Comprehension and Reading Theories

Comprehension is a student’s ability to understand what he or she has read. This is the ultimate goal of the reading process. Comprehension can be measured by asking a student to read a text and explain its meaning. This simple assessment can be enlightening. Some children become very proficient at decoding words, but fail to correctly comprehend the meaning of what they have read. In fact, without comprehension reading does not take place. A student who does not correctly comprehend the meaning is only "calling words."

The reading process requires the reader to identify words on a page while simultaneously building the meaning of the sentence or passage. Identifying words and comprehension require cognitive resources.  If a reader is concentrating too hard on decoding words, there will be very little cognitive resources left for comprehension.

Learning Objectives

After completing this section you will be able to:

• Explain what is meant by reading comprehension and describe how it can be measured
• Develop pre-reading, during-reading, and after-reading activities that help students increase their levels of reading comprehension