Talk Summaries

On this page, we post summaries of each talk, written by some of the attendees.

Kate Cain (Lancaster University): What have we learned from the study of poor comprehenders: reflections on past, present and future research and practice (Part 1)

Up to 10% of primary school aged children can read the words in a text with accuracy, but they experience difficulties with understanding the meaning of text. They can have weaknesses in a range of language skills including vocabulary, grammar, and higher-level skills such as inference making and comprehension monitoring. Professor Kate Cain ( Lancaster University) outlined four key take-home message for practitioners and researchers concerned with so-called ‘poor comprehenders’. First, we should expect and accept that the poor comprehender population is highly heterogeneous and unlikely to be characterised by any one single underlying deficit. Second, there is extensive variation in how people define reading comprehension difficulties, and identification criteria are likely to differ for research and practice. Third, there is as yet no “gold standard” test for poor comprehenders. A general guideline for practitioners is that they should utilise a standardised reading comprehension test, but be aware of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of that test, and supplement it with additional assessments of word reading and listening comprehension to better pinpoint where the child’s difficulties lie. Fourth, poor comprehenders must be considered in the context of development as the nature of the reading and associated language difficulties likely change with age.

Summarised by Rosa Kwok (Coventry University)

Kate Nation (University of Oxford): What have we learned from the study of poor comprehenders: reflections on past, present and future research and practice (Part 2)

Professor Kate Nation (University of Oxford) also emphasised the complexity of reading comprehension, as determined by multiple skills and sources of knowledge that interact reciprocally over development. Despite the heterogeneity inherent in this population however, research has converged on a number of key implications for teaching. For instance, it is well established that that large number of poor comprehenders have weaknesses in spoken language (e.g., vocabulary knowledge) and encounter difficulties with retrieving and processing semantic information. Research suggests that spoken language irrevocably provides a foundation for the development of effective reading comprehension. Such research emphasises the importance of helping children to develop good language skills in preschool, and has clear implications for children at risk of impoverished early language exposure (e.g., children who speak English as an additional language (EAL), children growing up in socially-disadvantaged circumstances). An important focus for future research is the need for scholars to better understand the online processes that are involved in good reading comprehension abilities, using eye-tracking, for example, to investigate the processes of reading comprehension as they unravel in real time. Regarding identification and assessment, it was suggested that the purpose of various selection criteria and assessment types should be better communicated to practitioners.

Summarised by Rosa Kwok (Coventry University)

Danielle Colenbrander (University of Bristol): Identifying reading comprehension difficulties: A tale of two tests

Dr Danielle Colenbrander (University of Bristol) focused on a hugely important question: how can we identify poor comprehenders? She first emphasised the complexity of the reading process, which involves everything a reader knows about written and spoken word forms (i.e., orthographic, phonological, grammatical and semantic aspects) with interplay from attention and memory systems. Reading comprehension tests can therefore assess a variety of different processes and skills, and the nature of what is captured depends heavily on the specific demands of the test. To demonstrate the implications of this for the identification of poor comprehenders, Dr Colenbrander presented data from 95 Australian children aged 8-12 years, comparing their performance on two commonly used tests: the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability (NARA; Neale, 1999), and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC; Snowling et al., 2012). It was found that the NARA consistently identified more pupils as poor comprehenders than the YARC. Possible reasons for this discrepancy include differences in the standardisation samples, the number of and the style of comprehension questions, and the difficulty of the higher-level passages. A key implication of these results is that reading comprehension assessments should always be interpreted using knowledge of the test’s strengths and weaknesses, and in some cases, more than one test may be necessary to evaluate a child’s reading comprehension performance. Dr Colenbrander also called for more communication between researchers and practitioners, in order to observe how well tests predict children’s performance in the classroom over time.

Summarised by Lena Blott (University College London)

Debbie Gooch (University of Surrey): Reading profiles in the Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study (SCALES)

Dr Debbie Gooch (University of Surrey) presented hot-off-the-press preliminary analyses from the Surrey Communication and Language in Education Study (SCALES). From 2012 onwards, about 7000 children across Surrey were screened by their teachers in Reception and a representative sample of 529 children were selected for in depth follow-up in Year 1 and 3 on an extensive battery of language and literacy measures. In line with previous prevalence estimations, 18% of the total SCALES cohort had some form of reading difficulty, with 11% identified as generally poor readers (i.e. below average scores on reading accuracy and/or comprehension) and an additional 7% identified as poor comprehenders (i.e., word reading in the average range but comprehension at least 1 standard deviation below and a 1SD discrepancy between accuracy and comprehension). Strikingly, 30% of the poor comprehenders also had developmental language disorder (DLD), emphasizing the potential overlap between these two populations. Generally, children with DLD were most commonly characterised by persistently poor word reading but also had lower reading comprehension scores than those without DLD, and 27% could be classified as poor comprehenders (compared to only 6% of those without DLD). Confirming previous findings of the importance of oral language for reading comprehension, children with DLD+poor comprehension had lower scores on expressive vocabulary tests in Year 1 and showed slower progress in language development compared to those with DLD+typically developing reading skills. An important message was that although the majority of children with DLD had poor reading skills (69%), not all children with DLD had reading comprehension difficulties. Dr Gooch called for further research to understand the factors that might protect against poor comprehension, including compensatory language and executive function abilities, as well as the home literacy environment. Such findings raise important practical implications, and call for further research into how we can protect children with a predisposition for reading comprehension difficulties from developing such difficulties.

Summarised by Lena Blott (University College London)

Jessie Ricketts (Royal Holloway, University of London): What can the Vocabulary and Reading in Secondary Schools (VaRiSS) project tell us about poor comprehenders?

International studies indicate that approximately 20% of adolescents do not have adequate reading skills. However, little research has examined reading comprehension attainment and development in secondary school pupils. As part of a wider project known as the VaRiSS project (Vocabulary and Reading in Secondary Schools), reading comprehension and vocabulary were assessed at three time-points: Year 7 (11-12 years), Year 8 (12-13 years) and Year 9 (13-14 years). Reading comprehension was assessed using the secondary version of the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC; Snowling et al., 2012). In this task, most passages are read silently and as such it is not possible to give corrective feedback if reading errors occur. Thus, when comprehension breaks down it is difficult to determine whether this is due to poor reading accuracy, fluency or comprehension. Notwithstanding the challenges of test validity, the VaRiSS project demonstrated a range of reading comprehension scores amongst participants, with the bottom 10-20% of the distribution not exceeding the average expected outcome of a 9-year old. The rate of growth from Year 7 to Year 9 did indicate some narrowing of the gap between poor and more skilled comprehenders; however, their comprehension scores remained below average. Consistent with previous research on younger populations, reading comprehension and vocabulary were very closely linked, suggesting that interventions targeting vocabulary could continue to benefit reading comprehension during adolescence. These findings highlight the importance of researching the reading and vocabulary skills of pupils beyond the primary school years where there is an expectation for learners to become increasingly independent in their learning.

Summarised by Natalie Smith (University of York)

Claudine Bowyer-Crane (University of York): Poor comprehension in children learning EAL

Over 20% of primary school pupils in the UK are learning English as an additional language (EAL). Many of these children show reading comprehension difficulties despite strengths in word reading and phonological processing. This literacy profile is similar to that of a poor comprehender, though it is unclear whether this is underpinned by the same processes and as such whether the same support would help both groups of learners. On revisiting a data set examining the language and literacy skills of children learning EAL, the oral language skills of good and poor comprehenders were explored whilst children with aged 5-6 years (Year 1). A regression technique was employed to identify relatively good and poor comprehenders (n 27 and n 21, respectively). Overall, the EAL sample displayed huge heterogeneity in their language and reading outcomes and this was also the case within the poor comprehender group. The poor comprehenders showed weaker expressive vocabulary, comprehension monitoring and listening comprehension than the relatively good comprehenders. Furthermore, comprehension monitoring and listening comprehension were directly associated with reading comprehension, with these relationships also mediated by vocabulary knowledge for all children. Not surprisingly, substantial amounts of variance in reading comprehension were left unexplained in this EAL sample. Reading comprehension is a multifaceted skill and the EAL environment adds extra layers of complexity. For example, children’s English language proficiency and exposure is wide-ranging, the similarities between first languages and English are variable and it is often unknown whether children are literate in their L1. All these factors are likely to contribute to reading comprehension outcomes in English, though they are challenging to assess. Though this area of research is complex, it is of both theoretical and practical value to longitudinally examine reading comprehension development within EAL populations.

Summarised by Natalie Smith (University of York)

Paula Clarke (University of Leeds): Pedagogy and Intervention for Developing Text Comprehension

There are two broad approaches to comprehension instruction: the strategies approach which incorporates direct teaching of specific procedures to use with text, and the content approach in which children’s attention is directed towards information in the text. Past intervention studies involving poor comprehenders have focused on inferencing (e.g. Yuill & Joscelyne, 1988; Yuill & Oakhill, 1988; McGee & Johnson, 2003), mental imagery (e.g. Oakhill & Patel, 1991; Francey & Cain, 2015) or a multi-component package (e.g. Johnson-Glenberg, 2000; 2005). Typically, interventions for poor comprehenders have involved small samples targeting primary school children and are not randomised controlled trials (RCT). Participants tend to be compared to skilled readers and the interventions are low dosage with a limited duration. Clarke, Snowling, Truelove & Hulme et al. (2010) conducted an RCT with three intervention conditions, compared to a waiting control: an oral language programme, a text comprehension programme and a combined programme. 160 poor comprehenders took part in the intervention, delivered by a teaching assistant. Results suggested greatest gains for participants of the oral language programme. Positive results have since been found for older participants in the transition to secondary school (Clarke et al., 2017). However, there are still considerations to make for poor comprehenders such as which measures to use for assessment, how to find suitable texts and whether to involve schools and key stakeholders in the intervention design, in order to ensure long term utility.

Summarised by Emily Oxley (University of Leeds)

Holly Joseph (University of Reading): What can eye movements tell us about children’s reading comprehension (difficulties)?

Dr Holly Joseph presented two experiments which strived to better understand the underlying processes involved in reading comprehension. Eye tracking was used as an online measure of reading comprehension as it unfolds in real-time, to detect differences between better and poor comprehenders while reading. In experiment 1, researchers investigated whether better and poorer comprehenders (aged 9-11) differed in how they detected implausibility. The results suggested that good comprehenders made more regressions to re-read previous parts of the text immediately after encountering an implausibility.. Poorer comprehenders, on the other hand, showed disruption to processing only later in the sentence. A second experiment investigated whether poorer comprehenders were less efficient at learning new words they encountered during reading, and whether they differed in how they approach new words in more challenging contexts. 40 children aged 9-11 read a series of sentences containing six very low frequency target verbs which they were not familiar with. Better comprehenders did better in post-tests of learning and reduced their reading times on the novel words more rapidly over the course of exposure, and spent longer reading words in more difficult contexts. Taken together, the results suggested that poorer comprehenders are less efficient comprehenders and word learners and that they spend longer resolving difficulties (implausibilities) and processing words in more challenging contexts. The results also serve to highlight that comprehension skill is associated with the process of comprehension and incidental word learning, not just the end product.

Summarised by Emily Oxley (University of Leeds)

Closing Discussion: Lisa Henderson (University of York) & Megan Dixon (Aspire Educational Trust)

Dr Henderson (University of York) reminded us that the main motivator for this workshop was the difficulty that various research groups have had in finding poor comprehenders, with today providing an opportunity to speculate over why this might be the case. Potential reasons include variations in the screening and selection criteria, and the use of different tests which vary in sensitivity. Nevertheless, it has been very pleasing to see that recent large-scale studies, for example those summarised by Jessie Ricketts and Debbie Gooch, suggest that these children are still very much in our classrooms and deserve research attention. We clearly need to revisit our selection and assessment criteria and objectively compare the effects of employing different criteria in large-scale longitudinal samples. Dr Henderson also expressed the parallel importance of smaller-scale experimental studies for pinning down basic processes and mechanisms involved in reading comprehension, noting that until we understand these processes and how they break down in poor comprehenders we are not best placed to devise sensitive assessments and interventions. From a theoretical research perspective, it’s clear to justify carrying out research on poor comprehenders: The profile allows us to isolate comprehension from decoding and provides the opportunity to understand the underlying process that support comprehension. But, as identified today, there are a number of practically motivated questions that researchers need to address before poor comprehenders become more readily identifiable in the classroom.

Having had 18 years experience as a teacher, consultant and teacher trainer, Megan Dixon (Director of Literacy at the Aspire Educational Trust) highlighted three key take-home messages for researchers to consider. Firstly, statistics show that 7% of the primary school population may have reading comprehension difficulties. This might seems to be a small number. Yet, statistics also show that 10% of the primary school population may have dyslexia and 20% of the primary school population learn English as an additional language. This implies that roughly 40% of the primary school population are at risk of reading comprehension difficulties for a variety of reasons and teachers need to know how to tackle these difficulties. Secondly, the lessons that we learn from poor comprehenders will also help us to develop effective interventions to support all children’s reading comprehension skill through a whole-school approach. Finally, since the year 1 phonics screening check assessment framework has been established, schools have placed a huge emphasis on phonics. All the studies that were mentioned today showed that there are lots of other skills that are involved in reading comprehension and schools need to start teaching vocabulary and morphosyntactic skills in a systematic way.

Summarised by Rosa Kwok (Coventry University)

Day 2

On Day 2, some of us stayed to discuss how we could combine our existing datasets to explore some of the issues raised during the workshop. Watch this space...