Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension is the process of making meaning of a text. Although the idea that texts contained meaning that a proficient reader could extract was once a widely held view, in the twenty-first century the influence of cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics on reading studies has led to the commonly held view that creating meaning is an interactive process between text and reader. A major difference in proficient readers and readers who lack proficiency is that the former understand that reading is a process to make meaning whereas poor readers equate reading with decoding—one word at a time—and do not expect reading to make sense. Expert opinion during the 2020s held that children who are not reading proficiently in the fourth grade will have approximately a 78 percent chance of never achieving proficiency. Poor reading comprehension skills have broad implications for individuals and for society. Poor readers are more likely to live below the poverty line, more likely to be unemployed or incarcerated, and less likely to vote or to volunteer for charitable causes.

Brief History

While logic dictates that reading comprehension must have been a concern of readers and their teachers from the beginning of reading instruction, it was not until the final quarter of the twentieth century that comprehension received specific attention from those concerned with improving literacy. The teaching of reading in colonial America was based on the culture’s Christian, Protestant, Puritan values. The hornbook, so called for the translucent horn used to protect the text, consisted of the alphabet, a set of syllables called a syllabary, the invocation, and the Lord’s Prayer. It was given to very young children because the method used to teach reading was an oral, spelling approach commonly known as the alphabet method. Recitation of the letters of the alphabet, the spelling aloud of the syllables in the syllabary, and then the spelling and recitation of each word of the printed prayer formed the pattern. Accuracy, declamation skills, and text memorization were the most highly valued skills for readers.

In the 1830s, educators began to argue that the alphabet method was flawed and that children learned best from whole words, and readers began to include comprehension questions. In the late nineteenth century, a shift toward silent reading began. Teachers realized that most children understood text more easily when they read it silently. By the early twentieth century, immigration, child labor laws, and mandatory school attendance increased the number of children in America’s classrooms. By 1920, 78 percent of the nation’s 5- to 17-year-olds were enrolled in public schools, 21 percent more than in 1870.

Silent reading meant that comprehension could be tested in group settings, and, thanks to the contributions of the behaviorists with their emphasis on measurable outcomes, inexpensive test instruments were available that could be scored quickly, efficiently, and objectively. Edward L. Thorndike’s Reading as Reasoning in 1917 underscored the complexity of reading comprehension and suggested the focus on text, reader, and process that characterized theories a century later. However, Thorndike’s influence on actual classroom practice was limited. In the 1940s, Frederick B. Davis equated reading comprehension with a hierarchy of measurable skills such as vocabulary, factual recall, and drawing inferences, a view that largely prevailed until the 1970s.

Topic Today

The revolution in reading comprehension theories and practices occurred in the mid-1970s when cognitive scientists directed attention to how readers make meaning as they engage a text. They focused particularly on the actual process that enabled good readers to comprehend material. The result was a new understanding of reading comprehension not as a set of discrete skills that could be acquired through a student’s diligent completion of a seemingly unlimited number of worksheets but as a complex construction of meaning that involved reader, text, and context. Good readers read with purpose and used a range of skills and strategies to aid them in constructing meaning, strategies they adapted according to the kind of text they were reading and their purpose for reading it.

More research was devoted to reading comprehension between 1975 and the end of the twentieth century than in all the preceding years, and research continued throughout the first decades of the twenty-first century. Schema theory, derived from the ideas of British psychologist Sir Frederic Bartlett, had a significant effect on the new understanding of reading comprehension. According to the theory, schemata—mental hierarchical structures that organize knowledge—enable the reader to move beyond the explicitly stated information in a text and make meaning of it. Schemata are not static but are modified by increased knowledge and experience. Proficient readers are engaged in a continual process of drawing inferences, evaluating the soundness and significance of texts, and connecting inferences to prior knowledge and experience. In this manner, readers make active use of schemata to comprehend a text. Since schemata are based on the individual reader’s experience, comprehension is a creative act and variations of meaning are to be expected.

Research also suggested that highly proficient readers are strategic readers—that is, their reading is purposeful and they use a variety of plans or strategies to achieve their purpose. Researchers concluded that readers develop the strategies that enable them to comprehend texts through reading and writing with support for the processes until they are able to use them independently, like a child learning to ride a bicycle through the use of training wheels and a guiding hand. Strategies include previewing the text, monitoring comprehension, summarizing, synthesizing, and so on. Critics have cautioned that while reading strategies may improve comprehension, they do not negate the need for reading fluency and domain knowledge.

By the 2020s, researchers interested in the topic of reading comprehension had also worked to study ways to improve this skill among learners who had been historically marginalized in mainstream education, including ESL (English as second language) learners and neurodivergent students, such as those with dyslexia or autism. Strategies for improving learning outcomes with these groups include multisensory activities, assistive technology, and phonics instruction.

Concerns about reading comprehension are not limited to a K-12 classroom setting. Studies have revealed that adult readers often believe they are comprehending at a much higher rate than is actually the case. Research shows that even college students have alarmingly low rates of deep comprehension. The belief is still widespread that recognizing words and understanding sentences equates with reading comprehension. The result is shallow readers who are skilled decoders weak in comprehension because they are unable to make inferences, link ideas coherently, and question the text critically.

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