a big idea? Why,
when and to whom is that big or important? Cornett’s considerations on the
relevance of making questions seems to be doubtless. According to her “the
ability to ask such [important] questions is an essential skill all teachers
need in order to provide effective comprehension instruction. More important,
students need to be taught to self-question before, during, and after
encountering any text if they are to become independent and continue to develop
comprehension abilities” (Cornett, 2010, p.8). We need to motivate our students
to make questions, to present their doubts and be proud of them. Curiosity and some
‘estrangement’ are fundamental to learning and life. If there is no questions,
there is no search for answers. The more we search, more questions we get. As
Cornett mentions, quoting Gambrell, Malloy, Mazzoni (2007), “the result of
inquiry is that, when readers tale this stance from the beginning, they
comprehend more and better” (p. 9). Making questions will improve text
comprehension because it will make it personally meaningful. Since it is
important to be personally meaningful that I think there is no big or small
questions. For the reader, all his (genuinely his) questions are big.
In a section of this
first chapter, Cornett discusses about evaluations, testing and scores. One
question raised by a teacher might summarize it well: “My hogs won’t get any
fatter if I weight them more often” (Cornett, 2010, p.10). There is an
increasing demand for testing, but now we need to prepare our students for a
“workplace that often requires employees to comprehend and navigate complex
texts, including Internet multimedia hypertext. It is no longer enough to be
able to read words from left to right and follow literal direction” (Cornett, 2010,
p.10). Besides dealing with multimodal hypertexts, we need also to help the
students to understand the texts they need to read in life. They need to learn how
to really comprehend the texts they read. In order to do that, they need to
learn phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, syntax, fluency and, mainly, how
to build the comprehension of the text, so that the text becomes meaningful for
them.
To succeed in this task
of teaching reading for comprehension the teacher needs to pay attention to the
learners needs and try to work on conditions that might help them to be successful.
Some common needs of the students are usually related to:
Ø Contexts
and learning spaces: the classroom must be a place that welcome diverse texts
and respect different cultures.
Ø Text
and engagement: the students should be engaged in reading, listening and
viewing a variety of diverse texts.
Ø Task
/ comprehension: teachers need to focus on active meaning making by students
(more than literal meaning).
Ø Teachers
and teaching:
§
Literacy models – demonstrate how to comprehend
well
§
Motivation – activate students’ intrinsic
motivation
§
Strategy instruction – help students learn a set
of thinking tools
§
Discussion – encourage students to generate
questions (and fell like finding the answers)
§
Assessment – teacher needs information about
students’ strengths and needs to plane instruction.
§
Instructional routines – e.g. provoke diverse
responses
§
Response options – enable students to create
verbal and nonverbal texts that show their understanding.
References
Cornett, C. E. (2010). Comprehension first: Inquiry into big ideas using important
questions. Holcomb Hathaway.
Gambrell, L. B., Malloy, J. A., & Mazzoni, S. A. (2007).
Evidence-based best practices for comprehensive literacy instruction. Best
practices in literacy instruction, 3, 11-29.
Soares, M. B. (1999). Letramento: um tema em três gêneros. São Paulo:
Autêntica.
