Using prior knowledge is an important part of reading comprehension for children with dyslexia.

Students relate written word to their previous experiences to make reading more personal,
helping them to both understand and remember what they have read. Some experts believe that
activating prior knowledge is the most important aspect of the reading experience.
What is Prior Knowledge?
When we talk about prior or previous knowledge, we refer to all of the experiences readers have
had throughout their lives, including information they have learned elsewhere. This knowledge is
used to bring the written word to life and to make it more relevant in the reader's mind. Just as
our understanding about the subject can lead to further understanding, misconceptions that we
accept also add to our understanding, or misunderstanding as we read.
Teaching Prior Knowledge
A number of teaching interventions can be implemented in the classroom to help students
effectively activate prior knowledge when reading: preteaching vocabulary, providing
background knowledge and creating opportunities and a framework for students to continue
building background knowledge.
Pre-teaching Vocabulary
In another article, we discussed the challenge in teaching students with dyslexia new vocabulary
words. These students may have a larger oral vocabulary than their reading vocabulary and they
may have a difficult time both sounding out new words and recognizing these words when
reading. It is often helpful for teachers to introduce and review new vocabulary before beginning
new reading assignments. As students become more familiar with vocabulary and continue to
build their vocabulary skills, not only does their reading fluency increase but so does their
reading comprehension. In addition, as students learn and understand new vocabulary word, and
relate these words to their personal knowledge of a subject, they can invoke that same knowledge
as they read. Learning the vocabulary, therefore, helps students to use their personal experiences
to relate to stories and information they read.
Providing Background Knowledge
When teaching, teachers accept that a student continues to build upon previous knowledge and
without this knowledge, they will have a much more difficult time understanding new concepts.
When students are first introduced to a new topic, they will have some level of prior knowledge.
They may have a great deal of knowledge, some knowledge or very little knowledge. Before
providing background knowledge, teachers must measure the level of prior knowledge in a
specific topic. This can be accomplished by:

Asking questions, beginning with general questions and slowly increasing the specificity
of questions

Write statements on the board based on what students have shared about the topic

Have students complete a worksheet, without grading, to determine knowledge

Once a teacher has gathered information on how much the students know, she can plan lessons to
students further background knowledge. For example, when beginning a lesson on the Aztecs,
questions on prior knowledge might revolve around types of homes, food, geography, beliefs and
accomplishments. Based on the information the teacher gathers, she can create a lesson to fill in
the blanks, showing slides or pictures of homes, describing what types of food were available,
what major accomplishments the Aztecs had. Any new vocabulary words in the lesson should be
introduced to the students. This information should be given as an overview and as a precursor to
the actual lesson. Once the review is completed, students can read the lesson, bringing in the
background knowledge to give them a greater understanding of what they have read.
Creating Opportunities and a Framework for Students to Continue Building Background
Knowledge
Guided reviews and introductions to new material, such as the previous example of the teacher
providing an overview, before reading are extremely helpful in providing students with
background information. But students must learn to find this type of information on their own.
Teachers can help by giving students specific strategies for increasing background knowledge
about a new topic:

Reading summaries and conclusions of chapters in a textbook

Reading the end-of-chapter questions before reading the chapter

Reading the headings and subheadings

For books, reading the back of the book for information on what the book is about

Older students can review cliff notes before reading the book

Skimming the book, reading the first line of each paragraph or reading the first paragraph
of each chapter

Skimming for unfamiliar words and learning definitions before reading

Reading short articles on the same topic

As students learn how to find background information on a previously unknown topic, their
confidence in their ability to understand this information increases and they can use this new
knowledge to build and learn about additional topics.
References:

"Increasing Comprehension by Activating Prior Knowledge," 1991, William L. Christen,

Thomas J. Murphy, ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills
"Prereading Strategies," Date Unknown, Karla Porter, M.Ed. Weber State University
"The Use of Prior Knowledge in Reading," 2006, Jason Rosenblatt, New York University

Building a Better
Vocabulary

Everyonefrom beginning learners in English to veterans in journalismknows the frustration

of not having the right word immediately available in that lexicon one carries between one's ears.
Sometimes it's a matter of not being able to recall the right word; sometimes we never knew it. It
is also frustrating to read a newspaper or homework assignment and run across words whose
meanings elude us. Language, after all, is power. When your children get in trouble fighting with
the neighbors' children, and your neighbors call your children little twerps and you call their
children nefarious miscreantswell, the battle is over and they didn't stand a chance. Building a
vocabulary that is adequate to the needs of one's reading and self-expression has to be a personal
goal for every writer and speaker.

Several quizzes have been connected to this

section as vocabulary muscle builders. In
addition, a javascript pop-up lexicon, A YEAR'S
WORTH OF WORDSwith a word for every
day of the yearis available. See the hyperlinks
at the bottom of this page.

Making It Personal
Using some durable piece of paperwhite construction paper or the insides of the ripped-off
covers of old notebooksbegin to write down words in small but readable script that you
discover in your reading that you can't define. Read journals and newspapers that challenge you
in terms of vocabulary. Pursue words actively and become alert to words that you simply
overlooked in the past. Write down the words in one column; then, later, when you have a

dictionary at your disposal, write down a common definition of the word; in a third column,
write a brief sentence using the word, underlined.
Carry this paper or cardboard with you always. In the pauses of your busy daywhen
you're sitting on the bus, in the dentist's office, during commercialstake out the paper
and review your vocabulary words until you feel comfortable that you would recognize (and be
able to use) these words the next time you see them. The amazing thing is that you will see the
words againeven "nefarious miscreants," and probably sooner than you thought. In fact, you
might well discover that the words you've written down are rather common. What's happening is
not that, all of a sudden, people are using words you never saw before, but that you are now
reading and using words that you had previously ignored.

Using Every Resource

Most bookstores carry books on building a more powerful vocabulary, some of them with zany
names such as Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. If you've got money to spare or if
they're on sale, buy them and use them; they can't hurt. Books that group words according to
what they have in commonmore in meaning than in spellingare especially useful.
Newspapers often carry brief daily articles that explore the meanings of words and phrases.
These articles often emphasize peculiar words that won't find themselves into your working
vocabulary, but they can still be fun. Often you'll find that learning one new word leads to other
new words, little constellations of meaning that keep your brain cells active and hungry for more.
Make reading these articles one of your daily habits, an addiction, even.
Play dictionary games with your family in which someone uses the dictionary to find a neat word
and writes down the real definition and everyone else writes down a fake (and funny) definition.
See how many people you can fool with your fake definitions.
Two trucks loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus collided as they
left a New York publishing house last Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
Witnesses were aghast, amazed, astonished, astounded, bemused, benumbed,
bewildered, confounded, confused, dazed, dazzled, disconcerted, disoriented,
dumbstruck, electrified, flabbergasted, horrified, immobilized, incredulous,
nonplussed, overwhelmed, paralyzed, perplexed, scared, shocked, startled, stunned,
stupified, surprised, taken aback, traumatized, upset. . . .
joke circulated on the Internet
December 2003

A thesaurus is like a dictionary except that it groups words within constellations of meaning. It
is often useful in discovering just the right word you need to express what you want to say. Make
sure you correctly understand the definition of a word (by using a dictionary) before using it in
some important paper or report. Your bookstore salesperson can provide plenty of examples of an
inexpensive thesaurus. The online Merriam Webster's WWWebster Dictionary has access to
both an extensive dictionary and a hyperlinked thesaurus. Links allow you to go conveniently
back and forth between the dictionary and the thesaurus.

If you have a speedy computer processor and a fast hookup to the internet, we recommend the
Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus. Once the program is entirely loaded, type in a word that you
would like to see "visualized," hit the return key, and a construct of verbal connections will float
across the screen. Click on any of the words within that construct and a new pattern of
connections will emerge. Try the Visual Thesaurus with several different kinds of wordsverbs,
adverbs, nouns, adjectivesand try adjusting some of the various controls on the bottom of the
window. We do not recommend this web-site for slow machines; in fact, the bigger your monitor
and the faster your computer and connection, the more satisfying this experience will be.
When people use a word that puzzles you, ask what it means! You'll find that most instructors,
especially, are not in the least bothered by such questionsin fact, they're probably pleased that
you're paying such close attentionbut if they do seem bothered, write down the word and look
it up later, before the context of the word evaporates.

Knowing the Roots

At least half of the words in the English language are derived from Greek and Latin roots.
Knowing these roots helps us to grasp the meaning of words before we look them up in the
dictionary. It also helps us to see how words are often arranged in families with similar
characteristics.
For instance, we know that sophomores are students in their second year of college or high
school. What does it mean, though, to be sophomoric? The "sopho" part of the word comes from
the same Greek root that gives us philosophy, which we know means "love of knowledge." The

"ic" ending is sometimes added to adjectival words in English, but the "more" part of the word
comes from the same Greek root that gives us moron. Thus sophomores are people who think
they know a lot but really don't know much about anything, and a sophomoric act is typical of a
"wise fool," a "smart-ass"!
Let's explore further. Going back to philosophy,
we know the "sophy" part is related to knowledge
and the "phil" part is related to love (because we
know that Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly
Love and that a philodendron loves shady spots).
What, then, is philanthropy? "Phil" is still love,
and "anthropy" comes from the same Greek root
that gives us anthropology, which is the study
("logy," we know, means study of any kind) of
anthropos, humankind. So a philanthropist must be someone who loves humans and does
something about itlike giving money to find a cure for cancer or to build a Writing Center for
the local community college. (And an anthropoid, while we're at it, is an animal who walks like a
human being.) Learning the roots of our language can even be fun!
Some common Greek and Latin roots:
Root (source)

Meaning

English words

aster, astr (G)

star

astronomy, astrology

audi (L)

to hear

audible, auditorium

bene (L)

good, well

benefit, benevolent

bio (G)

life

biology, autobiography

dic, dict (L)

to speak

dictionary, dictator

fer (L)

to carry

transfer, referral

fix (L)

to fasten

fix, suffix, affix

geo (G)

earth

geography, geology

graph (G)

to write

graphic, photography

jur, just (L)

law

jury, justice

log, logue (G)

word, thought,
speech

monolog(ue), astrology, biology, neologism

luc (L)

light

lucid, translucent

manu (L)

hand

manual, manuscript

meter, metr (G)

measure

metric, thermometer

op, oper (L)

work

operation, operator

path (G)

feeling

pathetic, sympathy, empathy

ped (G)

child

pediatrics, pedophile

phil (G)

love

philosophy, Anglophile

phys (G)

body, nature

physical, physics

scrib, script (L)

to write

scribble, manuscript

tele (G)

far off

telephone,television

ter, terr (L)

earth

territory, extraterrestrial

vac (L)

empty

vacant, vacuum, evacuate

verb (L)

word

verbal, verbose

vid, vis (L)

to see

video, vision, television

Authority for this chart: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg.
6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Learning Prefixes and Suffixes

Knowing the Greek and Latin roots of several prefixes and suffixes (beginning and endings
attached to words) can also help us determine the meaning of words. Ante, for instance, means
before, and if we connect bellum with belligerant to figure out the connection with war, we'll
know that antebellum refers to the period before war. (In the United States, the antebellum period
is our history before the Civil War.)
Prefixes showing quantity
Meaning

Prefixes in English Words

half

semiannual, hemisphere

one

unicycle, monarchy, monorail

two

binary, bimonthly, dilemma, dichotomy

hundred

century, centimeter, hectoliter

thousand

millimeter, kilometer

Prefixes showing negation

without, no, not

asexual, anonymous, illegal, immoral, invalid, irreverent, unskilled

not, absence of,

opposing, against

nonbreakable, antacid, antipathy, contradict

opposite to,
complement to

counterclockwise, counterweight

do the opposite of,

remove, reduce

dehorn, devitalize, devalue

do the opposite of,

deprive of

disestablish, disarm

wrongly, bad

misjudge, misdeed

Prefixes showing time

before

antecedent, forecast, precede, prologue

after

postwar

again

rewrite, redundant

Prefixes showing direction or position

above, over

supervise, supererogatory

across, over

transport, translate

below, under

infrasonic, infrastructure, subterranean, hypodermic

in front of

proceed, prefix

behind

recede

out of

erupt, explicit, ecstasy

into

injection, immerse, encourage, empower

around

circumnavigate, perimeter

with

coexist, colloquy, communicate, consequence, correspond,

sympathy, synchronize

Authority for this table: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg.
6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Suffixes, on the other hand, modify the meaning of a word and frequently determine its function
within a sentence. Take the noun nation, for example. With suffixes, the word becomes the
adjective national, the adverb nationally, and the verb nationalize.
See what words you can come up with that use the following suffixes.

Typical noun suffixes are -ence, -ance, -or, -er, -ment, -list, -ism, -ship, -ency, -sion,
-tion, -ness, -hood, -dom

Typical verb suffixes are -en, -ify, -ize, -ate

Typical adjective suffixes are -able, -ible, -al, -tial, -tic, -ly, -ful, -ous, -tive, -less, -ish,
-ulent

The adverb suffix is -ly (although not all words that end in -ly are adverbslike
friendly)

Using Your Dictionary

The dictionary should be one of the most often used books in your home. (We'll allow room for
sacred texts here.) Place the dictionary somewhere so that you can find it immediately and use it

often. If you do your reading and homework in the kitchen and the dictionary is on a shelf in the
den or bedroom, it's too tempting to say "I'll look it up next time."
The home dictionary should be large enough to contain much more than just spellings. It should
contain extensive definitions, word origins, and notes on usage. Carrying in your purse or
backpack a pocket dictionary with more concise definitions is also a good idea. Get in the habit
of turning to it often. A well worn dictionary is a beautiful thing.

Using the Internet

You can use the internet as an aid to vocabulary development by exploring the abundant
opportunities for reading available on the World Wide Web. Capital Community College
maintains an extensive list of online newspapers and commentary magazines. Choose
magazines such as Atlantic and Mother Jones that challenge your mind and your vocabulary
with full-text articles. At least once a week read a major article with the purpose of culling from
it some vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to you. We also recommend the New York Times
Book Review (which might require an easy, one-time, free registration).
Vocabulary University is a new online resource for working on groups of related vocabulary
words in a puzzle format. Vocabulary U., a graphically rich Web site, is broken into beginning,
intermediate, and college-level work. Vocabulary for English Language Learners is a treasury
and nicely organized resources for ESL students. It is maintained by the College of Arts &
Sciences of Ohio University.
There are also at least two services that send you an e-mail message every day with a new word
with definitions, pronunciation guides, and examples of its use. Get in the habit of reading
these messages regularly. Print out the words and definitions you think will be really useful, or
write them down and carry them around with you on your personal vocabulary builder.

Garner's Usage Tip OF the Day Bryan Garner, author of A Dictionary of Modern
American Usage (Oxford University Press), offers this invaluable, free, daily e-mail
service. Subscription is easy. http://www.us.oup.com/us/subscriptions/subscribe/?
view=usa .

Vocab Vitamins (formerly "MyWordaDay"): Colin O'Malley maintains this Website, a

treasure for people who know that developing an adequate vocabulary is not a short-term
project. Users can visit the Website or have the WordaDay e-mailed to them. Words are
arranged in meaningful groups and defined in painstaking and useful detail, with plenty
of examples. http://www.vocabvitamins.com/.

WORDSMITH: To subscribe or unsubscribe to A.Word.A.Day, send a message to

wsmith@wordsmith.org with the "Subject:" line as "subscribe " or "unsubscribe." The
Wordsmith has thousands of subscribers. It does a great job of discovering interesting
themes and sources of words and then exploring those wordsa word a dayfor a week
or so and then goes off to another theme and series of words.

Word of the Day: Maintained by Merriam Webster, Inc., the dictionary people. Go to the
online WWWebster Dictionary and click on Word of the Day. From there, you can
either subscribe to their free daily service or explore their archives. The guides for
pronunciation are easier to follow than Wordsmith's and the examples are well founded
and even fun. The Merriam-Webster people also provide a neat link directly to their word
database so that you can highlight a word on a Web-page, click on their icon in your
personal toolbar and get an instant and authoritative definition for that word.
The following resources do not go to your e-mail account, but they are easily available
online if you can just remember to visit them on a regular basis.

Word of the Day from the OED: Although the online version of the esteemed Oxford
English Dictionary is not available without a hefty price tag, you can get a free Word of
the Day from the OED. You will find more information there about each word presented
than you could ever imagine existed.

The New York Times Word of the Day: every weekday, a word chosen from the
archives of the New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/wordofday/.

Michael Quinion's "World Wide Words": investigating the use and creation of English
words, from a British point of view. Fun to read, always something
new.http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm.

The Atlantic section on Language: from the Atlantic Monthly's online journal. Select
from "Word Court," "Word Fugitive," and "Word Police."
http://www.theatlantic.com/language/.

Word Safari challenges web surfers' knowledge of vocabulary, and then sends them off
on expeditions to see the chosen word used in context on the web. Aiming her Web site at
building academic vocabulary skills, Ruth Pettis adds new vocabulary words every week.
http://home.earthlink.net/~ruthpett/safari/index.htm.

The Maven's Word for the Day was maintained by the Reference division of Random
House. It went belly-up in December 2001, but the archives are still available online.
http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/.

You can also go to the web-site of the Scripps-Howard Annual National Spelling Bee and listen
to words on Audio Paideia. The words are arranged in interesting groups. With RealAudio on
your browser, you can hear the word and its definition and then try to spell it on your own. Have
a dictionary handy! This Guide to Grammar and Writing also has a series of spelling tests that
can be used as a vocabulary builders: go to the section on Spelling and choose the spelling tests
(bottom of the page) that use sound (the words you're asked to spell are accompanied by brief
definitions).

Javascript Vocabulary Stretchers, maintained by John Gales, offers a new computer-graded

vocabulary test (ten words) every week. Michael Quinion maintains a series of articles about the
English language called Wide World of Words (also available as a weekly e-mail newsletter).
You can spend days wandering through the maze of word-games and language resources listed in
Judi Wolinsky's Word Play.
Crossword puzzles are an excellent way to develop your vocabulary. Do the puzzles that appear
in your local newspaper on a daily or weekly basis or try these interactive crossword puzzles on
the internet:

The Christian Science Monitor Interactive Crossword Puzzle

Crossword of the Day

Michael Curl's Puzzles and Wordplay (This stuff is a real challenge!)

Voycabulary.com provides a means of typing in the URL of any Web page and the program will
turn every word on that page into a clickable hyperlink that will reveal a definition in MerriamWebster's Dictionary or Thesaurus. Voycabulary will also translate a Web page into another
language for you. Try it with this page, whose URL is
http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/vocabulary.htm

Five-Dollar Words
An extensive vocabulary can be a powerful writing and speaking tool; it can also be misused,
made to make others feel powerless. Never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will
do the job just as well or better. Do we really need utilize when a three-letter word, use, will
nicely suffice. Risible is a lovely word, but is it worth sending your readers to the dictionary
when laughable is at hand? It's a good question. On the other hand, don't cheat yourself or your
readers out of some important nuance of meaning that you've discovered in a word that's new to
you. At some point you have to assume that your readers also have dictionaries. It's sometimes a
tough line to drawbetween being a pedantic, pretentious boor (Oh, there are three dandies!)
and being a writer who can take full and efficient advantage of the English language's
multifarious (another one!) resources.

Quizzes
The quizzes listed below are meant for college-level work. They include
a number of words that are alleged to appear on the Scholastic Aptitude
Tests and Graduate Record Exams from year to year. Have fun building
those vocabulary muscles!
3 Steps to a Cultivated Vocabulary

A large part of our vocabulary comes from our environment; from the people we socialize with,
to the books we read, to the films we watch.
Most people dont actively think about the exact words they are using and why, yet the words we
choose help shape our identity.
Be picky with your words.
Words are a powerful thing so its important to be conscious of what youre saying and take the
time to cultivate a certain vocabulary that properly expresses who you are.
What I like to do is create a list of words and phrases that I find appealing. They are
words I find best help me express my feelings in my own personal voice.

Try making a list of your own. Keep an open mind, pull out a thesaurus; choose words or phrases
that you can actually imagine using. However, be a little open. It may take some practice before
new words start to feel natural on your lips but after awhile they will become second nature.
The important thing is to choose words that feel authentic and truly represent how
you want to come across.

Another important thing is to weed out the words you want to stop using. Perhaps you swear too
often or are always saying fantastic.
Not that fantastic is a bad word but sometimes we constantly repeat certain
words if only for the lack of not knowing an alternative in the moment.

In this case think of words that have the same meaning as fantastic and add them to your list.
This way the next time you want to say fantastic youll have an alternative ready at hand. I have
a tendency to overuse the words beastly and insipid twit.

When you know which words you want to add and which to take away then focus on a few at a
time. You can keep a running list but dont overwhelm yourself with trying to use all the new
words at once or youll come across as pretentious or disingenuous.
So to cultivate and implement new vocabulary follow these 3 steps:
1. Surround yourself with the type of language you want to use. Be mindful of
friends, books, films, events; your environment has a big impact.
2. Create a list of words and phrases that appeal to you and infuse them into
you vocabulary by consciously using them whenever appropriate until theyre
second nature.
3. Weed out your unfavorable words. Words you use too often, dont like, or
appear unladylike such as vulgarities.

TEACHING READING COMPREHENSION

A Look At Reading Comprehension Strategies

Check out our Strategies for Reading Comprehension Page!

Check out our Reading Comprehension Worksheets Page!
As Steve mentioned on the Teaching Reading Page, comprehension is the only
reason for reading. Without comprehension, reading is a frustrating, pointless exercise
in word calling. It is no exaggeration to say that how well students develop the ability to
comprehend what they read has a profound effect on their entire lives. A major goal of
teaching reading comprehension, therefore, is to help students develop the knowledge,
skills, and experiences they must have if they are to become competent and
enthusiastic readers.
For many years, teaching reading comprehension was based on a concept of reading
as the application of a set of isolated skills such as identifying words, finding main ideas,
identifying cause and effect relationships, comparing and contrasting, and sequencing.
Teaching reading comprehension was viewed as a mastery of these skills.
Comprehension instruction followed what the study called mentioning, practicing, and
assessing procedure where teachers mentioned a specific skill that students were to
apply, had students practice the skill by completing workbook pages, then assessed
them to find out if they could use the skill correctly. Instruction did little to help students
learn how or when to use the skills, nor was is ever established that this particular set of
skills enabled comprehension.

Taken from http://reading.uoregon.edu/comp/comp_features.php

Research indicates that we build comprehension through the teaching of
comprehension strategies and environments that support an understanding of text. It is

important for educators and parents to teach children active strategies and skills to help
them become active, purposeful readers. Teaching reading comprehension is an active
process of constructing meaning, not skill application. The act of constructing meaning
is:
Interactive It involves not just the reader, but the text and the context in which reading
takes place.
Strategic Readers have purposes for their reading and use a variety of strategies as they
construct meaning.
Adaptable Readers change the strategies they use as they read different kinds of text or
as they read for different purposes.

What Do Good Readers Do?

Before reading, good readers tend to set goals for their reading.
During reading, good readers read words accurately and quickly, while dealing with
meanings of words.
Good readers are selective as they read.
Good readers use their background knowledge (schema) to create mental images, ask
questions, and make inferences.
Good readers monitor their comprehension as they read.

How Do Poor Readers Differ From Good Readers?

Poor readers do not have sufficient awareness to develop, select, and apply strategies that
can enhance their comprehension.
Poor readers rarely prepare before reading.
During reading, poor readers may have difficulty decoding, reading too slowly, and lack
fluency.
Poor readers often lack sufficient background knowledge and have trouble making
connections with text.
Some poor readers are unaware of text organization.
After reading, poor readers do not reflect on what they have just read.

READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES

Making Connections
Creating Mental Images (Visualizing)
Questioning
Inferring
Evaluating (Determining Importance)
Synthesizing

Steve and I use the lessons found in Comprehension Connections by Tanny McGregor,
Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller, and 7 Keys to Comprehension by Susan
Zimmerman and Chryse Hutchins for teaching reading comprehension strategies.

METACOGNITION & SCHEMA (BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE)

Although "metacognition" and "schema" aren't comprehension strategies, they are very
important for teaching reading comprehension strategies. John Flavell used the term
metacognition in the 70s and believed we were capable of monitoring our own
thoughts. Simply put, metacognition means to think about your thinking. In her book,
Comprehension Connections, Tanny McGregor uses a mathematical equation to teach
this concept to her students that Ive also used in my classroom: Text + Thinking =
Real Reading
When you read text and think at the same time you are real readingor being
metacognitive! In 7 Keys to Comprehension, Zimmerman & Hutchins define schema
(background knowledge) as the meaning you get from a piece of literature that is
intertwined with the meaning you bring to it. A layering occurs, a weaving of past and
present, an amalgam of old and new ideas and experiences. When you read,
sometimes you activate your schema or you build upon it. A previous student of mine
described schema simply as everything that is stuck in your brainI like that
definition!
As Tanny mentions in her book, its hard teaching reading comprehension strategies
without teaching your children about metacognition and schema. Look for the activities
that Steve and I use coming soon on the Comprehension Activities Page!

MAKING CONNECTIONS
Children make personal connections with the text by using their schema. There are
three main types of connections we can make during reading:
Text-to-Self: Refers to connections made between the text and the reader's personal
experience.
Text-to-Text: Refers to connections made between a text being read to a text that was
previously read.
Text-to-World: Refers to connections made between a text being read and something that
occurs in the world.

CREATING MENTAL IMAGES (VISUALIZING)

This strategy involves the ability of readers to make mental images of a text as a way to
understand processes or events they encounter during reading. This ability can be an
indication that a reader understands the text. Some research suggests that readers who
visualize as they read are better able to recall what they have read than those who do
not visualize.
QUESTIONING
This strategy involves readers asking themselves questions throughout the reading of
text. The ability of readers to ask themselves relevant questions as they read is
especially valuable in helping them to integrate information, identify main ideas, and
summarize information. Asking the right questions allows good readers to focus on the
most important information in a text.
INFERRING
Authors do not always provide complete descriptions of, or explicit information about a
topic, setting, character, or event. However, they often provide clues that readers can
use to read between the linesby making inferences that combine information in the
text with their schema.
EVALUATING (DETERMINING IMPORTANCE)
Determining importance has to do with knowing why youre reading and then making
decisions about what information or ideas are most critical to understanding the overall
meaning of the piece.
SYNTHESIZING
Synthesizing is the process of ordering, recalling, retelling, and recreating into a
coherent whole the information with which our minds are bombarded everyday.
Synthesizing is closely linked to evaluating. Basically, as we identify whats important,

we interweave our thoughts to form a comprehensive perspective to make the whole

greater than just the sum of the parts.

How to encourage students to read for pleasure: teachers share their top tips
While students might trudge through set texts in lessons, how can teachers inspire
them to open a book when they get home?

Here are some of the best ideas, initiatives and projects that teachers use to help
students develop a love of reading. Photograph: Alamy.

Martin Williams

@Martin_R_W

Tuesday 3 June 2014 15.28 BST Last modified on Thursday 5 June 2014 14.36 BST

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The big challenge for teachers is not simply getting students to read it's getting them to enjoy it
too. It's one thing for students to trudge through set texts in a lesson, but will they open another
book when they get home at the end of the day?
The National Literacy Trust has noted that becoming a lifetime reader is based on developing a
deep love of reading.

"Research has repeatedly shown that motivation to read decreases with age, especially if pupils'
attitudes towards reading become less positive," it said. "If children do not enjoy reading when
they are young, then they are unlikely to do so when they get older."
For younger readers in particular, their home environment is critically important.
"Home is a massive influence," says Eleanor Webster, a primary school teacher in
Nottinghamshire. "Supportive and understanding parents are key to developing their child's
reading."
But if a pupil doesn't see people reading at home, it may be harder to instil the idea of reading for
pleasure. So what can teachers do to encourage it? Here are some of the best ideas, initiatives
and projects that teachers have developed to motivate children and help them develop a love for
reading:
Reading challenges

Reading competitions come in many shapes and sizes, with the aim of spicing up literature and
giving children an incentive to open a book. Mountbatten School in Hampshire is one school that
has run several projects to encourage reading for pleasure.
"We wanted them to try reading a broad range of books," says Jennifer Ludgate, an English
teacher at the school.
"We challenged students to read one book, fiction or non-fiction, from a wide range of genres.
They get them ticked off by their teacher and there are medals at the end of the year."
Another competition saw students race against time to tick off the classics.
"A colleague created the '16 Before You're 16 Challenge' for the older years," says Ludgate.
"We chose 16 classics, like To Kill A Mockingbird and Brave New World, and challenged
students to read as many as they can before they turn 16. It's a good way to make sure they're
being challenged."
In another contest, Eleanor Webster gets younger children to read for pleasure with "extreme
reading" competitions over the summer holidays.
"They're always very popular," she says. "Children take pictures of themselves reading in strange
places and we display the photos in the main corridor. Some were on roller coasters, in tractors,
on top of bookcases or at holiday destinations."

The 100 Word Challenge , created by Julia Skinner, asks children to write regular posts online
and read other students' work.
"When you tell kids, 'We're going to do some reading,' it can immediately turn them off," says
Skinner.
"But with this you say: 'We're going to support someone who has done some writing. What do
you think of it?' It gives them a purpose to read."
Jennifer Ludgate, who uses the 100 Word Challenge, explains: "Their homework is to read two
students' writing they really like it because it's short, easy to read, and it only takes them a
couple of minutes."
Escapism

While reading challenges can give a sense of purpose, escaping the challenges of school is a
crucial part of encouraging reading for pleasure.
"Children won't find reading pleasurable if there is too much pressure on them," says Webster,
"so a relaxed atmosphere and a positive ethos around reading is really important."
"One teacher in my school started referring to library sessions as 'the escape'," says Suzy Dodd,
an English teacher at the Co-operative Academy of Leeds.
Promoting reading as a form of escapism from the general pressures of school and their social
lives encouraged her class to see reading as a form of self-indulgent relaxation, instead of
another intelligence test. Her class are among the most prolific readers in the school.
In September she gives her kids a good talk about reading as escapism, and then introduces
library sessions by saying, "we get to escape for an hour today".
Teacher involvement

"Showing students that teachers of all subjects read books, not just the English teachers, is really
important," says Ludgate.
"We asked teachers to bring in two or three of their favourite books. Then, at the start of every
lesson, whether that be geography, maths or whatever, the teacher would read to the class for ten
minutes from their favourite book.
"The students would come in talking about what their PE or history teacher was reading, and that
would spark really interesting discussions. It's especially good if they don't see people reading at
home. "

Reading walls

"Having a print-rich environment is important," says John Murphy, who is an English and history
teacher in Ireland and blogs at Web of Notes.
"The surroundings should encourage reading in all its forms and support their choices of reading
material. I don't simply mean putting up a poster which tries to promote reading because it's
'cool' I think they're totally ineffective. Instead, students and teachers could share the name of
the book that they're reading at the moment, and offer a sentence about it. It's a great way to
share recommendations."
Drop Everything And Read

Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) is used in classrooms across the country, and allows
children to forget their normal tasks and drift away with a good book.
Webster explains: "The whole school has a set time in the school day where children read to
themselves or an adult and they can choose from a wide variety of books."
Ludgate says it is important that DEAR does not become a task: "Having 10 minutes of reading
at the beginning of every lesson doesn't always work because it can become too ingrained. But
the idea with DEAR is that it goes across different subjects not just English."
Reading to the class

Encouraging children to read for pleasure is about more than getting them to pick up a book; it's
equally important for children to appreciate a good story.
"I think it's important to make sure you read to them as much as they read for themselves or other
people, making it a more supportive environment," says Ludgate.
"Spending once a half term saying, 'Right, I'm going to read to you this lesson', I think really
encourages them to appreciate it. The older years in particular haven't been read to at home for so
long that they absolutely love it."
Anything goes

"It's crucial to bear in mind what the student wants to read," says Murphy. "Having this control
shouldn't be undervalued, and I think they should be allowed to venture from one type of book to
another.
"Introduce students to a wide variety of texts, mediums and genres they may surprise
themselves once they have faced preconceived ideas about what they consider enjoyable and

embrace a diversity in what they read. Comics, ebooks, short stories, online articles and
magazines shouldn't be ignored."
Books across the curriculum

"Our curriculum is very creative and topics are often set around a book," says Webster.
"Children respond well to it because they love exploring details of books and making books
come to life. For example, we had a whole term based on the Gruffalo in September. Now in the
summer term children often recite it word for word and talk about other Julia Donaldson books
they've read since."

Teaching reading strategies enables your students to deconstruct texts, keep up their language
skills outside of class and make the most of the content to which they are exposed. Reading is
also the best way for students to enhance their vocabulary in a new language and whats more
important for language learners than learning new words?
But being strategic during reading activities also impacts writing. When students analyze how
the writer has organized his or her thoughts it can help them improve their own composition. In
addition, exposure to various text types and authors with different writing styles
reinforces grammar by providing ample examples of native speaker constructions.
So how do you get students to read? Teach them the tricks of the trade, suggest a few apps to
make the process easier and above all, pick out texts that will ensure they enjoy reading both for
school and for fun.
Teaching reading to beginners

Did you know that literacy skills transfer from your first to your second language? That means if
you know how to implement strategies in your mother tongue (whether or not you are aware that
youre using them) you will most likely be able to do the same in your new language. However,
reading is not something that comes naturally to us.
We all have to learn to read, some students are just naturally strategic readers to begin with.
Nonetheless, for the majority of learners, you will need to start at the beginning, particularly if
reading skills in the first language have not been strongly developed.
Tip #1 Delve into phonics as comprehension activities wont be effective if learners cannot
decode the language they are seeing. Going over the alphabet and looking at sound to letter
mapping is key, particularly in English as spelling is so irregular and pronunciation rules are
rather unreliable. Childrens books are a fun way to teach phonics, poetry may also be helpful if
it has a set rhythm and or rhymes.
Tip #2 Its good to introduce high frequency vocabulary that is likely to appear in most texts.
Helping students recognize sight words allows them to focus their attention on understanding the
more complex terms they encounter. For English as a second language learners, the Dolch list
is a great place to start.
Tip #3 Start small by practicing reading at the phrase and sentence level and gradually
expanding the scope of your material to paragraph and whole text examples.
Tip #4 The last thing you want to do is overwhelm a learner so its important to choose reading
material which contains mostly familiar vocabulary. If youre not sure your text is on-level, try

implementing the five finger rule. Read a sentence and lift one finger for every word your
students are likely not to know. If all five fingers go up, the text is too difficult.
Popular reading strategies

Strategies come in all shapes and sizes but they can usually be divided into top-down and
bottom-up categories. Top-down strategies focus on the gist and main ideas of a text in order to
activate a students prior knowledge on a topic and help him or her take better guesses at the
ideas the text will present.
Tip #5 Skimming is one of the most common top-down strategies used to quickly assess the
theme of a reading but you can also try pre-reading exercises such as discussing a related topic,
having students generate a list of vocabulary related to the texts main idea or teaching some of
the key terms students will need to understand the text.
Bottom-up strategies begin at the word and sentence level and require students to identify
smaller units of meaning.
Tip #6 Activities like scanning can help with comprehension of specific details. Have students
run their fingers through the text looking for a vocabulary word and then explain to you how it
has been used.
Strategies for vocabulary acquisition

Learning vocabulary from context is so much better for students than isolated study as it helps
them learn about usage and co-locates. A word is also more memorable if a student has tried to
guess its meaning before looking it up.
Tip #7 If 90% of the words in a sentence are familiar to learners, they should be able to take
good guesses at the meaning of unknown words. For every text students read, have them write
down at least 5 new words that they dont know, along with a potential definition. Next, get out
the dictionaries and verify the words actual meanings.
Tip #8 If a text contains a lot of complex vocabulary, you may want to provide a gloss on the
side of the page to help students refer back to the meaning of new words and guess at the words
which arent included in the gloss.
How to for teachers

Explain The first step in teaching reading strategies is to explain the strategy. Stick to why its
important and when you might want to use it.
Model Show students how it works by modeling the strategy for them.

Practice Have students practice the strategy and be sure to provide plenty of feedback and
answer any questions if they run into trouble.
Additional resources

While in the past, getting a hold of foreign language content to practice reading was somewhat
tricky (unless of course your local library had subscriptions to the foreign papers), the Internet
has opened up a whole new world of realia. Encouraging language students to practice their
reading skills and seek out original content on subjects they care about will ensure they stay in
regular contact with the language outside of class, receive repeat exposure to high frequency
vocabulary and continue to learn new words.
Graded readers Texts which have been custom made to include repeat vocabulary and high
frequency words are great for beginners who dont have a large vocabulary to start with.
However, the sooner you can move to authentic texts, the better.
Apps and extensions There are plenty of paid apps which provide online dictionaries and access
to foreign newspapers but Lingua.ly offers the same service for free. It contains an adaptive news
feed with articles in every category, flashcards and a mobile dictionary. Theres also an extension
tool to help you look up words when you read from foreign websites.

Teaching Reading
Assessing Reading Proficiency

Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In the communicative competence model, a
student's reading level is the level at which that student is able to use reading to accomplish
communication goals. This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with
purposes for reading.
Reading Aloud

A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that student's reading
ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a given text when reading it silently
may stumble when asked to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability
in the way that reading aloud requires.
In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the
classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: It does not test a student's
ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.
However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing" word endings and
other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read
and look up" approach: Ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more times, until
comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the
student to process the text, and lets you see the results of that processing and know what
elements, if any, the student is missing.
Comprehension Questions

Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have understood what
they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be
coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information,
comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to understand an
opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension questions should ask about those
points.
In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they
know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading.
To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the
classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to
read the test passage.

Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the
point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found
the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).
Authentic Assessment

In order to provide authentic assessment of students' reading proficiency, a post-listening activity

must reflect the real-life uses to which students might put information they have gained through
reading.

It must have a purpose other than assessment

It must require students to demonstrate their level of reading comprehension

by completing some task

To develop authentic assessment activities, consider the type of response that reading a particular
selection would elicit in a non-classroom situation. For example, after reading a weather report,
one might decide what to wear the next day; after reading a set of instructions, one might repeat
them to someone else; after reading a short story, one might discuss the story line with friends.
Use this response type as a base for selecting appropriate post-reading tasks. You can then
develop a checklist or rubric that will allow you to evaluate each student's comprehension of
specific parts of the text. See Assessing Learning for more on checklists and rubrics.

Teaching Reading
Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the
grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the
case of reading, this means producing students who can use reading strategies to maximize their
comprehension of text, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than
word-by-word comprehension.
Focus: The Reading Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of reading rather than on its product.

They develop students' awareness of the reading process and reading

strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they read in their
native language.

They allow students to practice the full repertoire of reading strategies by

using authentic reading tasks. They encourage students to read to learn (and
have an authentic purpose for reading) by giving students some choice of
reading material.

When working with reading tasks in class, they show students the strategies
that will work best for the reading purpose and the type of text. They explain
how and why students should use the strategies.

They have students practice reading strategies in class and ask them to
practice outside of class in their reading assignments. They encourage
students to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete reading
assignments.

They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and self-report

their use of strategies. They build comprehension checks into in-class and
out-of-class reading assignments, and periodically review how and when to
use particular strategies.

They encourage the development of reading skills and the use of reading
strategies by using the target language to convey instructions and courserelated information in written form: office hours, homework assignments, test
content.

They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to
another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a
different type of reading task or with another skill.

By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by
explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and

the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom.
In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new
language.
Integrating Reading Strategies

Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of reading
activities in the language classroom. Instructors can help their students become effective readers
by teaching them how to use strategies before, during, and after reading.
Before reading: Plan for the reading task

Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for

Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed

Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall
meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after reading: Monitor comprehension

Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses

Decide what is and is not important to understand

Reread to check comprehension

Ask for help

After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area

Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks

Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the
task

Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Approaches

For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and homework

reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life reading tasks that involve meaningful
communication. They must therefore be authentic in three ways.

1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of material that students will need
and want to be able to read when traveling, studying abroad, or using the language in other
contexts outside the classroom.
When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the difficulty of a reading text is
less a function of the language, and more a function of the conceptual difficulty and the task(s)
that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often
removes natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to
predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original were used.
Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it more approachable by eliciting
students' existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before
reading, and asking students to perform tasks that are within their competence, such as skimming
to get the main idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive reading.
2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading for reasons that make sense
and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher assigned it" is not an authentic reason for
reading a text.
To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan to use the language they are
learning and what topics they are interested in reading and learning about. Give them
opportunities to choose their reading assignments, and encourage them to use the library, the
Internet, and foreign language newsstands and bookstores to find other things they would like to
read.
3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the text in a way that matches
the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This means that reading
aloud will take place only in situations where it would take place outside the classroom, such as
reading for pleasure. The majority of students' reading should be done silently.
Reading Aloud in the Classroom

Students do not learn to read by reading aloud. A person who reads aloud and comprehends the
meaning of the text is coordinating word recognition with comprehension and speaking and
pronunciation ability in highly complex ways. Students whose language skills are limited are not
able to process at this level, and end up having to drop one or more of the elements. Usually the
dropped element is comprehension, and reading aloud becomes word calling: simply
pronouncing a series of words without regard for the meaning they carry individually and
together. Word calling is not productive for the student who is doing it, and it is boring for other
students to listen to.

There are two ways to use reading aloud productively in the language
classroom. Read aloud to your students as they follow along silently. You have

the ability to use inflection and tone to help them hear what the text is
saying. Following along as you read will help students move from word-byword reading to reading in phrases and thought units, as they do in their first
language.

Use the "read and look up" technique. With this technique, a student reads a
phrase or sentence silently as many times as necessary, then looks up (away
from the text) and tells you what the phrase or sentence says. This
encourages students to read for ideas, rather than for word recognition.

How to Evaluate Progress in Reading

by readingjourneymanJanuary 10, 2015

How to Evaluate Reading Progress

If you are a student or teacher, it is important to evaluate the achievements students have made
in reading. As we already discussed earlier in a different post, Goals are a good way to mark the
progress you have made and provide motivation to your true intentions of reading. However, as
an administrator and teacher, I have found there are other ways to evaluate progress with
statistics and the simple eye-test. Below are a couple of different ways you can try to see
progression in reading and English development. Each method requires different resources to
use, so it is recommended to use the method which is most convenient for you.
1. Reading Test
This method is best to demonstrate knowledge with context clues and understanding appropriate
uses of vocabulary. Based on the test subjects reading ability, choose a text (this may come from
a book, news article, magazine, newspaper, etc.) which about 1,500 words long. From this text,
separate it into meaningful paragraphs to show the organization of the passage. Leave the 1st
paragraph as it is, do not change it; change the rest of the text by deleting every 10th word and
leaving a blank or ____. Ask the test subject to read the passage and try to fill in the blanks with
their knowledge and understanding of the text. This can be used at the beginning and end of a
semester, or it could be used to see how much a test subject knows about the passage. The main
concern when deciding an appropriate text is making sure the content is not too difficult for the
reader. Choosing science terminology may not be appropriate for example if the reader is
unfamiliar with the terminology. You can give this as a starting test and finishing test to see how
well the student is doing better.
The example below shows what a potential passage would look like, courtesy of the LA Times

The students are not expected to guess the answer, but instead guess
which words could be placed in those blanks. The focus is understanding the sentence structure
and identifying missing parts of speech. For example, the first blank (Earth) is a noun. An
advanced student should get the answer Earth, but lower level students may still identify the
answer as a noun and name another planet or object. As an evaluator, you need to determine how
close to the actual answer you are wanting the students to achieve.
2. Reading Notebook
Having a notebook for either a class or individual reasons is a great way to view progress from
the beginning of your studies to when you have completed a goal or semester/class. This is
mainly a long term progression check because you are showing your original work and the end
result after studying and learning more English. Students are allowed to express their ideas and
writings about books they read or passages they read from class/outside sources. The notebook
can be treated as a diary or as a log of read material used as a reference of read material.
The key to this is to treat it as a notebook, not a study book. You should be able, after 6 or so
months go back and see how you have changed as a writer and reader. The material, content,
reading strategies, and writing can all have changed from beginning to end and hopefully you are
able to identify the changes yourself. A study book is where you take notes and use the notes as
study material; you may review for a test. This book is not meant to be reviewed but instead
reflected upon. Teachers are allowed to provide feedback on the work in the notebook and can
use this notebook for themselves to progress their feedback and notice any repetitive
comments/notes.

3. Creating a portfolio
Some people may already be familiar with the portfolio concept but basically, a portfolio is a
file you keep throughout your years in school or over a long period of time which includes
various work you have completed to showcase your skills and interests. English portfolios are
important because like reading notebooks, they include material you can reflect on and see the
progression you have made in English. However, a portfolio can include edited material and
most of the time includes various forms of your experience in English. This may include book
reports, essays, sample writings, videos of presentations, poster boards, activities, drawings, etc.
The goal of a portfolio is to express your English skills to those interested in your skills with a
large amount of content and material. I had an English portfolio from grade school to high school
and it was nice seeing the work which I did in Elementary School and the content I was writing
about in High School. For any administration or teacher really looking into this idea more I
recommend this method because it can be very motivational for new English learners to see the
value in their work from the beginning of their journey to a new stage in their language
development.
4. Interviews
One method I found very useful when evaluating a students reading ability is through
interviews. This method can be modified according to any type of situation and the administrator
has a lot of flexibility with how the interview process is handled. An interview may require
preparation time to create the questions and a means to evaluate the various answers available,
however a teacher should be able to immediately identify the level of comprehension the student
has of the interview topic. To be creative, you could have students interview other students to test
their comprehension, you could have teamed interviews, or even have a reversal with the teacher
and student. The key with interviews is how to phrase the questions to eliminate ambiguity.
A different post will go into detail about how to create fair questions for tests, interviews, and
other forms of assessment, however the important part of question making as a teacher involves
knowing what type of questions you want the students to answer. With various reading strategies,
questions need to be specific enough so the listener understands the question and is able to
answer accurately. Questions such as what is the story about? is very vague and can create
various degrees of responses. Asking for a summary of the important parts of the story would be
a better question because it allows the listener to think of the main ideas and connect them into a
summary. Remember to ask only important information which fulfills the purpose of the
question. a comprehension question should not ask for too specific information that is irrelevant
to the plot of the story. What color was the childs jacket? for example may not be a good
question if the jacket is not important to the story line. Asking questions like this confuse the
students and make them believe they need to memorize all of the details in the story.
At times, when interviewing, answers to questions may have been learned from prior knowledge,
specifically when interviewing about nonfiction books. Therefore, the interviewer needs to be
more knowledgeable about the specific book or content and ask specifics about it. Another area
to be aware of is book adaptations. When having students read books which have a movie based

on it, at times the student may rely on the movie to complete their reading assignment. An adult
student tried to read the Brothers Grimm version of the Little Mermaid and insisted he read it
all. In the interview I asked what happened to the little mermaid at the end of the story and the
student replied, she got married and lived happily ever after. For those who dont know, in the
Disney movie, The Little Mermaid, Ariel marries Prince Eric and they sail off into the sunset. In
the Brothers Grimm version, the little mermaid fails at making the prince fall in love with her
and she quietly turns into bubbles and washes away into the sea. I was able to identify if the
student read the book correctly from this question.
With interviews, if time permits itself the interview can also act as one-to-one teaching where the
teacher can provide feedback to the student and truly harness any difficulties the student may
have with their reading material. This can be very rewarding to the teacher and student as it gives
both the opportunity to really feel invested in the language learning process together outside of a
classroom setting.
There are other ways to assess and evaluate a students reading skills however these four are
fairly easy to do whether you are a parent preparing their child or a teacher looking for ways to
test your students reading abilities in class. What are some other ways you know of?