Strategies for Addressing Comprehension

DifficultiesPresentation at Reading Research 2004, International

Reading Association, Reno, Nevada

Nell K. Duke

Michigan State University

References for Material in this TalkThis talk is based largely on the upcoming chapter:

Duke, N. K., Pressley, G. M., & Hilden, K. (in press). Reading comprehension difficulties. To appear in B. Shulman, K. Apel, B. Ehren, E. R. Silliman, & C. A. Stone (Eds.), Handbook of language and literacy development and disorders. New York: Guilford Press.

Other relevant resources include:Cornoldi, C., & Oakhill, J. (1996). Reading comprehension difficulties:

Processes and Intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Carlisle, J. F., & Rice, M. S. (2002). Improving reading comprehension:

Research-based principles and practices. Baltimore, MD: York Press.Gersten, R., Fuchs, L. S., Williams, J. P., & Baker, S. (2001). Teaching

reading comprehension strategies to students with learning disabilities: A review of research. Review of Educational Research, 71, 279-320.

Plan for PresentationPlan for Presentation• About comprehension difficulties• Preventing and addressing comprehension

difficulties– General approach– Eight important instructional strategies for

preventing and addressing comprehension difficulties

Comprehension Difficulties:Comprehension Difficulties:

• Exist.

• Are not always caused by word recognition and decoding difficulties.

• Can be caused by many different things.

Comprehension Difficulties Exist

For evidence consider:

• Clinical casework on children with comprehension difficulties

• Range of performance on norm-referenced tests

• Results of state and national assessments

They are Not Always Caused By Difficulties with Word Recognition

• Far from perfect correlations between word recognition and/or fluency and comprehension (e.g., Nation and Snowling 1998; Paris, Carpenter, Paris, & Hamilton, 2002; Yuill & Oakhill, 1991)

• Documented cases of hyperlexia (e.g., Wahlberg, 2001; Barnes, Faulkner, & Dennis, 2001)

• Other cases in the clinical literature (e.g., Dewitz & Dewitz, 2003)

• Profile Analyses, good w.r., poor r.c.:

– Shankweiler et al, 1999: 13.6% of children 7.5 - 9.5 years old, 27.8% of impaired readers at this age

– Catts and Hogan, 2002: 3% of fourth graders, 19.5% of fourth graders with reading difficulties

– Buly and Valencia, 2002: 18% of fourth graders who did poorly on Washington state test

They are Not Always Caused By Difficulties with Word Recognition

Comprehension Difficulties Have Many Causes

• Difficulties with word recognition and decoding

• Difficulties with fluency

• Difficulties with language– Speech and language impairments

• Differences in language– Limited language proficiency (e.g. LEP)– Dialect differences?

• Difficulties with written language– Specific genres– Written language register

• Poor short-term and/or working memory

• Lack or poor use of strategies• Difficulties related to prior knowledge

– Lack of relevant prior knowledge– Failure to apply relevant prior knowledge– Application of irrelevant prior knowledge

• Lack of reading engagement• Other factors

– Eye movement problems– Other self-regulatory or metacognitive issues– Others

Example of oral register language:

Telling about a birthday party: Well. . . I had ten guests, . . . I don’t remember all who they were, . . . but I remember one was Ola, . . . one was Sara and Kathy, . . . ‘cause they are sisters. Older brother, . . . and . . . he also came, . . . he was tall, . . . and of course I had to invite my brother, . . . ‘cause of course he was. . . right there in the house. A-n-d . . . let’s see, . . . Ola,. . . and. . .

(Purcell-Gates, 1988, pages 157-158)

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Example of written register language:

Pretending to read a wordless picture book. there once. . . . was a brave knight,. . . and a beautiful lady. They went. . . on a trip. . . A dangerous trip. . . they saw a castle. In the distance. They went to it. A mean. . . me:an. . . me:an hunter, . . . was following them, . . . through the bushes. At the entrance. . . of the little castle. As he cree:ped out of the bushes, . . . he thought what to do. As the drawbridge was opened, . . . they could easily get in, . . . and the question was. . . . how to trick them, . . .

(Purcell-Gates, 1988, pages 157-158)

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Comprehension Difficulties Have Many Causes

In some cases, only one of the previously-listed causes may be at work.

In other, and probably most, cases, more than one of these causes is at work.

Preventing and Addressing Reading Comprehension Difficulties

Preventing• Provide effective comprehension instruction throughout

schooling

Addressing• Assess and intervene in the areas that can cause reading

comprehension difficulties *• Continue to provide effective comprehension instruction

* Note: There is not necessarily a one-to-one mapping between causes of reading comprehension difficulties and most effective approaches to addressing them. For example, the best way to improve reading comprehension for a child with weak short-term memory may be to improve reading comprehension strategy use.

Eight Important Instructional Strategies Eight Important Instructional Strategies for Preventing and Addressing for Preventing and Addressing Comprehension Difficulties*Comprehension Difficulties*

1. Appropriate attention to underlying or accompanying skills

2. Wide reading 3. Language exposure4. Language intervention5. Instruction in comprehension strategies6. Knowledge building7. Engagement fostering8. Miscellaneous (-:)

* Depending on the student,

the difficulty/ies, the goal. . .

1. Appropriate Attention to Underlying or Accompanying Skills

• Word recognition and decoding• Reading fluencyBut also,• Intentional/functional knowledge • Concepts of print• Phonemic Awareness • and so on

2. Wide Reading

3. Language Exposure

• Extensive exposure to written language

• Exposure to those -- and all of those -- types of text we want students to be able to comprehend

• Exposure to, and instruction about, rich vocabulary

Effective vocabulary instruction. . .

• Involves lots of time spent reading• Involves lots of rich talk and talk about text• Teaches important words• Teaches conceptually-related words• Relates new words to known words• Exposes children to words multiple times in

multiple meaningful contexts• Raises word consciousness

Semantic Word Map:

Farms

What They Do

Grow plants for people or animals to eat or useRaise

animals for people to eat or use

Animals

cows, pigs, chickens, sheep,

ostriches!, fish. . .

Crops

corn, wheat, soy beans, rice, fruit, vegetables. . .

Equipment

silo

barn

plow

Tractor

Milking machines

(Rupley, Logan, & Nichols, 1999; Duke & Bennett-Armistead, 2002)

Concept Wheel:

Hibernation

Sleep

Rest

Winter

Dens

Low heart rate

Bats

Bears

Turtles

Garter snakes

Toads

Hibernation Sleep

BearsWinter

(Rupley, Logan, & Nichols, 1999; Duke & Bennett-Armistead, 2002)

Categories: What is it?Properties: What is it like?Comparisons: Same/DifferentIllustrations: What are some Examples?

Concept of Definition:

(Schwartz & Raphael, 1985)

4. Language Intervention

• A wide range of language interventions exist.

• This is normally the purview of speech and language pathologists.

• Intervention may occur at many levels, including the phoneme, word, sentence, and extended text level

One outside-the box language intervention: Ambiguity training (Yuill, 1996)

• “Defining and finding words with double meanings (e.g. bank, fan)

Introduction explaining puns (e.g., What’s black and white and red all over?)

• Explaining sentences with double meanings (e.g., The mayor asked the police to stop stealing.)

• Further work on explaining jokes beyond the word level

• Given word compounds, with double meanings, inventing meanings different from the usual meaning (e.g., sausage roll, watch dog)

• Communication game: One child describes a picture in such a way that others can work out which picture in an array is referred to (e.g., “umbrella” would be an inadequate description for an array of a red and a yellow umbrella) (e.g., see Pratt & Bates, 1982).

• Given a word pair, such as “cow-horse,” thinking of a clue so that a peer can pick out one of the words (e.g., “milk” would prompt cow). Word pairs are either similar in meaning (e.g., river-ocean) or dissimilar (e.g., wash-give) (see Asher & Parke, 1975).Evaluating good and poor clues.

• Explaining metalinguistic jokes• Finding key words to help understand abstract stories

(see Yuill & Joscelyne, 1988, for examples)”p. 211

5. Instruction in Comprehension Strategies

Some key strategies:• Generating questions• Thinking aloud• Monitoring and adjusting as needed• Attending to and uncovering text structure• Activating and applying relevant background

knowledge, including predicting• Drawing inferences• Constructing visual representations• Summarizing

Five Components of Teaching Comprehension Strategies

(1) An explicit description of the strategy and when and how it should be used.

(2) Teacher and/or student modeling of the strategy in action

(3) Collaborative use of the strategy in action.(4) Guided practice using the strategy with

gradual release of responsibility.(5) Independent use of the strategy.

A key instructional construct:T

each

er R

esp

onsi

bil

ity

100

00

100Student Responsibility

With any luck, we move this way (----->) over time.But we are always prepared to slide up and down the diagonal.

Gradual Release of Responsibility

Teaching multiple strategies simultaneously may be particularly powerful (Duke & Pearson, 2002, pp. 224-231; NRP, 2000; Pressley, 2000).

Approaches tested with LD students include:• Reciprocal Teaching• Collaborative Strategic Reading• Multipass• POSSE• And others (see Gersten, et al., 2001)

6. Knowledge Building

• Through reading– especially reading texts whose primary purpose is

to convey information– I suggest 1/3 informational genres even in primary

grades

• Through hands on experiences• Through discussion

7. Engagement Fostering

• Especially among older students• Especially among students experiencing

difficulties• Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI;

Guthrie et al) and other engagement-concerned approaches

8. Miscellaneous

• Rich texts• Text discussion

– Questions and questioning (teacher and student)– Think-alouds (teacher and student)– Other

• Lots of opportunities for meaningful writing• Screening and treatment for sensory / perceptual

issues• Authentic literacy events

More About Authentic Literacy Events

Authentic literacy events are those that replicate or reflect reading and writing purposes and texts, specific to the genre, that occur in the world outside of a schooling context.

For example, authentic reading of informational text involves reading for the purpose of obtaining information you want or need to know (and writing for the purpose of communicating information to people who want or need to know it).

(Purcell-Gates & Duke, 2001)

Some set-ups for authentic reading of informational text in science in the TEXT

approach

Discrepant events to generate questions E.g., prisms on the overhead

Demonstrations of phenomena to generate questions E.g., volcano, caterpillars

Serendipitous events brought from world outside E.g., broken arm

Announcing topic and asking for questions E.g., K-W-L charts (topic: sound)

(Purcell-Gates, Duke, Hall, & Tower, 2002)

Some set-ups for authentic reading and writing in science in the TEXT approach

Literacy in response to a community need E.g. pond brochure

Literacy as part of problem-solving E.g. dying tadpoles

(Audience integral to authentic writing -- audiences include distant readers (e.g., Costa Rican pen pals), within-school audiences, and within-classroom audiences)

(Purcell-Gates, Duke, Hall, & Tower, 2002)