Forty years ago a landmark research study conducted in American classrooms revealed that a negligible percentage of time was allotted to teaching reading comprehension (Durkin, 1978-79). The neglect of reading comprehension was shocking given its central importance in reading. The study proved to be very influential in the U.S.A., and in the past forty years vast theory building and research in reading comprehension and instruction has taken place.

I wonder what will we find if we did a similar study in Indian classrooms to see the status of reading comprehension instruction. It is very likely that we will find that the time devoted to reading comprehension will range from minimal to non-existent, especially in the primary grades. This view might appear very pessimistic and exaggerated because it can be argued that many teachers devote time to reading and related activities in the classrooms. Further, reading comprehension is routinely assessed in language exams. But the question is that in India do the classroom activities related to reading contribute to the making of engaged readers who can construct the meaning of texts they read? If we look at survey reports and research studies in different parts of India, we will find that students perform very poorly in reading comprehension (Menon et al, 2017; Narsimhan, 2004; NCERT, 2013).

It is therefore important to think about classroom practices and reflect on what will support reading with meaning. In this blog, I will discuss briefly some important aspects of reading comprehension and then describe what classrooms can do to help children become engaged readers who can construct meaning. I will focus mostly on primary classrooms.  

Reading Comprehension

Extensive theory and research exploring various aspects of reading comprehension is available to us. Some examples are research on the role of prior knowledge in reading comprehension, reading of stories and informational texts, the role of text structure and its knowledge in understanding a text, metacognition, vocabulary, motivation, and role of culture and context. In this section, I will try to demonstrate that meaning is not transmitted from the text to the reader. It is actively constructed by the reader while reading a text.  

Reading comprehension is very complex in nature. It is not merely a function of decoding or knowing the meaning of individual words (Hoffman, 2009). To illustrate this point, I want to share my experience reading the following piece of news about a golf tournament:

Justin Thomas won on the 18th hole. Brooks Koepka halved his match. They were ahead comfortably in two matches, and two others were tight – Dustin Johnson was 1 up through 11 holes, and Tiger Woods was all square in his match through 12 holes.

I could easily decode this passage and knew the individual words but did not still understand what was happening except for the fact that two players were ahead in two matches and two were “tight”. I do not know what is meant by “halved his match” or “all square in his match through 12 holes”. Even though I am a proficient reader, it is difficult for me to understand Tiger Woods’ situation and if he had any possibility of winning. The reason is that I do not have any knowledge of golf.  However, I still can answer the following questions quite easily without understanding this text:

Who won on the 18th hole?  

Who were ahead in matches? How many matches were tight?

Therefore, these factual questions that are routinely asked as part of comprehension exercises are not very useful to assess comprehension.

To try to understand this example, we should look at the nature of text. No text is fully explicit (Anderson, 1994). Even the simplest text has gaps which the reader has to fill with her prior knowledge. To clarify this point, here are a few examples:

Example One: An egg rolled off the table and fell on the floor. Smita was very annoyed when she saw that.

Example Two: A pencil rolled off the table and fell on the floor. Smita picked it up and gave it to her brother.

In the first example we understand Smita’s reaction as eggs are messy when they fall. However, the text does not explicitly state that eggs are fragile and messy. We understand because what the sentences leave unsaid, we fill with our prior knowledge (schema). In fact, we can predict by reading that the situation will be troublesome for Smita. In the second example, we know that a pencil falling is not much of a problem because pencils do not break easily. Therefore, reading comprehension takes place when “information from the text and the knowledge possessed by the reader act together to produce meaning” (Anderson et al, 1985, p. 8).   

Additionally, while reading, a reader also needs to be aware that she is comprehending the text and realise if she fails to understand and take corrective measures (Brown, 1980).

These examples demonstrate that the reader is not a passive recipient of information from the text. She has to actively engage with the text to construct meaning. Wilkinson & Son (2011, p. 359) define reading comprehension as an “interplay between the knowledge and capabilities of the reader, the demands of the text, the activities engaged by the reader, and the socio-cultural context in which the reading occurs.”  

Children have difficulty comprehending a text because, as they read, they are not able to make connections using prior knowledge or monitor their reading effectively (Anderson,1994; Brown, 1980). So the instruction in the class should take account of this factor and help the children make connections. In the next section, I will describe some teaching strategies that would enable children to actively engage with reading.

Facilitating Reading Comprehension

Although educators, including teachers and curriculum planners, realise the importance of reading comprehension, in actual practice in early grades it always has a secondary status compared to decoding. The idea is that first children should master decoding skills, and comprehension can be added later on (Pearson & Duke, 2002). This is a problematic assumption because children need to realise right from the beginning that they read to make sense of the text so that they begin developing comprehension strategies and remain motivated to read. In middle and secondary grades, reading comprehension gets more attention but classroom practices do not support the process of comprehending. Typical components of the reading lesson include reading aloud with correct pronunciation and expression, extensive teachers’ explanation of the text, answering questions, and doing related activities with grammar and other skills. Reading lessons become an excuse for practicing various language skills. In fact, much of the classroom activity ensures that children read without meaning and do not learn how to comprehend independently (Sinha, 2012). In this section, I am listing some factors that need to be considered to enable children to understand the text and simultaneously acquire comprehension strategies that will make them independent readers.

Text selection

Often the texts written and selected to teach reading have an opposite effect because they can be meaningless, artificial, and insipid. Primers generally focus on phonics and end up ignoring meaning altogether (Sinha, 2009). Individual words or sentences may be meaningful, but they do not collectively tell a coherent story. For example, here’s the text for a Hindi lesson on ‘o’:

Dhol bajao. Chor bhagao, shor na machao. Pathshala chalo, kitab kholo. Bolkar padho. Dekhkar likho. Tote ko Ram-Ram ratne do. (Beat the drum. Scare the thief. Don’t make noise.  Go to school. Open the book. Read aloud. Look and write. Let the parrot say Ram-Ram.)

In this text, a child cannot focus on comprehension because there is nothing to comprehend. Some other texts used in such classrooms are more coherent. But even they are more interested in teaching some specific skill and hence end up being very boring and insipid. For example, following is the text (accompanied by illustrations of very poor quality) meant to teach students about ‘family’ in English:

My Family

Hello my name is Arya. Let me show you my family pictures. This is my baby brother. His name is Bobo. This is my cat, Cuppy. This is my dog, Dicky. This is my father, Gagan. He is a pilot.This is my mother, Indira. She is a homemaker. Look, this is my grandfather, Jai Kumar, and my grandmother, Leela. Preeti, Queeny, and Ravi are my cousins. I have three uncles and aunts. My family shares everything. We care for each other.

There are multiple problems with this text including the fact that it is not interesting. While selecting texts, it is important to pay attention to authenticity and keep children’s interest in mind. Texts solely created for the purpose of teaching a particular language skill tend to be boring. They affect children’s motivation to read. However, merely selecting interesting books is not enough. It is equally important to use them in an effective manner in the class.

Maintaining focus on meaning

As I have stated earlier, reading lessons often consist of practising different skills at the cost of meaning. While observing first grade classrooms in Jharkhand, I noticed that children read aloud and copied the text for handwriting practice. No discussion of the content took place. When I asked children to read and retell stories independently, often they did not even know that there was any point to reading other than decoding.

In another classroom, I observed that though there was more awareness about reading instruction, they too ignored reading comprehension. The teacher spent a whole period on identifying syllables and clapping with each syllable. By the end of the period they had only read just a small paragraph. It was a story about monkey but nobody bothered to find out what happened to him. No wonder children do not even know that they should look for meaning.  

It may appear very obvious, but it will be very helpful to call attention to meaning right at the beginning of a reading lesson. For example, “Today we are going to read a story about a girl, Meeta, who found a pair of magic shoes. Let us see what she did with them.” Such statements can call the attention of children to reading comprehension and let them take a more active role as a reader. Additionally, before reading, the teacher can also activate relevant schema (prior knowledge) and link it to the text. For example, before reading a poem about a storm, a teacher can ask children to share their experience about a storm and then they read the poem; or, while reading a text about pollution, the teacher can discuss what children already know about pollution, what they would like to know and a post reading discussion what they learnt (KWL strategy). Such activities help children activate their schema and engage with and make sense of what they are reading.

While reading a story, teachers often digress and start discussing some or the other language feature.   In one class, the teacher was teaching an interesting story. However, he came across an idiom and he started explaining it. Then he started discussing other examples. The story was abandoned for quite some time. In reading a text, it is important to maintain continuity and not get constantly distracted from the story. Children need to experience the reading of a text in its totality before analysing it or doing related activities. So while teachers may discuss some aspects of the text, they should not break the continuity and meaning making process of the story.  

Questions and discussion

Although questions based on reading comprehension are routinely asked, we should remember that they will be effective only if their quality is good. Factual or total recall questions are not useful because they can be answered without understanding, as we saw with the news item about golf. Another problem with asking such recall questions is that they are often based on irrelevant details that make children focus on elements that are not important to the story and hence prove distracting. There cannot be any discussion around these questions because the answers are either right or wrong.

Good questions invite children to make connections among different text elements and also with their own experiences. Another important point is that questions need not be only asked at the end of reading to test children’s understanding. They can be asked in the beginning so that they keep children focused in their reading, especially when they are reading informational text. Also prediction questions while reading help children think and engage with the text. For example, in a story where a duckling and a chick become friends, the chick imitates the ducking in everything he does. One day the duckling sees a pond and decides to jump into it. The chick decides to imitate him. At this point, the teacher can ask children to predict what happens next. The answer to the question will be based on children’s prior knowledge. They can see if their prediction is confirmed or not. Again, this will help them actively engage with the text. The teacher should not ask so many prediction questions while reading that they affect the continuity in reading.

Discussions around good questions help children see different points of view and also read with more concentration.  

Problem with “explaining”

I recall observing a pre-service teacher who explained every line of a poem that he was teaching in high school. When I asked him why he explained so much, he told me that the poem was too abstract and his students would¸ never understand it independently. In the next class, he was teaching a play where there was a line in which the host offered their guest some tea. Much to my amusement, the teacher said, “Here the host is saying, have some tea.” I asked him what was so abstract about it that he needed to paraphrase even that.  

A lot of time is spent in Indian classrooms explaining the text (Sah, 2009). In second language reading, the text is often translated by the teacher. But even in first language, there is a compulsion to explain. Undoubtedly, teachers do it with the best intention, so that children understand that text and then prepare for exams. In reality, it has a negative effect because children become passive, excessively dependent on the teacher, and do not learn comprehension strategies. It is not that the teacher should never explain anything or respond to children’s queries. However, if the bulk of the time is spent explaining the text, it will merely be a short-cut to comprehension and counterproductive.  One should then ask what other way can children understand the text and trust children to be able to construct meaning in an enabling environment. It will probably be more productive if the teachers “thinks aloud” what she does when she finds a problem while reading (Pearson & Duke, 2002). This way, she will help children develop knowledge of strategies that will help them read.

In addition, activities such as dramatisation of stories/poems, fully or in parts, can be used in the classroom to encourage children to read a text carefully and discuss its interpretation. Finally, reading a variety of texts will also help children develop comprehension skills.  

To conclude, it is important to realise that the teacher should constantly call attention to reading comprehension and use classroom strategies that allow children to engage with the texts they read. The objective of a reading lesson should not be just to get the meaning of that particular text but also to develop strategies to understand other texts.     

References

Anderson, R.C. (1994).   Role of the reader’s schema in comprehension, learning, and memory.   In R.B. Ruddell, M.R. Ruddell, & H. Singer (Eds.), Theoretical models and processes of  reading (4th ed., pp.469-482).  Delaware: International Reading Association.

Anderson, R. C., Hiebert, E.H., Scott, J.A., & Wilkinson, I.A.G. (1985).  Becoming a nation of readers:  The report of the commission on reading.  Washington D.C.:  National Academy of Education, National Institute of Education, & Center for the Study of Reading.

Brown, A.L. (1980).  Metacognitive development and reading.  In R.J. Spiro, B.C.Bruce, & W.F. Brewer (Eds.) Theoretical issues in reading comprehension (pp. 453-481).  Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Duke, N.K., & Carlisle, J. (2011).  The development of comprehension. .  In M.L.Kamil, P.D. Pearson, E.B. Moje, & P.P.Afflerbach (Eds.),  Handbook of reading research, volume IV (pp. 199-228).  New York: Routledge.

Durkin, D. (1978-79).  What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction.  Reading Research Quarterly, 14, 481-533.

Hoffman, J.V. (2009).  In serach of the “simple view” of reading comprehension.  In S.E. Isreal, and G.G.Duffy (Eds.), Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension  (pp. 54-66).  New York:: Routledge.  

Menon, S. (2017)

NCERT. (2013).  National assessment survey. New Delhi:  NCERT.

Narasimhan, R.  (2004). Characterizing literacy. New Delhi:  Sage Publications..

Pearson, P.D., & Duke, N.K. (2002).  Comprehension instruction in the primary grades.  In C.C.Block, & M. Pressley (Eds.), Comprehension Indstruction (pp. 247-258).  New York: The Guilford Press.  

Sah, S.  (2009). Reading Hindi literature in elementary school context. Unpublished M.Phil dissertation, University of Delhi, Delhi.

Sinha, S. (2010).  Literacy instruction in Indian schools.  In A. Nikolopoulou, T. Abraham, & F. Mirbagheri (Eds.),  Education for sustainable development (pp. 117-128).  Sage

Sinha, S. (2012).  Reading without meaning:  The dilemma of Indian classrooms.  

Wilkinson, I.A.G., & Son, E.H. (2011).  A dialogic turn in research on learning and teaching to comprehend. In M.L.Kamil, P.D. Pearson, E.B. Moje, & P.P.Afflerbach (Eds.),  Handbook of reading research, volume IV (pp. 359-387).  New York: Routledge.