Comprehension Strategy Instruction Research Articles

To What Extent and How Are Reading Comprehension Strategies Part of Language Arts Instruction? A Study of Lower Secondary Classrooms

AbstractThe authors examined naturally occurring reading comprehension strategies instruction (RCSI) across four consecutive lessons in 47 Norwegian language arts classrooms at the lower secondary level via video observations (n = 178). Although numerous studies have examined the effectiveness of RCSI for improving reading outcomes, few studies have focused on descriptions of real‐world classroom instruction. This study thus provides additional insights into the extent to which and how language arts teachers in lower secondary schools provide RCSI. Further, the study sheds light on additional aspects of reading comprehension instruction to obtain a broader picture of what this instruction encompasses. The authors address these issues by providing an overview of the amount of RCSI used in language arts classrooms, a characterization of provided RCSI, the frequency of salient features of reading comprehension instruction, and an examination of the possible connections between strategy instruction and students’ gains on national reading tests. The authors used the Protocol for Language Arts Teacher Observation manual to guide the first step of the analytic process, followed by qualitative content analyses of the provided RCSI and inductive coding of the reading comprehension instruction. The findings revealed limited evidence of explicit RCSI. When provided, the explicit instruction varied as either contextual or decontextual instruction. Several teachers demonstrated strategy knowledge, but in many cases, instruction seemed oriented more toward nontransferable activities than explicit strategy teaching. Mainly, the teachers focused their instruction on text‐based discussions and text structure. The authors discuss various reading instructional practices, teachers’ repertoire of strategies, and different approaches to explicit strategies instruction.

Exploration of Social Studies Teachers’ Experiences of Reading Practices: A Phenomenological Study

In this phenomenological study, I aimed to describe the perceptions of social studies teachers’ lived experiences about their reading practices that may have influence on the development of students’ reading comprehension. Data were collected from interviews and handwritten interview notes were analyzed by using qualitative data analysis. Sixteen middle school social studies teachers were recruited in different schools in a city in Turkey for this study. Three themes emerged from the data analysis in the study: reading comprehension skills and strategies, teaching practices and instructional practices. The results of this study yielded two findings: first, the majority of the teachers did not benefit from best practices, reflecting the highly interactive nature of the reading comprehension process; instead they often used the reading tasks or practices in traditional sense in-class. In addition, these teachers found feelings of inadequacy in terms of providing students with instruction in reading comprehension strategies due to their lack of training of content area reading instruction. Second, a few teachers believed that providing instructional scaffolding to support the development of students’ reading comprehension was of primary importance in terms of building understandings and skills for social studies reading achievement.

Examining Comprehension Strategy Instruction With English Learners’ Problem Solving: Study Findings and Educator Preparation Implications

Educator preparation in comprehension strategy instruction (CSI) is essential to meeting the needs of English learners (ELs) in contemporary schools. This article provides teacher educators and professional developers with concrete examples of practices to prepare classroom teachers in comprehensive strategy instruction, based on an experimental study that examined the effect (.37) of CSI on third-grade students’ ( n = 78) word-problem-solving (WPS) performance. CSI included problem-solving strategies that (a) helped students to understand the relevant and irrelevant information in a word problem’s question; (b) helped students to restate the problem orally, which allowed them to understand, to construct meaning, and to clarify any misunderstanding about the question; and (c) provided instructional feedback with student collaboration for problem solving and solution. Findings indicate that a focus on CSI may help facilitate WPS skills developing for ELs at risk of mathematics-learning difficulties (MLD). Educator preparation recommendations are embedded throughout with implications for future research and practice also discussed.

Using comprehension strategies for students' self-efficacy, anxiety, and proficiency in reading English as a foreign language

We examined whether or not instructing Taiwanese students in the use of comprehension strategies when they are reading English as a foreign language, reduces their English reading anxiety and increases their English reading self-efficacy and proficiency. We used a quasiexperimental design and conducted a 15-week course. The experimental group (n = 31) received instruction in reading comprehension strategies and the control group (n = 31) received instruction by traditional teaching methods. The results show that the experimental group had less anxiety when reading English and higher proficiency than the control group. In regard to self-efficacy when reading English, the experimental group also performed better than the control group in terms of self-affirmation, perseverance, verbal persuasion, and performance overall. However, there was no statistically significant difference for learning attitude between the groups.

Fostering Self‐Regulation of Students with Learning Disabilities: Insights from 30 Years of Reading Comprehension Intervention Research

AbstractThirty years of intervention research on the effects of reading comprehension strategies for students with learning disabilities was reviewed in this quantitative synthesis. Specifically, researchers targeted studies that contained self‐regulated learning components. A systematic search yielded 18 studies from nine research journals that met specified inclusion criteria. Studies were evaluated for methodological quality and to identify types of instructional and self‐regulation components within interventions. Large effect sizes were found immediately after instruction and after a time delay, suggesting that instruction in reading comprehension strategies that contain self‐regulation components may have a long lasting impact on student performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

REFLECTIONS ON PRACTITIONER RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY IN EFL READING INSTRUCTION

This paper reflects upon the author’s personal experience of practitioner research in my own workplace. The study was conducted to investigate the impact of Collaborative Strategic Reading (CSR), a collaborative comprehension strategy instruction with the combination of small group discussion and reading strategies in an EFL context at the university level. The participants were 110 students from two intact classes of a university in southern Taiwan. It adopted a mixed-method design and multiple types of data were collected including a standardised reading measure pre-test and post-test, the participants’ responses to a questionnaire survey, field notes, group interviews and transcription data of group discussions during CSR. To start with, this paper defines the practitioner research and discusses the merits and criticism of the practice. It also investigates the challenges in terms of ethical and methodological dilemmas by discussing the teacher’s role, ethics consideration as well as the issues of validity and reliability and how I resolved the dilemmas to ensure the quality of the search. It is hoped that these reflections can provide some insights for those who are interested in practitioner research in their own contexts. Article visualizations:

Comprehension monitoring strategy intervention in children with hearing loss: a single case design study

ABSTRACTThe objective of this single case design study was to examine the effectiveness of teaching comprehension monitoring strategy on strategy use as well as on reading comprehension performance. Four children with bilateral severe-profound hearing loss between the ages of 10–11 years and enrolled in the 3rd–5th grade classroom in a regional day school for the deaf participated in the study. Two comprehension monitoring strategies, namely retell and questioning, were taught to all four children. A third strategy, namely prediction, was used as a control strategy. Children received intervention for 20 min, twice a week for 13 weeks across a total of 26 sessions. During the first three sessions, children participated in probe sessions only. Following this baseline period, children participated in one intervention session and one probe session each week. Sessions were videotaped to monitor for treatment fidelity and to code for strategy use. Results showed a moderate evidence for a functional relation between comprehension strategy instruction and strategy use. Similarly, across participants, data also revealed moderate evidence for a functional relation between strategy implementation and reading comprehension performance. Future studies should investigate the effects of teaching a combination of reading comprehension monitoring strategies by increasing the duration and number of intervention sessions on reading comprehension performance by a larger group of children with hearing loss.

高等学校におけるマルチモーダル・テクストの理解方略指導 : 全員履修科目「国語表現I」の単元「CM分析」にみる可能性と課題

高等学校におけるマルチモーダル・テクストの理解方略指導 : 全員履修科目「国語表現I」の単元「CM分析」にみる可能性と課題

Fourth-grade emergent bilinguals' uses of functional grammar analysis to talk about text

While decades of research on reading comprehension strategy instruction has yielded significant insights into the effective use of comprehension strategies, less is known about how students—in particular students who are learning English as an additional language—can leverage their knowledge of language to make meaning with text. This descriptive case study provides insight into the ways talk about language, using a functional grammar, supports a group of fourth-grade emergent bilinguals. Students construct coherent mental representations of text by attending to linguistic features that they had learned to identify during the preceding school year, using a semantically-based linguistic metalanguage from systemic functional linguistics. Their connection of language forms and meanings in think-alouds and interviews suggests that functional grammar analysis holds promise as an instructional tool with which teachers can guide students’ attention to the central meanings in text.

Beyond Comprehension Strategy Instruction: What's Next?

In this article, we respond to Catts and Kamhi's (2017) argument that reading comprehension is not a single ability. We provide a brief review of the impact of strategy instruction, the importance of knowledge in reading comprehension, and possible avenues for future research and practice. We agree with Catts and Kamhi's argument that reading comprehension is a complex endeavor and that current recommended practices do not reflect the complexity of the construct. Knowledge building, despite its important role in comprehension, has been relegated to a back seat in reading comprehension instruction. In the final section of the article, we outline possible avenues for research and practice (e.g., generative language instruction, dialogic approaches to knowledge building, analogical reasoning and disciplinary literacy, the use of graphics and media, inference instruction) for improving reading-comprehension outcomes. Reading comprehension is a complex ability, and comprehension instruction should reflect this complexity. If we want to have an impact on long-term growth in reading comprehension, we will need to expand our current repertoire of instructional methods to include approaches that support the acquisition and integration of knowledge across a variety of texts and topics.

First- and Second-Grade Urban Students' Path to Comprehension Strategy Use: A Practitioner's Framework

This study seeks to explain what first- and second-grade African American, urban students who participated in an explicit comprehension strategy instruction (ECSI) program learned about comprehension strategies and how this knowledge supports self-regulated strategy use. The study was also designed to compare these students' knowledge with those who were exposed to less systematic comprehension strategy instruction. Students who participated in ECSI had more awareness and knowledge of strategies and applied them more frequently than students not in ECSI. A practitioner's framework is proposed to support teachers in developing their own ECSI.

Effects of an Informational Text Reading Comprehension Intervention for Fifth-Grade Students

Upper elementary school students who have reading problems may have difficulty in one or more areas of reading, each requiring specific types of interventions. This study evaluated a short-term reading intervention for 46 fifth-grade students with poor reading comprehension. Students were randomly assigned to an intervention or no treatment control condition. The 40 session (20 hr) intervention targeted reading comprehension strategy instruction in the context of informational science texts. Analyses showed statistically significant effects favoring the intervention on two proximal measures (i.e., measures closely related to the intervention content). The effects for the outcomes were moderate ( gs = 0.61 and 0.72). There were no statistically significant differences on distal measures (i.e., measures less closely aligned with the intervention). The findings provide support for the efficacy of a reading comprehension intervention that may inform short-term interventions within a Response to Intervention framework.

Using Performance Feedback of Reciprocal Teaching Strategies to Increase Reading Comprehension Strategy Use With Seventh Grade Students With Comprehension Difficulties

The current study used a multiple-baseline design to examine the effect of providing performance feedback on comprehension strategy use and reading comprehension. The participants were four seventh grade students with comprehension difficulties. The students were taught the reciprocal teaching comprehension strategies of generating questions, summarizing, clarifying, and predicting. Responses to a post-reading interview were coded to identify how well the students implemented the strategies, and this information was then used to provide performance feedback to the students. The use of the comprehension strategies and subsequent reading comprehension increased after receiving the feedback. Directions for practice and future research are included. Subscribe to LDMJ

Implications of pedagogical beliefs and pedagogical content knowledge for the reading comprehension strategy instruction of teachers

Implications of pedagogical beliefs and pedagogical content knowledge for the reading comprehension strategy instruction of teachers

Integrating Multiple and Focused Strategies for Improving Reading Comprehension and L2 Lexical Development of Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners

Effective reading is essential for success in learning a foreign language. EFL learners, therefore, need to master a number of reading strategies to be able to comprehend text information. Strategic reading research has already evidenced the possibility of teaching comprehension strategies to enhance learner’ comprehension and metacognitive abilities. Further research is needed though to examine the procedures or methodologies through which the approach can be applied. This pretest-posttest quasi-experimental article aimed, firstly, to compare the effects of the two widespread methods of explicit teaching of comprehension strategies (focused vs. multiple) on EFL learner’ reading comprehension and lexical development and, secondly, to explore whether or not integration of fixed and multiple instructional techniques significantly improved intermediate EFL learners reading comprehension ability and lexical knowledge. To this end, four intact classes including 69 intermediate EFL learners in a language center in Isfahan were randomly assigned to one control and three experimental groups. The groups received the same amount of instruction, however differently, three receiving focused, multiple, and integrated strategy interventions respectively and the other receiving conventional reading-based instruction. The results revealed that while receiving focused strategy intervention did not offer a statistically significant advantage over the typical classroom setting, benefiting from multiple strategy intervention significantly improved the learners’ ability in reading comprehension. Moreover, the results asserted the efficacy of integrated strategy instruction in improving both reading comprehension and lexical development among Iranian intermediate EFL learners.Keywords: Focused strategy instruction, Lexical development, Multiple strategy instruction, Reading comprehension

An Investigation of Literacy Practices in High School Science Classrooms

ABSTRACTThis study reports findings from an exploration of the literacy practices of 10 high school science teachers. Based on observations of teachers’ instruction, we report teachers’ use of text, evidence-based vocabulary and comprehension practices, and grouping practices. Based on interviews with teachers, we also report teachers’ perceptions regarding their role in implementing literacy instruction and the alignment of these perceptions with their practices. In total, we observed for 3,167 min across teachers. Coding of observations revealed that teachers rarely used expository text and implemented a minimal amount of vocabulary and comprehension strategy instruction. They used a variety of grouping practices but most often utilized whole-class instruction and independent work. Coding of interviews revealed that teachers supported the idea of integrating text and literacy instructional practices into their lessons but perceived a wide range of barriers to implementing these practices. We provide implications and directions for future research.

The Effect of Three Kinds of Reading Strategies on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension and Gender Difference Using Think-aloud Protocol

Reading comprehension strategy instruction is a powerful tool in teaching context. The present study examines the effect of teaching three kinds of reading strategies on L2 learners’ reading comprehension ability as well as identifying the gender role in this intervention. This quasi experimental study was carried out on 100 Iranian EFL students who were chosen on the basis of a convenient sampling procedure. These participants were divided into two groups of experimental and control. 50 students (experimental group) were taught to use three reading comprehension strategies while reading English texts over 16 sessions, whereas the other 50 students (control group) were taught reading comprehension traditionally. The results of the study revealed significant effect of reading strategies application on L2 learners’ reading comprehension ability. It also showed that not only male learners employ reading strategies more than their female counterparts, but also male learners had higher reading comprehension performance in comparison to their female counterparts. Thus, it seems that training of reading strategy raised students' awareness towards these strategies and could encourage some learners to use them; which in turn could improve the students' reading comprehension skill.

Layering Intermediate and Disciplinary Literacy Work: Lessons Learned From a Secondary Social Studies Teacher Team

AbstractSecondary teachers nationwide are encouraged by the Common Core State Standards and recent research to enact disciplinary literacy instruction. However, little is known about how teachers make sense of teaching disciplinary literacy skills to adolescents. To what extent might adolescents still need the kinds of foundational support provided by what Shanahan and Shanahan called intermediate strategy instruction, or instruction in general reading comprehension strategies? In this article, the authors describe findings from a disciplinary literacy project in which a group of high school social studies teachers (and the authors) discovered that a complex layering of intermediate and disciplinary literacy work was required to meet students’ needs. Implications for teams of teachers wishing to explore this tension and keep their focus on helping students access and communicate content material are shared.

Intervention Analysis and Listening Comprehension Strategy Instruction: Insights from Clinical Supervision

<p>The present study sought to investigate the effects of adapting the intervention provision framework put forward by John Heron, entitled Six-Category Intervention Analysis, into strategy instruction on listening comprehension performance of EFL learners. This model of intervention provision, having its genesis in clinical supervision, can regulate the verbal behavior and actual sentences used by teachers to intervene in language learning contexts. 175 Iranian intermediate level EFL learners participated in the study. The learners were divided into five 35-member groups including control; written mediation in which no oral intervention was provided; authoritative intervention in which the teacher suggested what had to be done, provided information, or confronted the students; facilitative, in which the teacher drew out ideas, solutions, or self-confidence; and synergetic authoritative-facilitative interventions. These groups received listening comprehension strategy instruction on three strategies of “guessing the meanings of unfamiliar words from the context”, “listening for gist”, and, “understanding cohesive devices”. Preliminary English Test was employed to assess the performance of language learners on their listening comprehension. Results indicated that the application of Six-Category Intervention Analysis while providing strategy instruction induced significant changes in the performance of the groups. In general, facilitative intervention and synergetic authoritative-facilitative intervention groups outperformed the control, written mediation, and authoritative intervention groups.</p>

Talking for meaning: The dialogic engagement of teachers and children in a small group reading context

This paper reports a UK study which investigated the instruction of comprehension strategies for elementary children in small group discussions about short animated films. The qualitative analysis of three lessons is reported to illustrate the differing approaches taken by the teachers, showing how they initiate discussions and follow up responses from the children. We examine how children’s ideas are elicited, selected for further discussion, developed and evaluated by the teachers. Findings highlight operating principles for how teachers conceptualise and realise reading comprehension instruction and how these relate to the use of key language, focusing on whether this produces a ‘performance’ of dialogue or genuine dialogic engagement.