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Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Difficulties

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Reading Development and Difficulties

Abstract

The Simple View of Reading indicates that reading comprehension is based upon two broad skills, language comprehension and word reading. This chapter explores the many factors that directly impact language comprehension and reading comprehension apart from word reading skills. Vocabulary, inferencing, background knowledge, comprehension monitoring, and knowledge of text structure are all explored in detail. How these factors interact with reading comprehension and with one other is described, and how to best improve these skills in struggling comprehenders is also presented.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that the usage of the term “tier” by Beck et al. (to denote three levels of vocabulary) is unrelated to the use of that term in the context of Response to Intervention (RTI).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Jane Oakhill

  2. Lancaster University, Lancashire, UK

    Kate Cain

  3. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Carsten Elbro

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Correspondence to Jane Oakhill .

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  1. State University of New York, College at Cortland, Cortland, NY, USA

    David A. Kilpatrick

  2. College of Education and Human Development, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    R. Malatesha Joshi

  3. Department of Psychology, Florida State University Florida Center for Reading Research, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Richard K. Wagner

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Oakhill, J., Cain, K., Elbro, C. (2019). Reading Comprehension and Reading Comprehension Difficulties. In: Kilpatrick, D., Joshi, R., Wagner, R. (eds) Reading Development and Difficulties. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26550-2_5

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