Some children automatically
are engaged and even entranced when reading, while others are simply
reading words on a page. Such
children often find little enjoyment in reading, and are often incapable of
telling you about the information they have just read. It is these children who gain little if
any pleasure from reading and do not spend much of their free time
reading. While these children are
typically able to read the words, they do not automatically comprehend what
they are reading. Such children may
have a learning or reading disability, although many do not. It is important to understand the
underlying reason a child may encounter such difficulty.
The most common type of
reading disability involved deficits in the areas of decoding and
comprehension. Many students with
learning disabilities often have difficulty comprehending what they have
read. Some researchers and
neuropsychologists have purported that decoding and comprehension abilities
are located in different parts of the brain. Reading depends on both the
decoding and the comprehension of the printed word. Each component is necessary, but not
sufficient, for reading success.
While much evidence
indicates that word reading deficits are related to phonological
impairments, less is known regarding the causes of reading comprehension
deficits. Some researchers believe
that reading comprehension difficulties stem from a general verbal deficit
rather than a specific deficit in reading comprehension. Some studies have shown that children
with specific comprehension deficits have difficulty with working memory
and verbal memory skills.
Another area of
difficulty lies with the monitoring of comprehension as a child reads. Poor readers have been shown to engage in
significantly less monitoring and therefore have less accurate reading
comprehension than good readers.
Comprehension monitoring involves two components, evaluation and
regulation. Evaluation refers to the
awareness of the understanding of information while regulation refers to
the calibration strategies one uses in order to resolve the disruption of
the understanding. This occurs when
readers not only recognize when comprehension fails to occur but also to
implement strategies to resolve the failure.
Use of a strategy tool
may remediate comprehension failure for children who do not automatically
gauge their understanding of text while they are reading. These children may have difficulty with
text comprehension because they do not naturally monitor their
comprehension and have difficulty understanding inconsistencies while
reading. Because many children are
not aware that they have difficulty understanding the text, they are often
unaware of their comprehension failure and their inability to make mental
images of the text. Therefore, a training
program that would teach the child to make visual images of the text while
reading would require the child to eventually engage in consistent
monitoring of their comprehension.
In addition, when the child is required to provide verbal
descriptions of the images obtained while reading, comprehension monitoring
is necessary in order for the child to verbally describe the images. Therefore, a reading comprehension
program should include not only the instructions for the child to visually
image, but also would incorporate a required verbal description and
elaboration of the images. Examples
of the visual imagery technique developed by Dr. Karen Kelly can be found here.
