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Epic Book: pg 18-21, 24-25

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Use the Curriculum Evaluation Guidelines to evaluate how well a curriculum aligns with the findings from the science of reading.

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Awhile back, I posted an opinion piece calling for the explicit teaching of sentence comprehension. With schools aiming to expose kids to complex text, it would seem that such instruction would be de rigueur. Texts are often complex because they include complicated sentences and experience tells me that students often fail to grasp the meaning of individual sentences - undermining their ability to identify main ideas, make inferences, draw conclusions, or answer any of the other question types.

Given that comprehension lessons tend to focus on "prior knowledge," vocabulary, text reading with follow-up questions, comprehension strategies, the lowly sentence gets short shrift in most programs and classrooms.

In any event, while that rant gathered some attention, it came up short.

Accordingly, I have decided to take a mulligan.

That blog articulated my opinions but neither marshalled the research evidence, nor provided much in the way of helpful instructional guidance. It called for action but was terse on specifics.

This piece should remedy those omissions.

To tell the truth, when I wrote that blog I didn't bother to search for research on sentence comprehension because, that topic never attracted much attention. There were some old studies indicating that teaching formal grammar had no impact on comprehension or writing. That seemed to settle it for most of us.

When I was working on my doctorate, a prominent reading scholar told me that "Noam Chomsky is dead." He meant it figuratively as he was trying to dissuade me from squandering my time on something as pointless as sentence comprehension.

No matter my excuses, boy was that a foolish oversight!

Over the past two decades - slowly, gradually - research on syntax and reading comprehension has accumulated. And, over the past couple of years, the numerous publications appearing in high quality psychological, educational, and linguistic journals suggests that being a sentence- comprehension researcher is now a respectable line of work, along with social media consultant or TikTok dancer.

First, the research.

These days we're all doing some handwringing over supply lines. Nevertheless, there are clearly no supply line problems to report when it comes to sentence-comprehension studies. The desert has become an oasis.

There is now a slew of rigorous studies revealing that an understanding of syntax is correlated with reading comprehension (Rand, 2002). That simply means that students who know more about how sentences are constructed do better on reading comprehension measures.

Even more persuasive is that many such studies examined that relationship AFTER controlling for differences in decoding ability, vocabulary knowledge, memory, and/or other relevant reading skills (Bowey, 1986; Bowey & Patel, 1988; Brimo, Apel, & Fountain, 2017; Brimo, Lund, & Sapp, 2018; Cain, 2007; Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006; Cutting & Scarborough, 2006; Deacon & Kieffer, 2018; Gaux & Gombert, 1999; Farnia & Geva, 2013; Goodwin, Petscher, & Reynolds, 2022; Gottardo, Mirza, Koh, Ferreira, & Javier, 2018; Hagtvet, 2003; Mackay, Lynch, Duncan, & Deacon, 2021; Mokhtri & Thompson, 2006; Nation & Snowling, 2000; Nippold, 2017; Nomvete & Easterbrooks, 2019; Poulsen, Nielsen, & Vang Chrisensen, 2022; Scarborough, 1990; Scott, 2015; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007; Sorenson Duncan, Mimeau, Crowell, & Deacon, 2021; Tong & McBride, 2015).

In other words, if all students did equally well on decoding, vocabulary, and memory tests, we'd still see variations in reading comprehension ability because of syntax difference. The kids who understand syntax comprehend better than the ones who don't.

That list of studies is impressive, but not comprehensive. I didn't search carefully for these studies - combing through reference lists, using a variety of search terms and strategies, considering books and doctoral dissertations, and so on.

It is fair to point out that some such studies didn't find significant relationships between syntax and comprehension (e.g., Cain & Oakhill, 2006), though the data are sufficiently one-sided enough to conclude that any honest meta-analysis would conclude that knowledge of syntax is an essential reading skill.

That collection of studies cited above found sentence knowledge to be important to comprehension as early as 30-months old and throughout the school grades, K-12. They found that syntax mattered with regular classroom kids and those with dyslexia. They reported this pattern in English, French, Dutch, and Cantonese. They found syntax to matter with native English speakers and with English Language Learners. Syntax played a significant role in comprehension both in studies that measured those simultaneously, and in longitudinal studies which considered the role of the relationship in learning and development.

The amount of comprehension variance explained by syntax varied quite a bit from study to study (~5% to 30%). Researchers attributed some of those differences to the nature of the syntax measures, suggesting that the ability to make sense of complex sentences is more crucial than the ability to evaluate grammatical accuracy (e.g., Brimo, Lund, & Sapp, 2018). Researchers paid less attention to variations in reading comprehension measurement.

The texts included in Comprehension tests can vary a great deal in sentence complexity, and in whether the questions they ask tap into this complexity (Shanahan & Kamil, 1984).

This concern is important since syntax is a particularly important factor determining text complexity or comprehensibility (Graisser, McNamara, & Kulikowich, 2011; Stenner & Swartz, 2012). Texts with more complicated sentence structures will be a special challenge for kids who lag in sentence comprehension ability. However, at least for fifth-graders the ability to make sense of sentences with simple structures was more closely related to reading comprehension than doing so with more difficult sentences; though this may have been due to the specific demands of the particular comprehension measure used in the study (Sorenson Duncan, Mimeau, Crowell, & Deacon, 2021).

Another relevant collection of studies is those focused on oral reading fluency or text reading fluency. Such research has long shown that oral sentence reading requires skills beyond those required to read word lists - even when the words in the lists and sentences are identical (Jenkins, Fuchs, van den Broek, Espin, & Deno, 2003). That study found sentence reading to be more predictive of reading comprehension than was word list reading. Students with specific reading comprehension deficits read word lists as well as comparison students but perform more poorly than controls on text reading fluency (Cutting, Matterek, Cole, Levine, & Mahone, 2009). Research also has reported that syntax and text prosody are related to each other and to reading comprehension (Veenendaal, Groen, & Vehoeven, 2015).

If that provocative but incomplete review of the research isn't enough to convince you that sentence comprehension is a thing, then you likely can't be convinced. Your lifetime membership in the Flat Earth Society is safe and secure for the time being.

For those of you who are more open minded, let's turn to what we know about teaching sentence comprehension.

I'd love to present an equally impressive array of studies showing that if you teach sentences your state test scores will reach levels just this side of Nirvana. Unfortunately, I can't do that.

A thoughtful review (MacKay, Lynch, Duncan, & Deacon, 2021; Stoddard, Valcante, Sindelar, O'Shea, & Algozzine, 1993) recently concluded that this research is so severely limited and insufficient that it would be unwise yet to proceed pedagogically. The reasoning of these researchers is admirable and consistent with what I usually espouse - don't try to apply basic research to classroom practice. Wait for the instructional studies!

MacKay and company rightly point out that some interventions aimed at improving sentence comprehension haven't worked (e.g., Balthazar & Scott, 2018), and that interventions aimed at sentence comprehension have been hopelessly confounded (e.g., Morris, et al., 2012; Proctor, Silverman, Harring, Jones, & Hartranft, 2000; Reynolds, 2021). Although these studies reported significant reading comprehension improvement, they didn't focus on syntactic work alone but also taught morphology, vocabulary, or text structure; perhaps the gains were due to one or another of them.

The same point could be made about paraphrasing studies (Stevens, Vaughn, House, & Stillman-Spisak, 2020). Although such teaching must include some attention to translating sentences into one's own words - for the most part, these studies have emphasized paragraph paraphrases which would likely include skills that go beyond sentence interpretation. Though this approach has been successful at improving reading comprehension, it would be inappropriate to conclude from this alone that sentence instruction is a good idea.

Despite these problems, in this case, I'm going to suggest the appropriateness of cautiously proceeding with sentence comprehension teaching.

First, I believe studies that show a close connection between text reading fluency and reading comprehension to be persuasive. (I cited a few such studies but could include many more; see Breznitz, 2005 for a more rigorous treatment of these issues). MacKay and her colleagues didn't credit this dimension of the work, but if you do then the many studies showing that oral reading guidance and chunking instruction can improve reading comprehension need to be considered (NICHD, 2000; Stevens, 1981). They suggest that teaching students how to read sentences aloud with proper prosody is effective, and I believe those practices to be examples of effective sentence instruction.

Also, I know researchers differ in the weight they accord to sentence manipulation instruction. I tend to be persuaded that sentence combining and reduction improves reading comprehension (Neville & Searls, 1985; O'Hare, 1973; Wilkinson & Patty, 1993), and that provides another body of supportive instructional data - though I admit the quality of some of these studies is dubious, it is also fair to point out that the results were just as good in the best designed and implemented studies.

Finally, I identified a couple of studies that were beyond the purview of the MacKay review. One of these studies taught 9- and 10-year-olds to read fables and to identify complex sentences, constituent clauses, and subordinate conjunctions in those texts, and then to revise the fables to make them more readable. This results in significant gains in both oral and written language.

I also recently discovered a doctoral dissertation that evaluated the impact of an intriguing sentence comprehension intervention that improved reading achievement for high school students - grades 9 and 11 (Rozen, 2005). That study had teachers guiding students to analyze difficult texts sentence-by-sentence, discussing main ideas, author's purpose, inferences, and styles of passage as expressed or revealed in those sentences. They also taught students to break down difficult sentences, simplifying them, and determining the primary function of the various phrases (e.g., who does what to whom?).

The comparison groups received all the business-as-usual reading instruction - including vocabulary, strategies, and practice reading of the texts. The 15-minutes per day of sentence work was accomplished by reducing the time accorded to the other skills. The classes were taught by the same teacher and control and experimental students read the same texts.

My advice to teachers?

1. Teach oral reading fluency either with grade level classroom texts, including the texts for social studies and science. In the upper grades focus specifically on prosody issues. If the students are not reading the sentences properly - attending to punctuation and pausing in the appropriate places in terms of meaning, then the sentences will make no sense. (Although I know of no research on the practice, but I wouldn't hesitate with older students to focus this fluency work on the reading of specific complicated sentences drawn from appropriate texts).

2. I think it also makes sense to engage students in sentence combining and reduction - combining simple sentences to make complex ones and breaking more complicated sentences down into their constituent parts. For examples of this kind of work, along with a wealth of other practical syntax teaching approaches, I recommend downloading the document, "Syntactic Awareness: Teaching Sentence Structure" by Joan Sedita. I found it by typing 'Syntactic Awareness" into the search box at the Mass Literacy Website ( https://www.doe.mass.edu/massliteracy/)

3. Lots of times teachers tell me they aren't too sure whether a sentence may seem complex to the students. A good readable source that can provide guidance for identifying sentences that may be barriers to comprehension can be found for free online; an article by Cheryl M. Scott and Catherine Balthazar provides great advice regarding sentence length, subordination, relative clauses, passive voice, and other syntactic issues. ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4373700/) However, remember that even more basic sentences may pose challenges for elementary students. However, no matter how complex a sentence may be, it is only worth breaking down if it poses some impediment to comprehension. Scott and Balthazar's guidance may help you to notice whether a sentence poses a particular kind of problem (like a passive sentence seemingly confusing actor and acted upon), but an exercise aimed at comprehending such a structure, should start with a question to determine whether or not students could understand it. If understood, move on. If not understood, it would be a great basis for a lesson.

4. I think that idea of replacing some typical "guided reading" with the kind of reading intervention described earlier - guiding students to read each sentence, to paraphrase what they mean, and to break the sentences down when they have trouble paraphrasing. That strikes me as a very intelligent and supportive way to teach these skills - going faster when the kids are having no problem with a sentence and digging in to solve the problem when they do.

5. Although I've emphasized sentences heavily here, it is important to remember that individual words play an important role in sentence interpretation and syntactic understanding (Adlof & Catts, 2015; Goodwin, Petscher, & Reynolds, 2022). Meaning will often turn on coordinating conjunctions (e.g., and, but, so) or subordinating conjunctions (e.g., because, when, if). Likewise, verb tenses (e.g., swim and swam) reveal when actions took place or are taking place or will take place in time. Sentence work requires some attention to word meanings and morphology.

6. There have been several successful reading interventions that included sentence work. Those studies aren't sufficient to determine the effectiveness of the sentence comprehension part of the instruction. Nevertheless, we can take some direction from such studies - including sentence work while still teaching vocabulary, morphology, text structure, and so on. These days vocabulary instruction seems to be getting a lot of play, though the contribution of syntax to reading comprehension is similar in magnitude (Deacon & Kieffer, 2018; Shiotsu & Weir, 2007). Perhaps 15 minutes per day on sentence comprehension would be a good use of reading instruction time.
References
Adlof, S. M., & Catts, H. W. (2015). Morphosyntax in poor comprehenders. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 28(7), 1051-1070.

Balthazar, C. H., & Scott, C. M. (2007). Syntax-morphology. In A. G. Kamhi, J. J. Masterson & K. Apel (Eds.), Clinical decision making in developmental language disorders; clinical decision making in developmental language disorders (pp. 143-163). Baltimore, MD: Paul H Brookes.

Bowey, J. A. (1986). Syntactic awareness and verbal performance from preschool to fifth grade. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 15(4), 285-308.

Bowey, J. A., & Patel, R. K. (1988). Metalinguistic ability and early reading achievement. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9(4), 367-383.

Breznitz, Z. (2005). Fluency in reading: Synchronization of processes. New York: Routledge.

Brimo, D., Apel, K., & Fountain, T. (2017). Examining the contributions of syntactic awareness and syntactic knowledge to reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 40(1), 57-74.

Brimo, D., Lund, E., & Sapp, A. (2018). Syntax and reading comprehension: A meta?analysis of different spoken?syntax assessments. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 53(3), 431-445.

Cain, K. (2007). Syntactic awareness and reading ability: Is there any evidence for a special relationship? Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 679-694.

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. (2006). Profiles of children with specific reading comprehension difficulties. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76(4), 683-696.

Catts, H. W., Adlof, S. M., & Weismer, S. E. (2006). Language deficits in poor comprehenders: A case for the simple view of reading. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49(2), 278-293.

Cutting, L. E., Materek, A., Cole, C. A. S., Levine, T. M., & Mahone, E. M. (2009). Effects of fluency, oral language, and executive function on reading comprehension performance. Annals of Dyslexia, 59(1), 34-54.

Cutting, L. E., & Scarborough, H. S. (2006). Prediction of reading comprehension: Relative contributions of word recognition, language proficiency, and other cognitive skills can depend on how comprehension is measured. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10(3), 277-299.

Deacon, S. H., & Kieffer, M. (2018). Understanding how syntactic awareness contributes to reading comprehension: Evidence from mediation and longitudinal models. Journal of Educational Psychology, 110(1), 72-86.

Farnia, F., & Geva, E. (2013). Growth and predictors of change in English language learners' reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 36(4), 389-421.

Gaux, C., & Gombert, J. (1999). La conscience syntaxique chez les préadolescents: Question de méthodes. L'Année Psychologique, 99(1), 45-74.

Goodwin, A. P., Petscher, Y., & Reynolds, D. (2021). Unraveling adolescent language & reading comprehension: The monster's data. Scientific Studies of Reading.

Gottardo, A., Mirza, A., Koh, P. W., Ferreira, A., & Javier, C. (2018). Unpacking listening comprehension: The role of vocabulary, morphological awareness, and syntactic knowledge in reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 31(8), 1741-1764.

Graesser, A.C., McNamara, D.S., & Kulikowich, J.M. (2011). Coh-Metrix providing multilevel analyses of text characteristics. Educational Researcher, 40(5), 223-234.

Hagtvet, B. E. (2003). Listening comprehension and reading comprehension in poor decoders: Evidence for the importance of syntactic and semantic skills as well as phonological skills. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16(6), 505-539.

Hirschman, M. (2000). Language repair via metalinguistic means. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 35(2), 251-268.

Jenkins, J. R., Fuchs, L. S., van den Broek, P., Espin, C., & Deno, S. L. (2003). Sources of individual differences in reading comprehension and reading fluency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(4), 719-729.

Lauterbach, S. L., & Bender, W. N. (1995). Cognitive strategy instruction for reading comprehension: A success for high school freshmen. High School Journal, 79(1), 58-64.

MacKay, E., Lynch, E., Sorenson Duncan, T., & Deacon, S. H. (2021). Informing the science of reading: Students' awareness of sentence?level information is important for reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly.

Mokhtari, K., & Thompson, H. B. (2006). How problems of reading fluency and comprehension are related to difficulties in syntactic awareness skills among fifth-graders. Reading Research and Instruction, 46(1), 73-94.

Morris, R.D., Lovett, M.W., Wolf, M., Sevcik, R.A., Steinbach, K.A., Frijters, J.C., & Shapiro, M.B. (2012). Multiple component remediation for developmental reading disabilities: IQ, socioeconomic status, and race as factors in remedial outcome. Journal of Learning Disabilities,

Nation, K., & Snowling, M. J. (2000). Factors influencing syntactic awareness skills in normal readers and poor comprehenders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21(2), 229-241.

Neville, D. D., & Searls, E. F. (1991). A meta-analytic review of the effect of sentence-combining on reading comprehension. Reading Research and Instruction, 31(1), 63-76.

Nippold, M.A. (2017). Reading comprehension deficits in adolescents: Addressing underlying language abilities. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 48(2), 125-131

Nomvete, P., & Easterbrooks, S. R. (2020). Phrase-reading mediates between words and syntax in struggling adolescent readers. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 41(3), 162-175.

Poulsen, M., Nielsen, J. L., & Vang Christensen, R. (2022). Remembering sentences is not all about memory: Convergent and discriminant validity of syntactic knowledge and its relationship with reading comprehension. Journal of Child Language, 49(2), 349-365.

Proctor, C. P., Silverman, R. D., Harring, J. R., Jones, R. L., & Hartranft, A. M. (2020). Teaching bilingual learners: Effects of a language?based reading intervention on academic language and reading comprehension in grades 4 and 5. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(1), 95-122.

RAND Reading Study Group (2002). Reading for understanding, toward an R&D Program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.

Rozen, S.D. (2005). Sentence disambiguation using syntactic awareness as a reading comprehension strategy for high school students. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.

Scarborough, H. S. (1990). Index of productive syntax. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11(1), 1-22.

Scott, C. M., & Balthazar, C. H. (2010). The grammar of information: Challenges for older students with language impairments. Topics in Language Disorders, 30(4), 288-307.

Scott, C.M., & Balthazar, C. (2013). The role of complex sentence knowledge in children with reading and writing difficulties. Perspectives on Literacy and Language, 39(3), 18-30.

Shanahan, T., & Kamil, M. L. (1984). The relationship of the concurrent and construct validities of cloze. In J. A. Niles, & L. A. Harris (Eds.), Changing perspectives on research in reading/language processing and instruction. (Thirty-third Yearbook of the National Reading Conference, pp. 252-256). Rochester, NY: National Reading Conference.

Shiotsu, T., & Weir, C. J. (2007). The relative significance of syntactic knowledge and vocabulary breadth in the prediction of reading comprehension test performance. Language Testing, 24(1), 99-128.

Sorenson Duncan, T., Mimeau, C., Crowell, N., & Deacon, S. H. (2021). Not all sentences are created equal: Evaluating the relation between children's understanding of basic and difficult sentences and their reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113(2), 268-278.

Stevens, E. A., Vaughn, S., House, L., & Stillman-Spisak, S. (2020). The effects of a paraphrasing and text structure intervention on the main idea generation and reading comprehension of students with reading disabilities in grades 4 and 5. Scientific Studies of Reading, 24(5), 365-379.

Stevens, K. (1981). Chunking material as an aid to reading comprehension. Journal of Reading, 25, 126-129.

Stoddard, K., Valcante, G., Sindelar, P., O'Shea, L., & al, e. (1993). Increasing reading rate and comprehension: The effects of repeated readings, sentence segmentation, and intonation training. Reading Research and Instruction, 32(4), 53-65

Tong, X., & McBride, C. (2015). A reciprocal relationship between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. Learning and Individual Differences, 57, 33-44.

Veenendaal, N. J., Groen, M. A., & Verhoeven, L. (2015). What oral text reading fluency can reveal about reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(3), 213-225.

Wilkinson, P.A., & Patty, D. (1993). The effects of sentence combining on the reading comprehension of fourth-grade students. Research in the Teaching of English, 27(1), 104-125.

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what teachers need to know about sentence comprehension

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what do teachers need to know about sentence comrehension

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what should teachers know about reading comprehension

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What Teachers Need to Know about Sentence Comprehension | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog entry provides an overview of the research that reveals the importance of syntax knowledge and sentence comprehension.

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I was recently developing some PowerPoints and activities for a comprehension training session about the role that text structure plays in reading comprehension. One of the related topics that is unfamiliar to many teachers was Cohesive Devices (sometimes called Cohesive Ties, and also known as anaphors). I thought I'd devote this post to explaining cohesive ties and how they might affect reading comprehension, especially for younger students or English language learners.

Cohesive devices are words or phrases used to connect ideas between different parts of text. There are three main types of cohesive devices:

Pronouns that refer back to a previously mentioned noun.
Example: Jim went out to the playground. He played on the swings.

Substitution of a synonym for a previously mentioned noun.
Example: There was a lot of food, but she only ate the bread.

Transition words and inter-clausal connectors such as so or because

Example: Jim played on the swings. Later, Jim played ball.

Example: Mary was late, so she took the bus. Mary was late because she took the bus.

Cohesive devices affect comprehension because they help readers integrate information between sentences in a text. The pronoun, synonym, or transition word is tied to a previous word, phrase or clause (the antecedent). Many students, even skilled readers, never consciously think about authors' use of cohesive devices. It is helpful for teachers to draw attention to this kind of text structure, especially for students who have difficulty comprehending a series of sentences that include cohesive ties. Children with poor reading comprehension make more errors on questions that can only be answered if a pronoun has been correctly resolved. They are less likely to supply the appropriate anaphor in a cloze task. For example, "Steve gave his umbrella to Andrea in the park because ___ wanted to keep dry." (Carlisle & Rice, 2002; Cain & Oakhill, 2007) Also, poor comprehenders' difficulties are particularly pronounced when there is intervening text between the anaphor and it's antecedent.
Examples
Look at the two examples below. The cohesive ties are linked to their antecedents with arrows. Notice how there can be multiple cohesive ties within a single paragraph!

Instructional Suggestions
As a means of drawing students' attention to cohesion, have them identify all the words that "stand for" other words, phrases, or a clause in a short, familiar passage from material students are reading. For young children, many of the read aloud texts that teachers use to develop vocabulary and comprehension include examples where the author has used pronouns, synonyms, and transitions to connect sentences. For good readers, an activity such as this may be all that is necessary to encourage greater attention to the connections between sentences. The following are some recommendations for students who have difficulty understanding cohesion (Maria, 1990):

Have students match the cohesive tie with its antecedent. There are several ways to do this. Students may draw arrows from the cohesive ties to the words they replace, write the antecedent above the cohesive tie, or write the same number over words that are linked. Some students may benefit from applying one of these techniques as they read.

Have children read a passage and answer questions that require comprehension of cohesive ties.

Delete pronouns from a passage, and have students fill in the blanks.

Give students a passage in which names and other sentence components have been unnecessarily repeated. Ask them to substitute cohesive ties for the repetitious information.

At times, the antecedent of a pronoun may be somewhat ambiguous. Some children may need to be taught how to use "clues" such as number and gender to figure out what pronouns stand for.
Example: Joe and Laura went to the beach. He played in the water while she looked for shells. Afterwards, they had a picnic lunch.

In other instances, children may need to draw on background knowledge and reasoning skills to determine the most probable antecedent of a pronoun. In the following example, it more likely refers to the mall than to the bank since John was able to conduct his business at the bank: John went to the mall after he deposited some money in his account at the bank. It was closed.

References:

Cain, K. & Oakhill, J. (2007). Reading comprehension difficulties: Correlates, causes, and consequences. In K. Cain & J. Oakhill (Eds.) Children's comprehension problems in oral and written language. New York: Guilford Press. pp. 48-49

Carlisle, J.F. & Rice, M. S. (2002). Improving reading comprehension: Research-based principles and practices. Baltimore, MD: York Press. pp. 129-130

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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What are Cohesive Devices and how do they affect comprehension? - Keys to Literacy

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I was recently developing some PowerPoints and activities for a comprehension training session about the role that text structure plays in reading comprehension. One of the related topics that is unfamiliar to many teachers was Cohesive Devices (sometimes called Cohesive Ties, and also known as anaphors).

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SAMPLE Morphology Weekly Lesson Plan-struct.docx

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34. Inference: Multiple Contributions to Comprehension

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Nancy Hennessy, literacy consultant and past president of the International Dyslexia Association, is an experienced educator. While in public schools, she provided leadership in the development of professional learning systems and innovative programming for special needs students... Read More →

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PaTTAN Literacy Symposium '22: 34. Inference: Multiple Contributions to...

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How the Brain Learns to Read - Prof. Stanislas Dehaene

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The Simple View of Reading Model in the Transparent and Deep Versions of Arabic Orthography

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Several studies have tested the validity of the simple view of reading model by examining various degrees of orthographic depth. This study aims to validate this model in both transparent and deep…

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Introduction

A goal of reading is to understand what has been read. Reading comprehension facilitates "reading to learn", when children become capable of constructing meaning from print by using reading as a tool to acquire knowledge (Chall, 1996). Researchers have developed several models in an attempt to understand complex cognitive processes involved in reading comprehension that include a host of sensory, perceptual, and linguistic abilities (Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006; Catts, Hogan, & Adlof, 2005). One highly tested model is the Simple View of Reading model (SVR) (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Hoover & Gough, 1990). According to this model, reading comprehension (RC) is the product of two sets of skills, "decoding" and "linguistic comprehension" (RC = D × LC). Decoding requires the effective use of word recognition skills to help readers to access the mental lexicon and derive word meanings. In contrast, linguistic or oral comprehension refers to the readers' abilities to process lexical and morpho-syntactic knowledge that enables them to read the text or script (Hoover & Gough, 1990). More recent models of reading comprehension acknowledge the complexity of decoding skills and linguistic comprehension skills by including subcomponents of each skill (Geva & Wiener, 2014; Gottardo et al., 2018; Scarborough, 2001). Modifications to the Simple View of Reading suggest that reading comprehension is a product of two factors: first, accurate and fluent word-level skills, such as reading isolated words, decoding unfamiliar or pseudowords, and spelling and second, language comprehension skills, as well as vocabulary, grammar, morphology, and listening comprehension ¹ (Geva & Wiener, 2014). The present study examined relations among word reading, orthography (word specific and word general spelling patterns), vocabulary, morphology and reading comprehension in Arabic-English speakers living in Saudi Arabia and Canada.

Numerous studies have examined the validity of the simple view of reading in native English speakers (Braze et al., 2016; Catts et al., 2006; Kieffer et al., 2016; Savage, 2006; Tilstra et al., 2009) and in languages other than English, including Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese and Arabic (Asadi et al., 2017; Asadi & Ibrahim, 2018; Carretti & Zamperlin, 2010; Joshi et al., 2012; Megherbi et al., 2006). Also, several studies examining reading comprehension in bilingual learners have used the simple view of reading as an explanatory model (Babayigit, 2014; Gottardo & Mueller, 2009; Hoover & Gough, 1990; Nakamoto et al., 2008; Proctor et al., 2005; Yaghoub-Zadeh et al., 2012). In all cases, both decoding and linguistic comprehension are necessary, but neither skill is sufficient for reading comprehension. Nevertheless, the simple view of reading model might differ in the extent to which decoding skills and listening comprehension skills are related to reading comprehension across languages especially in the earlier stages of reading development (Catts, Adlof, et al., 2005; Catts, Hogan, & Adlof, 2005). Studies have examined the role of decoding and listening comprehension in reading comprehension in transparent orthographies in early grades and found that both decoding and listening comprehension are essential to early reading comprehension (Asadi & Ibrahim, 2018; Florit & Cain, 2011). Consequently, the level of transparency or orthographic depth as well as features of syntax and morphology must be considered in terms of their contributions to both decoding and listening comprehension to reading comprehension in different languages (Florit & Cain, 2011; Tobia & Bonifacci, 2015). Additionally, many studies of the SVR have focused on languages written using the Roman alphabet, while Semitic languages such as Arabic might differ in the linguistic subcomponents related to reading comprehension.

In addition to linguistic features related to language and literacy acquisition, societal/ contextual factors can have an impact on literacy acquisition (Gottardo et al., 2021). Learning to read and comprehend a language when it is the dominant societal language allows for richer and more diverse linguistic input than learning the same language in limited environments such as only at home or school (Geva & Wiener, 2014; Westernoff, 1991). The present study tested the simple view of reading in Arabic speakers in grades 2 to 4 across two locations that reflect two different language learning contexts, Saudi Arabia and Canada. Components of the simple view of reading as well as the role of additional variables related to reading comprehension in Arabic were examined.

Arabic is a Semitic language, which differs from Indo-European languages in terms of its morphology (Boudelaa, 2014; Frost, 2012; Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). English is a concatenative language that uses linear morphological processes including prefixes and suffixes (e.g., un-happi-ness); while, Arabic is a non-concatenative language that includes both linear morphology, with prefixes and suffixes applied to the root to derive different words, and nonlinear morphology, where infixes (often vowels) are inserted into root morphemes, often consonant strings, that cannot exist on their own. For example, the same three consonantal sounds [k.t.b] have different but related meanings when different vowels or consonantal morphological markers are added. Therefore, k.t.b can become /ka:taba/ [he wrote], /kutiba/ [was written] and /kutub/ [books]. Affixes can also be used with roots from the poly-morphemic word to derive the meaning by combining the root with word patterns (Boudelaa, 2014).

While many studies have investigated the role of morphological awareness in the development of reading in English, fewer studies have examined the role of morphological awareness in relation to word reading and reading comprehension among Arabic-speaking children (Abu-Rabia, 2007; Abu-Rabia & Shalhoub-Awwad, 2004; Saiegh-Haddad, 2013; Shalhoub-Awwad & Leikin, 2016; Taha and Saiegh-Haddad, 2016, Taha and Saiegh-Haddad, 2017; Tibi & Kirby, 2017). In all cases, morphological awareness was a key variable in relation to word reading and reading comprehension. Therefore, in this study morphological awareness was added as a variable in the model of reading comprehension in Arabic.

Arabic is written using an "impure" abjad. It is a consonantal writing system with some vowels. These 28 letters represent consonant sounds, with the exception of (aleph أ /aa/, yeh ي /ii/, and wow و /uu/), which represent both consonant sounds and long vowel sounds (/aː/, /uː/, /iː/). Most of these letters have different shapes based on the positions of the letters: word initial, medial or final position (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006). For example, letter Haa' /ه/ has three shapes (initial: هـ, middle ــهـ, final ـه). Furthermore, the Arabic system uses dots within the letters, and the appearance or the absence of dots differentiates specific letters with the number of dots represented on, in, or under the letters. Thus, many letters in Arabic are only distinguishable by the number and placement of the dots. In other words, dots are considered part of the letter in Arabic, which can denote a different phoneme and different word (Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014).

Some features of Arabic orthography are unique to Semitic languages. First, Arabic script can be written using a "shallow" orthography if it is vowelized (with short vowels) and a "deep" orthography if it is un-vowelized (with only consonants and long vowels). In its deep form Arabic contains many homographic words (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003). The following is an example of how un-vowelized words result in homophones. As mentioned above and consistent with Arabic morphology, the same three consonantal letters [k.t.b] can be read differently if diacritics are added to mark short vowels, yielding the following possible reading (e.g., kutub [books]). However, if the word is written without short vowels then the reader must determine the correct pronunciation and meaning based on syntactic and semantic cues (e.g., kutiba [was written]; ka:taba [he wrote]). Therefore, reading Arabic script without short vowels can be a difficult task for beginning or less experienced readers or poor readers because they have to rely on identification of consonant clusters and their correspondences as well as using their semantic and background knowledge (Abu-Rabia, 2001). Secondly, Arabic in its less transparent form has some unique dimensions of complexity (e.g., ligatures, dual letters) that are often cited as a source of difficulty in learning to read in Arabic (Share & Daniels, 2015). Finally, Arabic is read from right to left.

Additionally, diglossia is another feature of Arabic that can have an impact on literacy acquisition in Arabic. Diglossia is defined as two forms of the same language that are used by the same person under different conditions (Ferguson, 1959). For Arabic, the two forms are Standard Arabic and spoken Arabic. Standard Arabic is the literary form of the language used for reading and writing and is a form common to all Arabic speakers. Spoken Arabic is the language learned informally at home, which is used for daily oral communication and varies by region. This spoken form is also called the colloquial dialect (Abu-Rabia, 2000). There are many spoken dialects of Arabic based on geographic region (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004; Biadsy et al., 2009). For example, there are several dialects such as the Gulf Arabic dialect for the Gulf States, the Iraqi Arabic dialect for Iraq, the Levantine Arabic dialect for Levant countries such as Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, the Egyptian Arabic dialect for Egypt, and the Maghrebi Arabic dialect for the Western Arab countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. The two forms of the Arabic language, Standard Arabic and colloquial Arabic "are characterized by different phonological systems with overlapping, although not identical, phonemic inventories and with different phonotactic constraints on the phonological composition of syllables" (Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, p. 433). According to Ayari (1996), the diglossic nature of Arabic has an impact on the reading acquisition of Arabic children. As an illustration, most Arabic children learn to speak the local dialect at home and later learn reading, writing and communication in Modern Standard Arabic at school. Given the differences in linguistic form, many children are not exposed to Standard Arabic until they begin formal schooling. The linguistic distance between Standard Arabic and the spoken form used by specific learners varies by region and might result in a learning experience similar to second language learning when children begin formal schooling.

Instead of treating linguistic comprehension as a global skill, some researchers have "unpacked" the construct of linguistic comprehension to examine related skills such as vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness (Babayiğit & Shapiro, 2020; Gottardo et al., 2018; Ke et al., 2021; Massonnié et al., 2019). The current study examined the role of vocabulary and morphological awareness as proxies for linguistic comprehension.

Vocabulary knowledge was selected as a proxy for linguistic comprehension as it has been investigated extensively in relation to reading comprehension (Farnia & Geva, 2013; Pasquarella et al., 2012; Proctor et al., 2012). Previous research showed that vocabulary was a robust predictor of reading comprehension in English first (L1) and second language (L2) learners even in cases where listening comprehension was included in the model (e.g., August et al., 2005; Farnia & Geva, 2013; Geva & Farnia, 2012; Ouelette, 2006; Proctor et al., 2005). Vocabulary knowledge might be particularly important for reading comprehension in second language learners due to weaknesses in this domain (Droop & Verhoeven, 2003; Farnia & Geva, 2013; Verhoeven, 2000). Vocabulary knowledge was included as one component of listening comprehension in our model of reading comprehension in Arabic.

Morphological awareness, which means the awareness of and ability to manipulate morphemes, is considered as a subcomponent of listening comprehension (Carlisle, 1995; Kuo & Anderson, 2008). Morphological awareness is related to reading comprehension skill. Morphological awareness as a subcomponent of listening comprehension has received less attention in relation to reading comprehension particularly in relation to the simple view of reading (Gottardo et al., 2018). The role of morphemes, such as roots, prefixes, suffixes and infixes used to mark derivations and grammatical inflections, has been studied in European languages (Bowers et al., 2010). Morphological awareness is related to a variety of literacy skills, including reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension in English (Lam et al., 2017; Roman et al., 2009). Additionally, morphological awareness is related to word reading and reading comprehension in Arabic among learners in contexts where Arabic is the societal language, and by Arab heritage language learners living in a non-Arabic speaking context (Gottardo et al., 2020; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008). The role of morphological awareness should be considered when examining reading comprehension in Arabic due to its complex morphology. Therefore, morphological awareness was examined in our adaptation of the simple view of reading.

Orthographies range in terms of levels of orthographic depth from shallow to deep (Katz & Frost, 1992). The orthographic depth hypothesis states that the ease of reading acquisition is related to the degree of transparency also known as regularity and consistency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences (Katz & Frost, 1992; Seymour et al., 2003). Shallow orthographies are defined as having consistent, one-to-one grapheme-phoneme mappings, while deep orthographies are defined as having inconsistent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences (Katz & Frost, 1992). Arabic has been described as a shallow alphabetic orthography when the vowel diacritics are included (Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014). In contrast, Arabic is written using a deep orthographic, which could be characterized as an impure abjad, when the vowel diacritics have been removed (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014).

Several studies have shown that decoding was a key predictor of reading comprehension in a deep orthography in the early grades (Catts, Adlof, et al., 2005; Catts, Hogan, & Adlof, 2005; Seymour et al., 2003; Vellutino et al., 2007; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005). Additionally, the influence of decoding skill may extend to higher grades due to the ambiguity of grapheme-phoneme correspondence in deep orthographies (Florit & Cain, 2011). Decoding skills may continue to effect reading comprehension in groups of less proficient readers, such as individuals with reading disabilities or second language learners of shallow and deep orthographies (Braze et al., 2007; Pasquarella et al., 2012). Based on these previous studies, we expected that the variance in reading comprehension explained by decoding and components of linguistic comprehension would be related to reading in Arabic when it is written in its deep form.

While researchers acknowledge the role of context in language and literacy acquisition, contextual factors, such as the status of the L1 or L2 as the dominant societal languages or languages of instruction, are rarely explicitly considered in research (see Gottardo et al., 2021 for a review). Historically, classroom effects have been identified as contextual effects that have an impact on language learning (Breen, 1985). Researchers found differences in variables related to L1, Chinese or Spanish, reading in children in monolingual versus bilingual environments (Lam et al., 2017; Páez, Tabors, & López, 2007). However, in these studies, the role of context was confounded with the monolingual versus bilingual status of the participants. The current study examined the relations among reading and language skills in bilinguals in different contexts. Research examined the role of linguistic and meta-cognitive variables in adults learning English in Turkey in an instructional setting where English was the medium of instruction (Nergis, 2013). In cases where the language of instruction matches the societal language, children can gain exposure to the language through media or informal conversation with peers and adults. In some cases, although the language of instruction differs from the societal language, it might match the home language as occurs with heritage language classes. Although children in immigrant contexts might continue to use their L1 at home and learn L1 literacy skills, they typically do not develop their L1 academic language and literacy skills at the same rate as students for whom the language of instruction and the dominant societal language are the same (Westernoff, 1991). Greater exposure to a language in its oral and written forms in a range of informal contexts (e.g., oral & written media) can lead to higher levels of oral language proficiency and therefore, higher reading comprehension. Additionally, contextual factors such as culturally familiar texts, by Arab, Jewish or English authors, facilitated L2 comprehension in Arabic L1 speakers learning Hebrew or English as an L2 in Israel or Canada, respectively (Abu-Rabia, 1996).

The current model of reading comprehension examined components of linguistic comprehension, specifically vocabulary knowledge and morphological knowledge. Vocabulary was selected because it is universally related to reading comprehension, while morphological knowledge was selected because it is expected to be highly related in Arabic speakers due to the nature of the language. Acknowledging and examining the role of group differences between children learning Arabic and English in Saudi Arabia and Canada provides a more complete picture of reading comprehension when the languages of instruction are held constant. Therefore, the study included a cross-cultural comparison of Arabic speakers and readers in Canada and Saudi Arabia to determine the universal and specific processes in learning to read Arabic. Cognitive-linguistic variables related to reading comprehension were examined in Arabic-English learners from Saudi Arabia and Canada, receiving formal instruction primarily in English in each country with supplemental Arabic instruction. However, the societal language differed in the two contexts with Arabic being the societal language in Saudi Arabia and English being the societal language in Canada. Similarities between the groups should be related to the languages spoken and learned, while differences can be attributed to contextual and societal factors. In this study, three research questions and hypotheses were addressed.

Are there group differences between the Saudi and Canadian groups in terms of their performance on reading comprehension and on the subcomponents of the simple view of reading? Due to the language-related demographic differences, specifically exposure and experience with Arabic, it was expected that the Saudi children would outperform the Canadian children on the measures used in this study.

Are variables related to reading comprehension similar for the Saudi and Canadian groups, and are the correlations between the groups statistically different? According to the previous studies mentioned above, four subcomponents of the simple view of reading unvowelized word reading, orthographic processing, morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge were expected to have a positive relationship with reading comprehension.

Which variables are uniquely significantly related to reading comprehension in each group for the Saudi and Canadian participants? This research question is exploratory in that all variables were selected to be related to Arabic reading. Although morphological awareness is expected to be related to reading comprehension for the more proficient group, the Saudi group, no specific hypothesis was made for the Canadian group.

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The Simple View of Reading: Language-specific and contextual characteristics related to Arabic speakers in Saudi Arabia and Canada

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A goal of reading is to understand what has been read. Reading comprehension facilitates "reading to learn", when children become capable of constructing meaning from print by using reading as a tool to acquire knowledge (Chall, 1996).

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Reading fluency has been defined as the process of automatically associating graphemic and phonetic information in a text with minimal conscious attention if any at all. Research has found that the effect of fluency on reading proficiency is of importance to student learning and that increasing oral reading fluency (ORF) rates has been correlated in several studies to improved comprehension. However, no reading fluency rates (FR) or standards in Arabic have been established to date. This exploratory study begins to examine Arabic language ORF and proposes an initial Arabic reading fluency scale. Thirty-five teachers from six private bilingual schools across three Arabian Gulf countries (KSA, the UAE, and Kuwait), administered ORF tests that comprised of authentic, vowelized, and leveled Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) connected texts on 1003 students in Grades 1-6 in Fall and Spring of the same academic year. Results of independent samples t-test revealed changes in reading fluency between Fall and Spring. Furthermore, the range of FR for these initial data within each grade level was significant. Results obtained, however, appeared to be lower than several of the international ORF charts used for English and Arabic languages. Girls outperformed boys in Grades 1-3, while boys outperformed girls in Grades 4-6. The study has several limitations and several likely implications that extend to languages other than Arabic possibly including the potential importance of extended reading practice and early exposure to text.

Arabic language teaching and learning, Automaticity, Early reading skills, Literacy, Oral reading fluency

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Arabic Reading Fluency Rates: An Exploratory Study | Gulf Education and Social Policy Review (GESPR)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Reading fluency has been defined as the process of automatically associating graphemic and phonetic information in a text with minimal conscious attention if any at all. Research has found that the effect of fluency on reading proficiency is of importance to student learning and that increasing oral reading fluency (ORF) rates has been correlated in several studies to improved comprehension.