Getting Over the Hump

Overcoming Reading-Comprehension Difficulties

When most people think of reading difficulties, they think of dyslexia. But not all reading difficulties stem from this learning disability. To be a proficient reader involves2 basic skills; 1. recognizing words and 2. understanding their meaning. Word recognition is a very broad term that encompasses the phenomena of dyslexia without going into detail.

But a small number of children, around 10%, have trouble with reading comprehension. They have no problem with reading text and they read with a great deal of accuracy—unlike children with dyslexia. What children with reading-comprehension difficulties cannot do is explain to you what they’ve just read.

A recent study published in Psychological Science, a publication put out by the Association for Psychological Science, discusses a training program which may help kids overcome this type of reading difficulty. Four psychological scientists from the University of York in the UK, Paula J. Clarke, Margaret J. Snowling, Emma Truelove, and Charles Hulme carried out a study to determine which of three reading intervention programs would be the most effective in enhancing a child’s reading comprehension.

Three Programs

The participants in this study were 8 and 9 year-old children with reading-comprehension difficulties. They took part in one of three intervention programs: Text Comprehension training (TC), which involves re-reading written texts and trying to visualize content (metacognitive); Oral Language training (OL), which ignores texts altogether, and concentrates instead on spoken language with an accompanying emphasis on vocabulary; and a third program consisting of a combination of TC and OL called COM, that utilizes components from the other two programs. The children were evaluated for performance prior to the study, during the training period, and at 11 months after completion of the programs.

While all three groups showed some improvement in reading comprehension, the children with the most significant and long-term improvement were those who participated in the OL training group. “The OL and COM groups also showed improvements in knowledge of the meanings of words that they had been taught and these improvements, in turn, helped to account for these children’s improved reading comprehension skills,” said the authors.

The simple fact that the children who had the OL training did better than those in the COM training group suggests that spending more time on oral-language training seems to be a key factor in overcoming reading-comprehension issues. The COM program used half the amount of oral-language training used in the OL intervention.

Vocabulary Deficits

The authors point out that their findings seem to have pinpointed underdeveloped vocabulary as at least one major underlying reason for reading-comprehension difficulties. It is hoped that the results of the study will guide educators in helping children get over the hump of their reading-comprehension issues.

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