The Young Reader

Research on Young Readers

Hoover and Gough (1990) state reading success is based on two components, decoding and linguistic comprehension. They define decoding as efficient word recognition, which is an ability to rapidly look at print and retrieve the semantic information at word level. Linguistic comprehension is defined as the ability to take semantic information at word level and derive sentence and text interpretations. Hoover and Gough explain that linguistic comprehension is assessed by asking the reader to answer questions about the text. Using these common definitions, they believe the complex process of reading success (R) can be described with the “simple view” of combining decoding (D) and linguistic comprehension (L) multiplicatively on scales of 0-1, or D x L = R. With this equation, Hoover and Gough claim there are three reasons for poor reading: decoding is adequate but linguistic comprehension is weak, linguistic comprehension is adequate but decoding is weak, or both decoding and linguistic comprehension is weak.

Within the Bookworms curriculum there is a highly scripted and systematic plan to provide instruction to build decoding knowledge; however the path to improving comprehension seems less straight forward. Storch and Whitehorse (2002) note that there are varying degrees of abilities in older students between decoding and comprehension. Students may be able to read all of the words on the page, but are unable to garner meaning from the text. For these students, we can utilize their differentiated instruction time to build fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Storch and Whitehorse (2002) found that sentence and text comprehension are affected by a child's general verbal ability and oral language skills, indicating that one way to improve reading comprehension is to build oral language. To improve oral language and build vocabulary, students can be exposed to a high volume of grade-level text and encouraged to discuss the text. This serves several purposes: 1. Increased exposure to vocabulary; 2. Increased world knowledge to discuss and make connections among and across texts; 3. Increased exposure to a variety of sentence structures.

In addition to improving reading comprehension via text exposure and discussion, it has been found that fluency is an indicator for comprehension proficiency. Fuchs, Fuchs and Maxwell (1998) measured oral reading fluency (ORF)) versus direct measures of reading comprehension. The direct measures of reading comprehension measured were question answering, cloze, and passage recall. Seventy middle school and junior high school students with mild to moderate reading disabilities were assessed using the Reading Comprehension subtest of the Stanford Achievement test, each of the three direct reading comprehension measures and on ORF. ORF was measured as words read correctly per minute across two 400-word passages. The criterion validity coefficients were .82 for question answering, .70 for recall, .72 for cloze and .91 for ORF, indicating that statistically speaking, students that can read fluently are more likely able to understand what they read. Improving oral reading fluency through daily practice of orally reading grade level text and discussing the text should prove beneficial to students. Improving students' reading comprehension is the goal of this website.