S9 E4: Comprehension is not a skill, with Hugh Catts, Ph.D.

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hugh Catts (00:00):
So if I was going to define comprehension ...
it's not a single thing. Imean, that's the problem. We
want it to be a single thing,but it depends upon what you're
reading and why you're readingit.

Susan Lambert (00:15):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science

of Reading (00:17):
The Podcast, from Amplify, where the Science of
Reading lives. We are now onEpisode 4 in our season-long
Reading Reboot, Reexamining andBuilding on Foundational
literacy concepts. We'vealready received some fantastic
questions from listeners likeyou, and we're excited to
explore them over the course ofthis season. I was just reading

(00:40):
a great question about what'smost important for
administrators to know and lookfor when it comes to reading
instruction. I can't wait totake that on in an upcoming
episode, but I think today'sepisode will also help answer
that. Remember to check out theshow notes for a link to submit
your own questions. Today, I'mthrilled to revisit the Simple

(01:02):
View of Reading with renownedliteracy expert Hugh Catts,
professor of the School ofCommunication Science and
Disorders at Florida StateUniversity. Dr. Catts will
explain why he wants us torethink our understanding of
comprehension, and togetherwe'll explore what this might
mean for instruction andassessment. Without further

(01:23):
ado, here's Dr. Hugh Catts. Dr.
Hugh Catts, thank you so muchfor joining us on today's
episode!

Hugh Catts (01:32):
Thanks! Great to be here .

So, we always love to ask our guests to give
our listeners just a little bitabout your journey and maybe
how you got into the world ofliteracy.

Hugh Catts (01:44):
Yeah, sure. I was originally trained in speech
and language sciences. And withmy first job, I taught courses
like acoustics and phonetics.
But I did teach a languagedisorders class. And in reading
that — the readings for that —I ran across a paper on the
phonological basis of dyslexia.

(02:05):
So you have to recognize, thisis in the early '80s, and it
really hit home, because I havea family history of dyslexia. I
had a brother who had dyslexia,and I had a lot of trouble
learning to read in the firstcouple of grades. And the one
thing that we shared were thephonological difficulties,
right ? So all the things thatthey were talking about in

(02:27):
those papers were problems thatI'd experienced all my life,
but just didn't know wererelevant to reading and
dyslexia. So I completelychanged my program of study.
And although I remained in acommunication disorders
program, I read everything Icould about dyslexia, and
actually ended up changinguniversities so I could teach

(02:50):
courses related to dyslexia andreading and so forth. And that
kind of led to, I don't know,30-some-odd years of studying
early identification ofdyslexia, treatment related to
dyslexia, its relationship tolanguage disorders, I've always
been interested in and soforth. So it was a roundabout

(03:12):
way, but fortunately, I raninto it early in my career,
rather than...

Rather than later!

Hugh Catts (03:18):
Rather than later.
I had plenty of time to thinkabout it over the years.

That must have been quite an "aha" moment both
for you, personally andprofessionally. Wow.

Hugh Catts (03:28):
Yeah, yeah .

That's really cool.

Hugh Catts (03:30):
It really was. I mean, it's one of these things:
"Whoa, that's the problems thatI have!"


Hugh Catts (03:37):
And my brother and I — he's a little bit younger
than I — we always talk aboutthe difficulties we have, and
laugh about it and so forth.

That's good .
That's good that you could alsointroduce him to what you both
were experiencing, as both ascholar and a researcher.
That's very interesting. Andglad that you can laugh about
it, because sometimes it couldbe frustrating, right?

Hugh Catts (03:59):
Yeah . It was at the time.

Oh, I bet. I bet. So, we're gonna actually
talk about comprehension. Howdid you make it from this world
of phonics and phenology,speech language pathology, into
this world of comprehension?

Hugh Catts (04:15):
Yeah. Well, initially, of course, we were
interested in word reading,because that's a primary
problem of kids with dyslexia.
It's problems I have. It's aproblem most directly related
to phonological difficulties.
But in following kids over aperiod of time, they got older,
we had a wonderful study d oneout of Iowa where w e

(04:37):
identified kids with languaging problems at
kindergarten and fo llowed them all the way through t he ir
twenties. And as part of that,I was interested in the
word-reading aspects of thosekids, but we ended up giving
comprehension measures. And sothat got me interested in
what's involved incomprehension. And I had a bit

(04:58):
of a background, being inspeech and language, to
understand ab o utcomprehension. But I d id a
number of studies there andspent probably the la st 10
years involved in some studiesrelated to comprehension, but a
good deal of reading andthinking about comprehension,
and what problems might bethere, what instruction we

(05:19):
would do, and so forth.

So, given all that thinking that you've done
about this, what are you seeingthat has been new to you? Or
maybe some major problems interms of our approach to
comprehension?

Hugh Catts (05:33):
Yeah. I mean, when I first started, I thought
about comprehension just likeeverybody else does. And that
is that it was an aspect ofreading that you could measure
with a standardized test andget some estimate of ability.
And then you could instruct orintervene and find some change

(05:54):
in that ability. You know, overa shorter period of time you
could see change in thatability. But, you know, over
the last 10 or more years, I'vekind of recognized that that's
not really the case. That it'snot something that you can
measure with a standardizedtest in the same way that we
measure other aspects ofreading. And it's not something
that's easily changed throughinstruction or intervention.

(06:16):
It's, we think about changeover a longer period of time, a
change in comprehension occursover the lifetime, as opposed
to these other aspects of, ofreading. And I think a major
insight for me was that we'vebeen thinking about
comprehension as a component ofreading. And that's what most

(06:36):
people do. And we've got thefive, the big five, or the five
pillars of reading. Butcomprehension's really not a
component of reading. Itdoesn't really share anything.
And when I say comprehension, Iwanna put vocabulary in there.
They got separated in the NRPreport, because there was

(06:58):
research separately oncomprehension and vocabulary,
but I kind of think about thoseas the same thing. And those
two are not like the otherthree aspects of the big five,
in the sense that they're notskills that you could train and
then apply across the board.
You know, I always use theexample of swimming: If you

(07:20):
learn how to swim, you can swimin a lake, a pool, an ocean,
whatever. But that's not thecase for comprehension. You
can't learn to comprehend andthen take that out into
different situations fordifferent purposes. You can
learn some things that willhelp you, but in general, it's

(07:41):
the topic and the purpose thatare gonna impact how well you
understand something. Andrecognizing that, it's a big
shift in the way that we thinkabout comprehension. It's more
like listening comprehension ormovie comprehension. When you
watch a movie, you're actuallyengaged in building an

(08:04):
understanding of what's goingon in that movie. And that's
not all that different thanwhen you read a book.

Right.

Hugh Catts (08:10):
So if you've got a narrative movie and a narrative
book, they're similar in manyways. Or a documentary and an
expository book — very similarin the types of cognitive
activities that you engage in.
Some important differences, butthey are similar for the most
part.

You know, that, that makes me think of one of
my big "aha"s withcomprehension. It was, you
know, comprehension isn't. "youeither comprehend it or you
don't comprehend it." It's notblack and white, either. But
it's sort of how well do youcomprehend it or how
differently do you comprehendit? So going back to your movie

(08:48):
idea, if you and I go watch thesame movie, we're going to come
out of that movie and talkabout maybe some really
different things or get somereally different models of what
was happening in that moviefrom each other. Same when
you're reading a book, right?
Like in a book club, manypeople read the same book, but
they come together and they'relike, "That's not what I got

(09:08):
from that." Is that a littlebit what you're talking about?

Hugh Catts (09:11):
Yeah, kind of . I mean, I didn't bring in the
individual differences in thatway. But comprehension's a
combination of what the readerbrings into the situation of
reading and the book andpurpose that they're reading,
the text and the purpose of it.
Same way with what you walkinto the movie theater with
interacts with the storylineand the visual images,

(09:36):
whatever's in the m ovie. Youknow, the other comparison that
works even better is listeningcomprehension. So, reading
comprehension a nd listeningcomprehension are very similar
in that t he listener brings incertain knowledge about the
topic and certain interests inthe topic. And that impacts how

(09:56):
well they understand, or what,in your words, what type of
understanding they have aboutthe particular text.

So we're gonna jump into this understanding
about language comprehension injust a minute, because it's so
related to the Simple View ofReading, which we talk about
all the time. But before we gothere, can I ask you this
question? You made a point thatyou feel like vocabulary and
comprehension are more likeeach other. Do you mean they're
more like each other than theother elements of the big five?

(10:29):
Phonemic awareness, phonics,fluency?

Hugh Catts (10:31):
Yes. You know, initially when the NRP panel
got together, they were gonnareview the literature, talking
about advances in instructionand reading. So they were
coming at , "What does theresearch tell us about that?"
Well, they divided all thatliterature up into alphabetics,
fluency, and comprehension. So,vocabulary was part of

(10:53):
comprehension in their mind. Itjust so happens that the
research that had been done hadeither isolated comprehension
by teaching comprehensionexplicitly, or the research had
worked on text comprehensionprimarily by teaching
strategies. So that you couldmake conclusions about one

(11:15):
independent of the other. Theyhad to do look at the studies
that addressed one and notnecessarily the other. So it's
unfortunate that vocabularygets divided out from
comprehension. 'Cause it'scentral to comprehension. It's
part of what you need to have,to be able to understand a

(11:36):
text. But I always have to sayit's part of comprehension.
'Cause the big five, of course,has it listed as another area
of reading.

Right. Yeah. I think there's an article that
you wrote about that, that Ioften use in presentations
about the unintendedconsequences of the five-pillar
images that we always see inpresentations and professional

development (11:59):
that phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency,
vocabulary, comprehension areall sort of the same size
pillars. Or they're all pillarsunderneath this big , big
umbrella.

Hugh Catts (12:12):
Yeah. And even in the big five, you can sometimes
see where comprehension's alittle box at the top of the
infographic, you know? But itdoes give the impression that
they're independent and youcould actually work on each of
those five. And there is nowlegislation in 34 different

(12:32):
states that have the pillars ofreading instruction, it's
mentioned explicitly in there.
And that's another place we canget the impression that
teachers ought to work on, onphonemic, phonics, fluency,
vocabulary, and comprehension.
And again, the reason theyappear as independent

(12:52):
categories is 'cause theresearchers that did the review
wanted to look at theindependent contributions of
it. They never suggested thatthose things should be done
independently of each other. Wewould work on phonological
awareness in this context oflearning phonics, and both of
those in the context ofbecoming more fluent. And we

(13:13):
work on vocabulary andcomprehension at the same time.
I think we could even tievocabulary and comprehension
more tightly together. Youwould never work on vocabulary
without working on its meaningwithin a context that you're
trying to understand.

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And another

"aha" I had (13:33):
We recently did an episode with Dr. Sharon Vaughn,
and she says readingcomprehension can't be taught;
it's an outcome. And that wassomething that was an "aha" for
me too, because how manyteachers in the classroom right
now are their lesson plans allabout teaching comprehension?

Hugh Catts (13:54):
Yeah.

And it's a misunderstanding.

Hugh Catts (13:55):
And it's a goal! Right? It's a goal. A child
will comprehend better. Twothings wrong with that. You're
not gonna be able to measurethat difference in traditional
measures. And the other is thatit takes ... I think Robert
Pondiscio said thatcomprehension is not a skill;
it's a condition you create.

That's a good one. I always like that.

Hugh Catts (14:18):
Right. It's a condition you create by
providing the backgroundknowledge, the language skills,
and the strategies come intothat as well. But that happens
over time. And over time, youcreate mental models and

(14:39):
language abilities and thinkingroutines that allow you to do
it better than you did severalyears earlier.

Yeah. That's so great. So let's talk a little
bit about languagecomprehension, because for all
of our listeners, they'reprobably well aware of the
framework of the Simple View ofReading that reading
proficiency is a product ofword recognition, language
comprehension. I personallyfind that many people, when you

(15:06):
ask them what languagecomprehension is, they don't
even know where to start. So,when you think about language
comprehension, what is thisidea of language comprehension,
in this world of readingproficiency?

Hugh Catts (15:21):
Yeah. Let's talk about it within the framework
of the Simple View, like youjust introduced . And most
people don't understand wherethe Simple View came from. It
was Philip Gough and BillTunmer who came up with that in
1986. The reason they came upwith it, where they were both

(15:43):
interested in word reading andthe fact that word reading was
not getting enough attention inreading instruction. Some deja
vu, right?

Yeah .

Hugh Catts (15:52):
And so what they wanted to do was to illustrate
how important those skills arethat allow you to decode new
words and read words fluently.
And so, in their model, whatthey did was divide that
portion of reading out, andthey called it "decoding" or
"word reading." And that wasthat portion of reading. And

(16:13):
they talked about what wasinvolved in that, and so forth.
Everything else got put underthe rubric of language
comprehension. So that iseverything involved in
comprehension after you takeout word reading. And I'll talk
about what that might be and soforth. But it's not just
language in that sense. It'severything that a reader does

(16:38):
beyond recognizing the words.
So it's gonna be a very complexphenomenon. And in a paper I
talked about a number of yearsago, on the Simple View, was
that was another case of wherewe can get a false impression.
We can assume when we see thosetwo boxes, that language
comprehension is similar todecoding in terms of its

(16:59):
complexity and malleability. Weknow that it's not! But when
you see that presented thatway, it makes us think that
those two things are thingsthat you could address in
intervention or instruction andactually make change fairly
quickly.

Yeah. And they equally contribute to reading
comprehension over time, right?

Hugh Catts (17:21):
Yeah. And so, one way of dealing with that was a
way that my colleague AlanKamhai and I kind of
entertained back in 2007–8,something like that. We said,
"All right, we can solve thisproblem if we call 'decoding'
'reading'." And that's allreading is, is that. Everything

(17:42):
else is comprehension. And bydoing that, we can then think
about other situations in whichyou comprehend, like listening,
watching a movie, so forth. Andtalk about more broadly what's
all involved in that? And Alantalked about it as the narrow
view of reading. Now, at thetime we introduced it, we did

(18:03):
not expect everybody in thefield of literacy to now
redefine reading as only wordreading! It was more of
... I call it a thoughtexercise that we wanted to have
people think about. But itactually is coming now to
where, with the types ofassessments we're doing a nd
the types of instruction we'redoing, it's a more realistic

(18:28):
way to think about what'sinvolved in reading. 'Cause
today, we have a much broaderview or we're beginning to have
a much broader view of what'sinvolved in comprehension.

Can you talk a little bit about that? What all
is involved in comprehension?

Hugh Catts (18:44):
Yeah. Well, let's talk about the language
component. Because that's themodifier of comprehension. And
that's what, that's what theychose to use. I mean, I know
Bill Tunmer pretty well, and Idon't know if I ever asked him
why he called it "languagecomprehension." I think at one
time it was "linguisticcomprehension." And of course

(19:05):
everybody threw "listeningcomprehension" in there. And
they've used those termsinterchangeably. They can mean
different things. But if wetalk about the language part of
it, language refers to a systemof symbols that we use to
communicate. And spokenlanguage, it's t he sounds that
we put together to form words.

(19:25):
And the words that we order inparticular way according to
syntax t o make meaningfulsentences. And then there's

language rules (19:33):
how you put those sentences together to
write a text, and so forth. Inwritten language, of course:
You got the letters. Theletters go t ogether t hrough
words. And then the wordssimilar way go together to form
sentences and so forth. And the sign language, that also has
a vocabulary and a syntax toit. But if we just think about

(19:56):
the listening and r eading, thelanguage skills are gonna b e
important. Right? So kids havebegun developing that from
birth on. They're acquiringtheir language skills. And
that's why I said that readingintervention or reading
instruction starts at birth. Itdoesn't start at first or

(20:18):
second grade. Because thosepreschool years are really
critical in languagedevelopment. That's where kids
are learning all thevocabulary. They're learning
about the knowledge of theworld and everything else. And
so having rich input and richdialogue with parents and
friends is an important step ininstructing reading
comprehension. Y ou m ightthink that's w here t he c

(20:42):
ondition o f r eadingcomprehension s tarts. I k now
S usan Neuman's always b een big o n t his. And it d oesn't g
et a s m uch a ttention as itneeds to in our concerns about
why kids are doing so poor inreading comprehension. Well, it
goes back a lot earlier thanphonics a nd reading i
nstruction.

Hm.

Hugh Catts (20:59):
So there's that part. But then when you get
near school, and you startengaging in books, you're
learning a slightly differentlanguage than what parents or
siblings or friends mightinteract with in the earlier
grades . We use a slightlydifferent language to write
about. And the reason we do iswe have to be much more
specific, because in spokenlanguage, the speaker can

(21:25):
generally see the audience andcan change their vocabulary or
the way that they're saying itto help the listener. In
reading comprehension, that'snot available. So as writers,
we tend to be much morespecific. We use vocabulary
that is specific to theparticular meaning we have in
mind. When there's a number ofdifferent synonyms that we

(21:47):
could possibly use, we choosethe one that's closer to the
meaning that we have in mind.
And we pack our sentences withgrammar that helps explain the
specific person we're talkingabout, the conditions under
which that person did whateverthey did, and those add to

(22:08):
clauses being added tosentences. And so kids have to
start to get experience withthe language, or what's called
academic language. And thatcomes from just reading more.
And when you get to school, italso comes from writing more.
Writing really helps you withthe syntax, academic syntax.

(22:30):
And then the text is differentthan a spoken dialogue. Even a
lecture is gonna be somewhatdifferent than a chapter on a
particular topic. But they doshare things. So, story grammar
that occurs in a book is thesame basic story grammar that I

(22:52):
would use if I was telling youa story orally. Right? That's
language as well. That'slanguage beyond the sentence,
if you will. And so you need tohave that knowledge to be able
to understand text. Or atleast, you have to have a
certain level of that to getinto whatever it is you're

(23:16):
reading. And what we we see isthat some kids have difficulty
learning language. They're slowto learn vocabulary. The syntax
trips 'em up. And that's oftenthe reason that they have
comprehension problems. Thosekids are referred to as having
a developmental languageimpairment or DLD,

(23:37):
developmental languagedisorders. And people are
becoming just as interested inidentifying those kids early on
as they are identifying kidswith dyslexia. Because the
impact of having DLD is worsethan having dyslexia, because

(23:57):
DLD is highly associated withdyslexia, but it's also
associated with havingdifficulties understanding what
you're reading.

Got it.

Hugh Catts (24:06):
So there's good reason to pay more attention to
it.

So I'm gonna backtrack a little bit and and
summarize what I think I heardyou said. First of all, huge
impact for kids just coming toschool. Their language
experiences before they come toschool have a significant
impact on what happens the daythat they walk in. So our
kindergarten teachers know thiswell, right? That kids come

(24:30):
with a range of experienceswith language, and it's quite
broad sometimes, even withmonolingual learners, right? So
we have a really big impact ofwhat happens before kids come
to school. I think that's whatI heard you say? And I think
kindergarten teachers canreally relate to that. I never
taught kindergarten, thankgoodness, but I can relate to

(24:52):
that one. The other thing thatI think I heard you say is ...
there's a difference in themodes of language or the
registers, maybe we wanna callit, of what you experience
outside of schooling. And whatthen you have to learn and
experience when you come toschool, in the process of
schooling. So, academiclanguage is different than the
kind of language that kids useoutside the schooling

(25:15):
environment. Did I hear thosetwo things correctly?

Hugh Catts (25:18):
Yeah. Yes. Very true. Yep .

So language is a really important thing that
fits someplace intocomprehension -- both listening
comprehension and readingcomprehension. Is it a good
time to make that segue intotalking about what
comprehension is?

Hugh Catts (25:35):
Yeah. We can move into there. So, if I was going
to define comprehension, it'snot a single thing. I mean,
that's the problem. We want itto be a single thing. But it
depends upon what you'rereading and why you're reading
it. Some people say that thepurpose of reading is
comprehension. It's not thepurpose of reading. The purpose

(25:56):
of reading is whatever you'recomprehending for.

Ah.

Hugh Catts (26:00):
So sometimes, all you want to do is find a fact
within the text that you'rereading. Right? You just want
one little bit of info. Anothertime, all you want's the gist.
You only kind of wanna knowwhat's happening. So, when I
read newspaper feeds, thee-copies that I get in the
morning, most of the stories, Ijust want kind of a sense of

(26:21):
it, right ?

Yep .

Hugh Catts (26:23):
So I'm reading it at a level of the gist of it.
And in other cases, it's reallyimportant for you. Right ? So,
I'll give you an example ofwhen that might be. So, when
you look on the web for adisease that you may have found
out you just had or one of yourfriends have, the level of

(26:44):
comprehension there is gonna bemuch deeper, right? You're
gonna spend much more timetrying to get at the meaning of
it, if you will, comprehend it.
What comprehension is is theinteraction of what you bring
into that reading situation andwhat you already know about it,

(27:05):
and your motivation and purposeto comprehend it.

. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. I
love it.

Hugh Catts (27:13):
One of my colleagues calls it a "
standard of coherence."What'syour standard of coherence?
That is, how much sense do youwanna make of this?
laughs> And it's not the samefor everything you read. I
mean, most of life, it's prettysuperficial, 'cause we read so
much on the internet now. Andmuch of that's read to get the

(27:37):
gist out, right ? But inschool, we're trying to build
an understanding so that welearn something that we can
later be able to apply. So wehave to read it at a much
deeper level. So, theunderstanding, sometimes called
a mental model, the mentalmodel that you build is gonna
be richer. Because you wannaremember that later on.

That's similar to listening comprehension
though, as well, right?

Hugh Catts (28:02):
Yes. Very similar.

That's great. I have a personal example — I
just had a big "aha" here. So,when I took my language
coursework in college, Ilearned about aphasia. I
learned to memorize thedefinition of aphasia, and I
kind of knew what it was. Mydad recently had a major stroke

(28:25):
and he now has expressive orBroca's aphasia. I'll tell you
what, I know a lot more aboutaphasia now than I did from
that college course where Ijust sort of memorized the
definition.

Hugh Catts (28:37):
Yeah . Right .
That's why I use the example,because most people can relate
to that situation, to wherethere is something you really
wanna understand, so you'remotivated and you also have
this higher standard thatyou're working for. Right?
You're trying to build a muchmore complete understanding of
it.

So, in that same vein, what would you recommend
then to classroom teachers? Imean, is it okay to have kids
read something and it's notnecessarily for deep, deep
comprehension? Is thatsomething we should be helping
them understand? Reading fordifferent purposes means
reading for different ... Ihate to say "levels of

(29:19):
comprehension," 'cause that'snot quite right, but ... you
know what I mean?

Hugh Catts (29:23):
Yeah. I don't know; I haven't thought too much
about that. But there aresituations where, if you talked
about p urposes of reading varydepending upon what the reading
is for in class. So, forexample, if you go to middle
school and you talk aboutreading to write a paper,
that's g onna require adifferent type of thinking than

(29:47):
it would to read a chapter because you're gonna have a test
on it the next day. And that'ssomething we should point out
to students. That what it isthat they should be doing in
those situations to achievethat purpose. Right? So i f
you're writing a paper, you'regonna have multiple sources.
What are you gonna do first?

(30:08):
You're gonna look to see ifthat source you just found,
you're gonna have some idea ofwhat your purpose is in the
paper you're writing, what itsoverall mission is and so
forth. Then, you'll go look atthese papers and see if these
papers fit into that mission... or whether that paper will
change the way you think aboutthat mission. You might alter

(30:31):
your idea of what you'rewriting. Those types of reading
does not necessarily requirebuilding an extensive mental
model at that moment in time.
You'll come back and do that ata later point, when you've got
your story down, and then youcan really get down i n the
nitty-gritties about thedifferent sources that, that

(30:52):
you're using. That might be theway that I would approach it.
Teachers can think about theway that they would explain it
to a middle-school studentthat's beginning to write,
where they h ave multiplesources. But in the other case,
if it is so mething you have tostudy for the next day, then
you can talk about what arethey gonna have to think about

(31:15):
when reading that chapterthat's gonna make them best
prepared to answer the typicaltypes of questions that are on
exams related to that.

Yeah. It makes me think about, as a teacher
... I taught mostly thirdgrade, but I remember using a
strategy and now I gotta goback and I'm questioning myself
whether it was right or not!But I guess it doesn't matter
anymore. Those kids are grownand gone. Right? I've
already ruined them. No, justkidding. Anyway, we used to use
a strategy to read this page,"read to find out." So

(31:49):
essentially, look for a nuggetin this page or pages, to find
out this one thing, right?

Hugh Catts (31:56):
Yeah.

So that's a type of purpose for reading, right?

Hugh Catts (32:00):
Yeah, you know, "look for the main idea" gets
such bad press sometimes, butsometimes that's what one needs
to do to begin with, is try tofigure out what the passage is
about. But it's not nearenough. Then the next question
was, "What specifically is itabout?" So let's say it's about
dolphins, right? And you askthe child, and "Well, it's

(32:22):
about dolphins," is what thekid says. Right? But what you

wanna know (32:25):
What specifically is it about dolphins? Is it
about their communication? Isit about their habitat? About
what they eat? Their lifecycle?
Those are the types of thingsthat you would ask kids to
think about, so that the nexttime they come to a passage

(32:47):
about bears, they will alsothink about, "What specifically
is it about?" And that's a nicething about doing this within
science, or whatever, whateverobservations you make about the
habitat of dolphins is gonna bedirectly relevant to habitat of
a bear, even though one livesin water and the other doesn't.

(33:09):
Right? They gotta eat! Theygotta live somewhere! I don't
know the habitat of dolphinsvery much . But the
vocabulary you use is quitesimilar from one context to the
other. It's those types ofstrategies, if you will, that
you would would want to thinkabout. You know, you mentioned

(33:32):
the strategies, and let me talka little bit about strategies
here. Because they've got a lotof attention ... and we didn't
really talk about knowledge, ifyou wanna come back and ask
some questions about it ...
but, you know, the bestpredictor of whether you're
gonna understand something ornot is whether you already know
something about it. And wesometimes forget that, in our

(33:53):
instruction. And maybe we'llcome back and talk about that
in a minute.

We should. Yep .
Yep .

Hugh Catts (33:57):
But it's not just knowledge. You actually have to
think about that knowledge. Andthat's goes back to the thing
about thinking about it deeplywhen you need to, or think
about a particular waydepending on your purpose. But
thinking is not a really easything to do. I mean, we're not
biologically predisposed tothink deeply.

Oh , thanks for saying that. I don't feel so
bad now.

Hugh Catts (34:24):
You're not! Because thinking deeply allows you only
to think deeply. You can't domuch else when you're thinking
deeply. Like, you might think,reading a book, trying to
figure out the storyline in it,why that person did that,
what's gonna happen? You loseyourself in the world. And that
type of thinking is not goodwhen you're driving your car

(34:46):
around or doing other types ofthings — in earlier times,
hunting for food, or whatever.
So we're predisposed to thinkat a much more shallow level.
So we have to turn on thatlevel of thinking. And I always
ask , "Well, how do we get kidsto do that?" We can't tell 'em

(35:06):
, "Think more deeply." < Laugh> Right? You're a third-grade
teacher. Can you imaginetelling your students, "All
right, now what I want you todo is think more deeply about
what you just read"? Right?

< Laugh> Yeah.

Hugh Catts (35:16):
So how do we do it?
Well , we give them ways tothink more deeply about it. So
we ask them , "What's the mainidea? Can you paraphrase what
that chapter said? Can youthink back to what you read
earlier, and think what thatparticular sentence means in
terms of that? Make aninference based upon something

(35:40):
earlier?" Can you just simplymonitor: "Please think about
whether you're understanding itas you go through"? All those
strategies are good things foremerging readers to think
about. But they're not whatgood readers consciously think
about while they're reading.

(36:00):
Theirs tend to be more specificto the purpose and the topic
they're reading. They tailor itmuch, much closer to what
they're trying to achievethere. I mean, some of it's
unconscious, simply 'causewe've read so much. So we've
got our strategies we use tohelp us think . But some of it
is pretty conscious. You'reconstantly thinking, when

(36:23):
you're reading something that'sreally tough, "Do I really
understand this?" Or, "How isthis fitting into the mental
model that I have about thisparticular topic?" Right? When
I'm writing a paper, I'mthinking, when I read this
article, "Where does this fitinto what I'm saying? Does it

(36:43):
go along with it? Does itchallenge it?" And so forth.
And that type of thinking isdependent upon what it is and
what your task is. So, as kidsget more sophisticated,
instruction and strategies needto be more specific to the
topic and the purpose of it.

(37:06):
Depending on whether they'restudying for a test, trying to
learn about this particularsubject matter is gonna require
s omething different than ifyou're trying to understand an
argument. I f you're trying tounderstand a n argument, you
have to think about, "Well,what's the premise? What's the
evidence to support that? What's their bias? What's my

(37:27):
bias?" That type of thing.

Yeah. So, strategies are important, in
service of learning the contentor the purpose for the reading,
right?

Hugh Catts (37:41):
Or ... enjoying, too! We have to put in there,
you know!

Oh, yeah.

Hugh Catts (37:44):
'Cause the strategy at night, when I'm trying to
read a really tough book, andtrying to figure out what's
going on there and so forth.
...

That makes sense. Okay. So let's come back
to knowledge, because I'vealways been a believer in the
importance of knowledgedevelopment. My first teaching
job was in a school that usedthe core knowledge sequence. So
I saw the power of developingkids' background knowledge,
both in terms of motivation,but then what they bring to
that for both readingcomprehension, and I would say

(38:13):
writing composition. So fromyour point of view, why is
knowledge so important to thisprocess of listening and
reading comprehension?

Hugh Catts (38:25):
And movie comprehension too, right? I
mean, because it's central tothe building of the
understanding. It's verydifficult to build an
understanding if you don't haveany background knowledge.
'Cause to build a meaningfulmemory of something that you

(38:47):
can hold on and use, you haveto think about it, right ? One
of my favorite quotes is fromDaniel Willingham, where he
said that memory is the residueof thought.

I just love that .

Hugh Catts (38:59):
If you wanna remember something, you have to
think about it. So if you don'tknow very much information, how
do you think about it, whileyou read about it in the text?
But the problem is you can onlyget so much of the information
in that text into your memory,'cause it's gotta go through a

(39:22):
system we call working memory.
And working memory iscapacity-limited. You can only
think about a few things at atime, right ? And the advantage
to having background knowledgeis when you're thinking about
the new information. You canretrieve knowledge that you

(39:43):
have, that's chunked intobigger bits of information, so
it doesn't take up as muchroom, if you will, in your
working memory. And you can usethat to help you make sense of
that incoming information andbuild a bigger memory. It's not
the case that you could just golook it up on the internet and

(40:04):
then think about it deeply andyou'll have an understanding of
it. Right? There's just notenough mental reserve to be
able to build that meaning thatquickly. So it helps
tremendously that you have someknowledge about it beforehand.
That knowledge gives you aplace to put information. So
when you read about something,it gives you storage for the

(40:24):
information. It's kind of likea cubby hole that you put the
mail in, in an office. It givesyou a slip for that. New bits
of information fits into "thatold schema, if you will, or
understanding of a particulartopic. Some people refer to
that as mental Velcro." I thinkit was Marilyn Adams who said
that. It just sticks better ifyou already know it. The other

(40:49):
thing that it it does for youis having knowledge makes you
want more knowledge. Wegenerally are more interested
in something we already havesome knowledge about to begin
with. And the more expertise weget in it, the more likely we
are to be interested in it. Andwe'll create a higher standard

(41:09):
of coherence. We'll wanna getmore information. The other
thing it does is it helps uswith inferencing. So authors
seldom tell us everything weneed to know to read — to
understand — a text. It'd beboring if they told us every
single detail that they have.
They have to assume that thereader knows something. But if
the reader doesn't know it,then they're not gonna be able

(41:33):
to fill in the blanks of whatthey're reading. And that
inferencing gets a lot ofattention. But what people
often miss about it is thatmost inferencing is automatic.
It's not inferences that wehave to think about. It's
because our language systemworks such that soon as we read

(41:57):
or hear a word, the activationwithin the middle model spreads
to all related words. And itspreads to related words based
upon how related they've beenin the past. An example I use
is when you hear the word"bank," it spreads to
everything related to money,but it also spreads to the

(42:19):
river. Even though "river" is asubordinate meaning of it. The
idea is, that's why we're sogood at language comprehension,
is all this spreadingactivation happens immediately,
based upon the reader'sexperience or the listener's
experience with language. Soinferencing is automatic most
of the time, but there arethose situations when it's not

(42:41):
automatic, 'cause you have tothink about it. You have to
read that text and think, "Allright, how does that go with
that?" So if your listeners canbear a visual representation of
— it's my favorite example.
It's a Larson cartoon whereit's inside a pet store, and
over on one side of the room isa cat with two peg legs. And on

(43:06):
the other side of the room is abowl with a piranha in it. And
it says, "Piranha, $29." Youlook at that image, right away,
you don't necessarily get it.
But you've got entrance, right?

Right.

Hugh Catts (43:19):
And that's the way reading is. It takes a few
minutes for you to kind of ...
you know, Gary Larson's gonnahave something in there that's
kind of absurd . So ifyou're a Larson fan, you look
for it. If you're reading, thattext may be kind of related to
this, but you have to thinkabout it. But the important
thing about inferencing is youstill gotta know it. You still

(43:43):
have to know that a piranhacould eat a cat's foot. Yeah. A
cat could, like, put their footin there. If you don't know
that, all the inferencingstrategy training in the world
won't help you.

Yeah. That's fascinating. And I've never
thought about inferencing asbeing automatic. We often think
about word recognition,building that to automaticity.
But you're right. And I've donethe same thing with cartoons,
like, "Look at this cartoon!"But my question to people
usually is, "What backgroundknowledge do you need to have

(44:17):
to understand this?" Right? ButI've never made the connection
that they're also automaticallymaking inferences because they
have the background knowledgeto be able to do that quickly.

Hugh Catts (44:27):
Yeah. It just depends on how direct the
inference is. In some cases,the author's written a text, so
the inference is a little bitmore difficult to make. And you
know, as an author, that's agood thing. Why? Because you
want your readers to thinkabout what they're reading. So
a little less coherence in atext, where you're not putting

(44:51):
every little sentence togetherso that the reader can follow
it all the way through, is notvery interesting. And it
doesn't tend to be rememberedas well as if the text has a
little bit of lack ofcoherence. That is, that the
inference that you need tomake, you don't learn about
until a little bit later in thepassage. That gets people to

(45:14):
think more about that passage,and in doing so, remember it
better.

Yeah.

Hugh Catts (45:20):
But you still have to have the knowledge to be
able to do that. You can't makean inference without the
knowledge.

Yeah. And that goes back to what we were
talking about early in theepisode: the importance of what
knowledge or experiences kidsbring to us in school, in
kindergarten. Because it feelslike broad background knowledge
is pretty important to thiscomprehension process. And
sometimes it feels like thechicken or the egg. Right?

(45:48):
Because if I wanna learn aboutsomething, and listen and read
about something, do I have toknow something about it to
actually gain this newknowledge? Or do I need a
little bit of new knowledge togain new knowledge?

Hugh Catts (46:01):
Yeah. That's a great, great issue. I mean,
I've thought about that; a lotof people ask about that. But
before we run out of time, I'lltalk about it in the context of
the core knowledge youmentioned. That program ...
well, that's just one of anumber of what we call
content-rich literacy programs.
And so, what they do is theyteach literacy in the context

(46:23):
of knowledge. It's knowledgethat's spread out over long
periods of time, that build oneach other. So there's no
chicken and egg situation here,'cause you're doing both of
them at the same time. Soyou're teaching kids about this
subject matter at the same timeyou're teaching them how to
extract that information from atext or how to write about that

(46:46):
information or how to talkabout that information in a
dialogue. So you teach kids toread by talking about it,
reading about it, watchingYouTube videos about it,
documentaries about it, and soforth. So, it puts literacy
instruction in the context ofknowledge. And that's what's

(47:10):
the real benefit, I think, ofthe narrower view of reading
is. What the narrower view ofreading would suggest is that
we teach kids to decode wordswithin English Language Arts.
After that, English LanguageArts is over. What we then do
is we teach comprehension. Andfluency, fluency a little bit,

(47:31):
probably, and English LanguageArts too. We, we teach it
within the subject matter. So,at the same time kids are
learning to comprehend, they'relearning about social studies,
science, history, whatever itmight be, in a way that builds
from one instructional periodto another instructional
period. What I was telling youabout learning about the

(47:52):
habitat of dolphins helps youlearn about the habitat of
something else, what helps youlearn is this ... and people
that write those curricula havethought about, "What's the best
way to teach this?" And what'sstrange to me is it's the same
teacher in K through thirdgrade or whatever. Why would
that teacher have to thinkabout teaching that within

(48:14):
English Language Arts? Whydon't we just have the block?
We would have to have curriculathat are better designed for
that. Right? Most of thecurricula now that are these
content-rich curricula are onesthat are built for English
Language Arts. But there's noreason we couldn't go the other
way. And the last thing I'llsay that that's good for is

(48:37):
that the focus changes to thepurpose of school. And that's
learning.

Ah. Yeah.

Hugh Catts (48:43):
I mean, if you want to see where we should be going
— or my opinion of where weshould be going — sorry to feel
so strongly about this!

No, that's great.

Hugh Catts (48:53):
I'm getting to be the age where I could do that.
It's that the content-richliteracy programs put the focus
on the real purpose of school,and that's to learn — or when
reading, to enjoy literacy. Andthat move us into the science
of learning as opposed to theScience of Reading. Now, it
would incorporate the Scienceof Reading within that. But
that fits back to the ideaabout purpose. So kids would be

(49:19):
learning science at the sametime. They're learning how to
read science and write aboutscience.

That's amazing.
That's great. We forget aboutthat, when we're teaching
reading, that the purpose ofreading is to learn something.
Well, or enjoyment. But yes,learning is an important thing
of going to school, isn't it?

Hugh Catts (49:38):
Yep.

Well, this has been a fascinating
conversation. I just wonder ifyou have any thoughts,
messages, or anything you'dlike to leave with our
listeners before we close out?

Hugh Catts (49:49):
I just, you know, suggest that we have to think a
little bit more deeply ingeneral about comprehension and
start developing some modelsthat will allow us to do that.
To go beyond the skill-basedapproach to reading
comprehension and, you know,focus on purpose. Why are we

(50:09):
wanting kids to comprehend thisparticular text, and so forth?
And I think when we do thatwe'll realize that we might go
about teaching differently,depending upon that purpose and
that particular topic.

Well, Dr. Hugh Catts, thank you for the work
that you're doing. And again,thank you for joining us on
today's episode. We reallyappreciate it.

Hugh Catts (50:33):
Yeah, I appreciate, appreciate you had me. That was
fun. Thank you.

That was Dr.
Hugh Catts, professor of theSchool of Communication Science
and Disorders at Florida StateUniversity. Please check out
the show notes to read morefrom Dr. Catts on comprehension
and the Simple View of Reading.
Next time on the show, literacyspecialist and educational
consultant, Lori Josephson willdiscuss her new book, Calling

All Neurons (50:59):
How Reading and Spelling Happen. She will also
tackle some of our listenermailbag questions, including
how to remediate upperelementary kids who lack
foundational reading skills.

Lori Josephson (51:12):
I firmly believe that no matter how old
you are, you still need tolearn the same information.
Let's let that sink in. Ifsomeone does not — if an
individual in middle school orhigh school does not have the
foundational skills, yourmemory is only so big.

That's coming up next time. And submit your own
Science of Reading questions byvisiting
Amplify.com/SORmailbag. Bysubmitting a question, you
could also win a visit from meto your school. And if you're
enjoying our reading reboot,please consider telling a
friend or colleague about theshow. We're grateful for any

(51:51):
help spreading the word. Youcan join the conversation about
this episode in our Facebookdiscussion group, Science of

Reading (51:58):
The Community. Science of Reading
brought to you by Amplify. I'mSusan Lambert. Thank you so
much for listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}S9 E4: Comprehension is not a skill, with Hugh Catts, Ph.D.