October 16, 2024 • 53 mins
In this episode Susan Lambert is joined by Hugh Catts, Ph.D., professor at Florida State University, to break down what comprehension is and bust some myths around what it isn’t. With a family history of dyslexia, he has a personal connection to the topic that led him into research in language sciences and language disorders. He discusses how his findings moved him away from viewing comprehension as simply a “component of reading” but rather something entirely separate—a condition created over time, defined by purpose, and influenced by prior knowledge. Together, Susan and Hugh address many comprehension-related contexts, such as the simple view of reading, the five pillars of reading, and comprehension’s relationship to knowledge building. Hugh also gives listeners practical advice for helping students suss out their comprehension before reading, and he clarifies why understanding the standard of coherence is important.
Show notes:
- Submit your literacy questions for a chance to win!
- Read: Rethinking How to Promote Reading Comprehension by Hugh Catts
- Read: The Simple View of Reading: Advancements and False Impressions by Hugh Catts
- Follow Hugh on X: @CattsHugh
Quotes:
“If I was going to define comprehension, it's not a single thing. I mean, that's the problem. We want it to be a single thing, but it depends upon what you're reading and why you're reading it.” –Hugh Catts, Ph.D.
“What comprehension is is the interaction of what you bring into that reading situation and what you already know about it and your motivation and purpose to comprehend it.” –Hugh Catts, Ph.D.
“There's just not enough mental reserve to be able to build that meaning that quickly. So it helps tremendously that you have some knowledge about it beforehand. That knowledge gives you a place to put information. So when you read about something, it gives you storage for the information. It's kind of like a cubby hole that you put the mail in, in an office.” ––Hugh Catts, Ph.D.
Episode timestamps*
02:00 Introduction: Who is Hugh Catts?
03:00 Personal Connection to Dyslexia
07:00 Rethinking comprehension as a component of reading
11:00 Vocabulary and comprehension
15:00 Comprehension as a condition you create
16:00 Language comprehension and the simple view of reading
19:00 Differences in types of comprehension
26:00 What comprehension is and isn’t
32:00 Thinking deeply
39:00 Background knowledge and comprehension
42:00 Automatic inferencing
50:00 Final thoughts
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So if I was going to define comprehension, it , it ,
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.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading the podcast fromAmplify where the Science of
Reading lives. We are now onepisode four in our season long
reading, reboot, reexamining,and Building on Foundational
Literacy Concepts. We'vealready received some fantastic
questions from listeners likeyou, and we're excited to
(00:36):
explore them over the course ofthis season. I was just reading
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
(00:58):
your own questions. Today I'mthrilled to revisit the simple
view of reading with renownedliteracy expert Hugh Katz,
professor of the School ofCommunication Science and
Disorders at Florida StateUniversity. Dr. Katz will
explain why he wants us torethink our understanding of
comprehension, and togetherwe'll explore what this might
(01:19):
mean for instruction andassessment. Without further
ado, here's Dr. Hugh Katz. Dr.
Hugh Katz. Thank you so muchfor joining us on today's
episode. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Great to be here .
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Be here . So , um, we always love to just ask our
guests to give our listenersjust a little bit about your
journey and maybe how you gotinto the world of literacy.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, sure. Uh, I was originally trained in
speech and language sciencesand , and , uh, with my first
job, I taught courses likeacoustics and phonetics, but I
did teach a language disordersclass. And , and in reading
that , uh, the readings forthat, I ran across a paper on
the phonological basis ofdyslexia. So I have to
(02:06):
recognize this is in the earlyeighties, and , uh, it really
hit home because I have afamily 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 ? Mm-Hmm .. Uh , so all the things that
they were talking about inthose papers were problems
(02:29):
that, that I'd experienced allmy life, but just didn't know
were relevant to, to readingand dyslexia. So I completely
changed my program of study.
Um, and although I remained ina communication disorders , uh,
programs, I , uh, readeverything I could about
dyslexia and actually ended upchanging universities so I
(02:49):
could teach , uh, coursesrelated to dyslexia and reading
and so forth. And , and thatkind of led to, I don't know ,
uh, 30 some odd years ofstudying , um, early
identification of dyslexia ,uh, treatment related to
dyslexia, it's relationship tolanguage disorders. I've always
been interested and so forth.
(03:10):
So it was, it was a , aroundabout way, but it , uh,
fortunately I ran into it earlyin my career is rather than,
than
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Rather than later, rather
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Than later. I had plenty time. But think about
it, over the years,
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That must have been quite , um, an aha moment both
for you personally andprofessionally. Wow. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah . Yeah . Yeah.
That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
It really was. I mean, it's one of the things ,
whoa, that's, that's theproblems that I have
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And , and my, my brother and I , uh, he's a
little bit younger than I, wealways talk about the
difficulties we have and, andlaugh about it and so forth. So
Speaker 2 (03:45):
That's good . That's good that you could also , um,
introduce him to what, youknow, you both were
experiencing as, as both ascholar and a researcher.
That's very interesting. Um ,and glad that you can laugh
about it because Yeah .
Sometimes it could befrustrating, right,.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah . Yeah . It was at the time.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh, I bet. I bet.
Um, so we're gonna actuallytalk about comprehension. So
how did you make it from sortof this world of phonics and,
and and phenology speechlanguage pathology into this
world of comprehension?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah. Well, well, initially of course, we were
interested in word readingbecause that's a primary
problem of kids with dyslexia.
It's problems I have, it's aproblems most directly related
to phonological difficulties.
But , um, in following kidsover a period of time, they got
older, we had a, we had awonderful study , uh, done out
(04:36):
of Iowa where we identifiedkids with , uh, language and
problems at kindergarten andfollowed them all the way
through , uh, their twenties.
Hmm . And as part of that, Iwas interested in the word
reading aspects of those kids,but we ended up giving
comprehension measures. Okay.
And so that got me interestedinto what's involved in, in
(04:56):
comprehension. And I had a bitof a background being in, in
speech and language tounderstand , uh, about
comprehension. But , uh, did anumber of studies there and,
and spent probably the last 10years involved in some studies
related to comprehension, buta, a good deal of reading and
thinking about comprehensionand what problems might be
(05:18):
there, what instruction wewould do so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Hmm . So given all that thinking that you've done
about this, what are you seeingthen that has been new to you?
Or some, some maybe majorproblems in, in terms of our
approach to comprehension?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah. I mean, when I first started, I, I thought
about comprehension just like,just about everybody else does.
And that is that it was anaspect of reading that you
could measure with astandardized test and get some
estimate of ability, and thenyou could instruct or intervene
and find some change in thatability. Yeah. You know, over a
(05:56):
shorter period of time youcould see change in that
ability. But, you know, overthe last 10 or more years, I've
kind of recognized that that'snot really the case. That, that
it's not something that you canmeasure with a standardized
test in the same way that wemeasure other aspects of
reading. And it's not somethingthat's easily changed through
instruction or intervention.
(06:17):
It's, we think about changeover a longer period of time,
changing comprehension occursover the lifetime as opposed to
these other , uh, aspects of,of reading. And I think a major
insight for me was that we'vebeen thinking about
comprehension as a component ofreading, and that's what most
people do. And we've got thefive, the big five or the five
(06:40):
pillars of reading. Butcomprehension's is really not a
component of reading it. It ,it doesn't really share
anything. And when I saycomprehension, I wanna put
vocabulary in there. Okay. Theygot separated in the, in the
NRP report because they, therewas research separately on
comprehension vocabulary, but Ikind of think about those as,
(07:02):
as the same thing. And in the ,those two are not like the
other three aspects of the bigfive in the sense that, that
they're , they're not skillsthat you could train and then
apply across the board. Youknow, kind of like, I always
use examples, swimming. If youlearn how to swim, you can swim
in a , a lake, a pool, anocean, whatever. Uh, but that's
(07:26):
not the case for comprehension.
You , you can't learn tocomprehend and then be, and
take that out into, intodifferent situations for
different purposes. You canlearn some things that will
help you, but in general, it'sthe topic and the purpose that
are gonna impact how well youunderstand something. Hmm . And
(07:47):
recognizing that it , it , it'sa big shift in the way that we
think about, aboutcomprehension. It's, it's more
like listening comprehension orMm-Hmm . movie
comprehension. When you watch amovie, you're actually engaged
in a, in building anunderstanding of what's going
on in that movie. And that'snot all that different than
(08:07):
when you read a book. Right .
Uh , so if you've got anarrative 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 insome important differences. But
they are, they are similar forthe most part.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Hmm . You know, that, that makes me think of
one , one of my big ahas withcomprehension was, you know,
comprehension isn't, you eithercomprehend it or you don't
comprehend it. It's not blackand white either or, 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
outta that movie and talk aboutmaybe some really different
things or get some reallydifferent , um, 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 , um, that's not what I
(09:08):
got from that. Is that a littlebit what you're talking about?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, kind of . I mean, I didn't bring in the
individual differences in thatway, but, but comprehension's a
combination of what the readerbrings into the situation of
reading and the book andpurpose that they're, that
they're reading the text andthe purpose of it. Same way
with what you walk into themovie theater with. Mm-Hmm.
as interacts withwhat the storyline and the, you
(09:34):
know, visual images, whatever'sin the , uh, movie. You know,
the other, the other comparisonthat works even better is, is
listening comprehension.
Mm-Hmm. . So thatreading comprehension and
listening comprehension are,are very similar in that , uh,
the listener brings in certainknowledge about the topic and
certain interests in the topic.
(09:55):
And that impacts how well theyunderstand or what their , in
your words, what, what , uh,type of understanding they have
about the, about the particulartext.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So we're gonna jump into this understanding about
language comprehension in justa minute because it's so, it's
so related to the simple viewof reading, which we talk about
all the time. But before we gothere, can I ask you this
question? You, you made a pointthat you 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 phonicsfluency?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yes. Um , you know, initially when the NRP panel
got together, they were gonnareview the literature, talking
about advances in, ininstruction and reading. So
they were coming at , what doesthe research tell us about
that? Well, they divided the ,all that literature up into
alphabetics fluency and, andcomprehension. Mm-Hmm .
(10:51):
vocabulary waspart of comprehension in their
mind. It just so happens thatthe research that had been done
had either isolatedcomprehension by teaching
comprehension explicitly, orthe research had worked on text
comprehension primarily bytesting , uh, or 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,
it's unfortunate thatvocabulary gets divided out
from comprehension. 'cause it'scentral to comprehension. It's
part of what you need to haveto be able to understand a , a
(11:36):
text. But I , uh, always haveto say it's part of
comprehension. 'cause a bigfive of course, has it listed
as another area of reading.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right. Yeah. I think there's an article that you
wrote about that, that I, thatI often use in presentations
about the unintendedconsequences of especially the,
you know, the five pillarimages that we always see in
presentations and professionaldevelopment that phonemic
awareness, phonics fluency,vocabulary comprehension, are
(12:06):
all sort of the same sizepillars, or they're all pillars
underneath this big , bigumbrella.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah. And , and even , even in the big five, you can
sometimes see wherecomprehension's a little box at
the top of the infographic, youknow? Oh . But it does give the
impression that they're , thatthey're independent and you
could actually work on each ofthose five. And there is now ,
uh, legislation in 34 differentstates that have the pillars
(12:34):
of, of , uh, readinginstruction is mentioned
explicitly in there Mm-Hmm .
. And that'sanother place we can get the
impression that teachers oughtto work on, on phonemic a
phonics fluency, vocabulary andcomprehension. And again, the
reason they're , they appear asindependent , uh, categories is
'cause the researchers that didthe review wanted to look at
(12:56):
the independent contributionsof it. They never suggested
that those things should bedone independently of each
other. We would work onphonological awareness in this
context of learning phonics andboth of those in the , in the
context of becoming morefluent. Mm . And we work on
vocabulary and comprehension atthe same time. Uh, I think we
(13:18):
could even tie co vocabularyand comprehension more tightly
together. You would never workon vocabulary without working
on its meaning within a contextthat you're trying to
understand.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And , um, and
another aha had, we recentlydid an episode with Dr. Sharon
Vaughn, and she says, readingcomprehension can't be taught
it's an outcome. And that, thatwas something that was a , an
aha for me too, because howmany teachers in the classroom
right now are their lessonplans are all about teaching
(13:53):
comprehension. Yeah . And amisunderstanding.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And it's a goal, right? It's a goal. Yeah .
Child will comprehend better.
Two things wrong with that,you're not gonna be able to
measure that difference intraditional measures. And the
other is that , that it, ittakes , uh, uh, I think Robert
, uh, Padio said thatcomprehension is not a skill,
it's a condition you create.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Hmm . That's a good one. I always
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Like that. Right.
It's, it's, it's a conditionyou create by providing the,
the background knowledge, thelanguage skills , um, and , uh,
the , the strategies come intothat as well. But that, that
happens over time. And, andover time, you, you create ,
uh, mental models and languageabilities and thinking routines
(14:41):
that allow you to do it betterthan you did several years
earlier.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah. 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 as 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. Sowhen you think about language
comprehension, what, what isthis idea of language
comprehension in this world ofreading proficiency?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah. Let's talk about it within the, within the
framework of the simple view.
Like, like you just introduced. And most people don't
understand where the simpleview came from. It was Philip
Goff and , and Bill Tomer cameup with that , uh, I don't know
, 80, 19 86 . The reason theycame up with it, where they
were both interested in wordreading and the fact that word
(15:44):
reading was not getting enoughattention in reading
instruction. Okay. Some dejavu, right? Yeah . . And
so what they wanted to do wasto illustrate how important
those skills are that allow youto decode new words and read
words fluently. And so they, intheir model, what they did was
divide that portion of readingout. Okay . And they called it
(16:07):
decoding or word reading.
Mm-Hmm. . And ,and that was that portion of,
of reading. And they, theytalked about what was involved
in that and , and so forth.
Everything else got put underthe rubric of language
comprehension. So that iseverything involved in
comprehension after you takeout word reading. Right . And
(16:29):
I'll talk about what that mightbe and so forth. But it's, it's
not just language in thatsense. It's, it's everything
that a reader does beyondrecognizing the words. So it's
gonna be a very complex , uh,uh, phenomenon. And in a, a
paper I talked about a numberof years ago, wrote on the
simple view was that wasanother case of where we can
(16:50):
get a false impression. We canassume when we see those two
boxes, that languagecomprehension is similar to
decoding in terms of itscomplexity in mal malleability.
We know that it's not Yeah. Butwhen you see that presented
that way, it makes us thinkthat those two things are, you
know, are things that you couldaddress in intervention and or
(17:11):
instruction and actually makechange fairly quickly.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. And , and they equally contribute to reading
comprehension over time, right?
Yeah . Yeah . Yeah .
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And so it , it , it's inter , one way of dealing
with that was a way that, thatmy colleague Alan Kamai and I
kind of entertained back in ,uh, uh, 2007, eight, something
like that, we said, alright ,we can solve this problem if we
call decoding reading. Andthat's all reading is, is that
(17:41):
everything else iscomprehension. And by doing
that, we can then think aboutother situations in which you
comprehend, like listening,watching a movie, so forth, and
talk about more broadly what'sall, what's all involved in
that. And Alan talked about itas a narrow view of reading.
(18:02):
Now, at the time we introducedit, we did not expect everybody
in the field of literacy to nowredefine reading is only word
reading. It was more ofa kind of a, I call it a
thought exercise that we wantedto have people think about.
But, but it actually is comingnow to where with the types of
assessments we're doing and thetypes of instruction we're
(18:23):
doing it , it's a morerealistic way to think about
what's involved in, in reading.
'cause we are, today, we have amuch broader view or beginning
to have a much broader view ofwhat's, what's involved in
comprehension. Hmm .
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Can you talk a little bit about that? What's
in , what all is involved incomprehension?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Well, let's talk about the language
component, because that's,that's the modifier of
comprehension. Great. Andthat's what, that's what they
chose to use. I mean, I know ,uh, uh, bill Tomer pretty well,
and I, I don't know if I everasked him why he called it
language comprehension. Uh, Ithink at one time it was
linguistic comprehension. Uh,and of course everybody through
(19:04):
listening comprehension inthere Yeah . And have used
those terms interchangeably.
They have, they , they can meandifferent things. But if we
talk about the language part ofit, the language language
refers to a system of , ofsymbols that we use to
communicate. Mm-Hmm .
. And so, andspoken language, it's the
sounds that we put together toform words and the words that
(19:25):
we order in particular wayaccording to syntax to make
meaningful sentences. And thenthere's language rules, how you
put those sentences together towrite a text , um, so forth and
written language, of course,you got the letters, the
letters go together throughwords, and then the words
similar way go together to formsentences and so forth. And the
(19:46):
sign language. But , uh, thatalso has a vocabulary and a
syntax to it. But if we justthink about the listening and,
and , uh, reading, the languageskills are gonna be imp
important. Right. So kids have, have begun developing that
from birth , um, on they're ,they're acquiring their
(20:07):
language skills. And that's whyI said that reading
intervention or readinginstruction starts at birth. It
doesn't start at first orsecond grade, because those
preschool years are reallycritical in language
development. That's where kidsare learning all the , the
vocabulary. They're learningabout the, the knowledge of the
world and everything else. Andso having rich input and rich
(20:30):
dialogue with parents andfriends is an important step in
instructing readingcomprehension. You might think
that's , that's where thecondition of reading
comprehension starts . Yeah . Iknow Susan Newman's has always
been big on this . And , and itdoesn't get as much attention
as, as it needs to in , in ,uh, you know, our concerns
(20:51):
about why kids are doing sopoor and reading comprehension.
Well, it goes back a lotearlier than phonics and, and
readings instruction . Hmm . Sothere's that part, but then
when you get near school andyou start engaging in books,
you're learning a slightlydifferent language than what
parents or , or siblings might,or friends might interact with
(21:11):
in their earlier grades . Weuse a slightly different
language to write about. Right? Mm-Hmm . . And
the reason we do is we have tobe much more specific because
the in spoken language, the ,the , uh, speaker can generally
see the audience and can changetheir vocabulary or the way
that they're saying it to helpthe listener in reading
(21:33):
comprehension, that's notavailable. So as writers, we
tend to be much more specific.
We use vocabulary that isspecific to the particular
meaning we have in mind. Whenthere's a number of different
synonyms that we could possiblyuse. We choose the one that's
closer to the one meaning thatwe have in mind, and we pack
(21:54):
our sentences with, withgrammar that helps explain the
specific person. We're talkingabout the conditions under
which that person did whateverthey did. And those add to
clauses being added tosentences. And so kids have to
start to get experience withthe language or what's called
(22:15):
academic language. And, andthat comes from, from just
reading more. Uh, and when youget to school, it also comes
from writing more. Writingreally helps you with the
syntax of , of academic syntax.
And then , uh, the , uh, textis different than a spoken
(22:35):
dialogue. Even a lecture isgonna be somewhat different
than a, than a chapter on aparticular topic. Mm-Hmm.
. Uh , but theydo share things. So story
grammar that occurs in a bookis the same basic story grammar
that I would use if I wastelling you a story orally.
Okay. Right ? Mm-Hmm.
. So that, that's,that's language as well, that's
(22:59):
language beyond the , thesentence, if you will. And so
you need to have that knowledgeto be able to understand text,
or at least you have to have acertain level of that to get
into whatever it is you're,you're , you're reading. And
what we we see is that somekids have difficulty learning
(23:20):
language. They're, they're slowto learn vocabulary. They , uh,
syntax trips 'em up. And that'soften the reason that they have
comprehension problems. Thosekids are referred to as having
a , a , uh, developmentallanguage impairment. Mm-Hmm.
, um, uh, or DLDdevelopmental language
disorders. And people are, arebecoming just as interested in
(23:44):
, uh, identifying those kidsearly on is they are
identifying kids with dyslexia.
Right. Because the impact ofhaving DLD is worse than having
dyslexia because DLD is highlyassociated with dyslexia, but
it's also associated withhaving difficulties
understanding what you'rereading. Got
Speaker 2 (24:05):
It.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So there's good reason to pay more attention to
it.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So I'm gonna track back a little bit and , um, 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, it ,
it's quite broad sometimes ,um, even with monolingual
learners, right. So, so we havea , a really big impact of what
happens before kids come toschool. I think that's what I
heard you say. And I, I thinkkindergarten and teachers can
really relate to that. I nevertaught kindergarten, thank
(24:51):
goodness, but I can relate tothat one. The other thing that
I think I heard you say isthere's a difference in the
modes of language or theregisters, maybe we wanna call
it, of what you experienceoutside of schooling. And what
then you have to learn andexperience when you come to
school in the process ofschooling. So academic language
(25:11):
is different than the kind oflanguage that kids use outside
the schooling environment. DidI hear those two things
correctly? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes . Very true. Yep .
Speaker 2 (25:20):
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?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah. I mean, we can, we can move into there.
So, so if I was going to definecomprehension, is it , it ,
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. Some people say that the
purpose of reading iscomprehension. It's not the
purpose of reading. The purposeof reading is whatever you're
(25:57):
comprehending for. Ah . Sosometimes all you want to do is
find a fact within the textthat you're reading. Right? You
just want one little bit ofanother time. All you want is
the gist. You all only kind ofwanna know what's happening. So
when I read the, you know,newspaper feeds, the , the eco
that I, I get in the morning, I, most of the stories, I just
(26:20):
want a kind of a sense of it,right ? Yep . So I'm reading it
at a level of , of , uh, of thegist of it. And in other cases,
it's really important for you.
Right ? So I'll give you anexample when 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
(26:43):
comprehension there is gonna bemuch deeper, right? Right .
You're gonna , you're gonnaspend a , a , a much more time
trying to get at the meaning ofit, if you will comprehend it.
Mm-Hmm. what,what comprehension is. It's the
interaction of what you bringinto that reading situation and
what you already know about it,and your motivation and purpose
(27:08):
to comprehend it.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
. That's
brilliant. That's brilliant. I
love it.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
One of my colleagues calls it a , uh, what's it
standard of coherence , uh, iswhat's your standard of
coherence? That is, how muchsense do you wanna make of this
? And it's not the sameon everything you read. That's
right. Right ? I mean , um,it's, it , most of life, it's
pretty superficial. 'cause weread so much on the internet
(27:33):
now, and most, and much ofthat's read to get the gist
out, right ? But in school,we're, we're trying to build an
understanding so that we learnsomething that we can later on
be able to apply. So we have toread it at a much deeper level.
So the understanding sometimescalled a mental model, the
mental model that you build isgonna be richer. Mm-Hmm.
(27:56):
. 'cause you, youwanna remember that later on.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
That's similar to listening comprehension though,
as well, right? Yes. Yep . Soyou very
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Similar listening comprehension
Speaker 2 (28:05):
. Yeah .
Yeah. That's great. I have ,um, a personal example that I
just had a big aha here. Sowhen I took my language
coursework and 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
and he now has expressive orbroke his aphasia. I'll tell
(28:29):
you what, I know a lot moreabout aphasia now than I did
from that college course whereI just sort of memorized the
definition. Yep .
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah . Right .
That's why I use example,because most people can relate
to that situation to wherethere is something you really
wanna understand. So you're,you're motivated and you also
have this higher standard thatyou're working for. Yeah. Right
? You're trying to build a muchmore complete understanding of
it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So in, 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, I hateto say the word levels of
(29:19):
comprehension 'cause that's notquite right, but you, you know
what I mean? Yeah ,
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah. I don't know .
I haven't thought too muchabout that. But I mean, there
are, there are situations whereif you talked about , uh,
purposes of reading varydepending upon what, what the
reading is for in, in class. Sofor example, if you go to
middle school and you're, youtalk about reading to write a
paper. Yep . Right ? That'sgonna require a different type
(29:45):
of thinking than it would toread a chapter because you're
gonna have a test on it thenext day. And that's something
we should point out to studentsthat what it is that they
should be doing in thosesituations to achieve that
purpose. Right? So if you'rewriting a paper, right , you're
gonna have multiple sources.
(30:06):
What are you gonna do first,right ? You're gonna look to
see if that's source you justfound you , you're gonna have
some idea of what your purposeis in the paper you're writing,
what its overall mission of itis so forth. Then you'll go
look at these papers and see ifthese papers fit into that
mission. Mm-Hmm.or whether that paper will
(30:28):
change the way you think aboutthat mission. You might alter
your idea of what you're , whatyou're writing. Those types of
reading does not necessarilyrequire building an extensive
middle model at that moment intime. You'll come back and do
that at a later point whenyou've kind of got your story
down, and then you can reallyget down in the nitty gritties
(30:50):
about the different sourcesthat, that you're using. Right
? That might be the way that Iwould approach it. Uh, teachers
can think about the way thatthey would explain it to a, a
middle school student that'sbeginning to write, you know,
where they have multiplesources. But in the other case,
if it is , uh, something youhave to study for the next day,
(31:11):
then you can talk about what'sgoing, what are they gonna have
to think about when readingthat chapter that's gonna make
them best prepared to answerthe typical types of questions
that are on exams related tothat.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Mm-Hmm .
. Mm-Hmm.
. Yeah. It makesme think about, as a teacher, I
, I taught mostly third grade,but I remember using a strategy
and now I'm, I gotta go backand 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,so read to find out, so
(31:49):
essentially look for a nuggetin this, in this page or pages
to find out this one thing,right? Yeah . So that's a type
of purpose for reading, right?
You
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Know, the , the , the , you know, the, the look
for the main idea gets such badpress sometimes, but sometimes
that's what one needs to do tobegin with, is try to figure
out what the passage is , isabout, but it's not near
enough. Then the next questionwas, what specifically is it
about? So it's about, let's sayit's about dolphins, right? And
(32:21):
the mm-Hmm . Ask the child thatWhat's about dolphins is what
the kid says, right ? But whatyou wanna know, what's
specifically is it aboutdolphins, right ? Is it about
their, their communication? Isit about their habitat , uh,
about , uh, what they eat theirlifecycle? Those are the ,
those are the types of thingsthat you would ask kids to
(32:42):
think about so that the nexttime they come to a passage
about bears, they will alsothink about what specifically
is it a is it about? And that'sa nice thing about, about doing
this within science orwhatever, whatever observations
you make about the habitat of ,uh, dolphins gonna be directly
(33:05):
relevant to habitat of a bear,even though one lives in water
and the other doesn't. Right?
They gotta eat. Mm-Hmm .
, they gotta ,uh, live somewhere. I know the
habitat of dolphins very much . Um , but, but it's ,
the vocabulary you use is quitesimilar from, from one context
to the other. It, it's thosetypes of strategies if you, if
(33:27):
you will , um, that , uh, youwould would want to think
about. You know, you mentionedthe strategies, and let me talk
a little bit about strategieshere, because they get , they
got , yeah , they've got a lotof attention and we, we didn't
really talk about knowledge,but I, if you wanna come back
and ask some questions aboutit, but, you know, the best
predictor of whether you'regonna understand something or
not is whether you already knowsomething about it. Yeah . Yeah
(33:50):
. And so we sometimes forgetthat in our instruction, and
maybe we'll come back and talkabout that in a minute, but
Speaker 2 (33:56):
We should. Yep . Yep .
Speaker 1 (33:57):
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 it particular way to pinupon your, your , uh, purpose.
But thinking is not a reallyeasy thing to do. I mean, we're
not, we're not biologicallypredisposed to think deeply.
(34:20):
, .
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Oh , thanks for saying that. I don't feel so
bad now,,
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You're not, because it thinking deeply allows you
only to think deeply. So , uh,you can't do much else when
you're thinking deeply like youmight think reading a book,
trying to figure out, you know,the, the storyline in it, you
know, why that person did that.
What's gonna happen? You know,you lose yourself in the world.
And , and that type of thinkingis not good when you're driving
(34:45):
your car around or , you know,doing other types of, of
things. Um , and , you know, inearlier times, you know,
hunting for food or whatever.
So we're, we're predestined orpredisposed to think at a much
more shallow level. So we haveto turn on that level of
thinking. And I always ask ,well, how do we get kids to do
that? Well, we can't tell 'em ,think more deeply. ,
(35:08):
right ? You're a third gradeteacher. You can imagine
telling your students, alright, now what I want you to do is
think more deeply about whatyou just read, right? Yeah .
, right ? So, how do wedo it? Well , we give them ways
to think more deeply about it.
So we ask them , you know,what's the main, what's the
main idea? And that , uh, canyou paraphrase what that
chapter said? Can you , uh,think back to what you read
(35:31):
earlier and think what thatparticular sentence means in
terms of that, you know, makean inference based upon
something earlier. Uh , can you, uh, uh, just simply monitor ,
please think about whetheryou're understanding it as you
go through. So all thosestrategies are , are good
things for emerging readers tothink about, but they're not
(35:54):
what good readers consciouslythink about while they're
reading. Theirs tend to be morespecific to the purpose and the
topic they're reading. Theytailor it much, much closer to
what they're trying to achievethere. I mean , uh, some of
it's unconscious simply 'causewe've read so much, right? So
(36:15):
we, we've got our strategies weuse to help us think . But some
of it is pretty conscious. Youknow, you're constantly
thinking, you know, when you'rereading something that's really
tough, do I really understandthis? Or how is this fitting
into the middle model that Ihave about this particular
topic? Right ? Hmm . I , I,when I'm writing a paper, I'm
(36:38):
thinking, when I read thisarticle, where does this fit
into what I'm saying? It , doesit go along with it? Does it
challenge it so forth? And thattype of thinking is dependent
upon what it is and what yourtask is. So as kids get more
sophisticated instruction andstrategies need to be more
(37:00):
specific to the topic and thepurpose of it. You know,
depending on whether they're ,they're studying for a test,
you know, trying to learn aboutthis particular subject matter
is gonna require , uh,something different than if
you're trying to understand anargument. If you're trying to
understand an argument, youhave to think about, well ,
(37:21):
what's, what's the premise?
What's the , the evidence tosupport that? What's their
bias? What's my bias? That typeof thing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah. So strategies in , so strategies are
important in service oflearning the content or the
purpose for the reading, right?
So ,
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Or yeah, enjoying too. We have to put in there,
you know, 'cause I'm, I'm, ohyeah . The strategy at night
when I'm trying to read areally tough book and trying to
figure out what's going onthere and so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So let's
come back to knowledge, becauseI've always 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, I would say
listening and readingcomprehension
Speaker 1 (38:25):
And , and movie comprehension too, right? So
that's, that's so , uh, I mean,because it , it , it's central
to the building of theunderstanding. It's, it's very
difficult to build anunderstanding if you don't have
any background knowledge. Right. 'cause to, to build a
meaningful , um, memory ofsomething that you can hold on
(38:47):
and use, you have to thinkabout it, right ? Mm-Hmm.
, one of myfavorite quotes is from Daniel
Willingham, where he said thatmemory is the residue of
thought. Mm . I love that . Ifyou wanna remember something,
you have to think about it. Yep. So if you don't know very
much information, how do youthink about it while you read
about it in the text? But theproblem is you can only get so
(39:11):
much of the information in thattext into your memory. Mm-Hmm .
. 'cause it'sgotta go through a system we
call working memory. Andworking memory is capacity
limited. You can only thinkabout a few things at a time,
right ? Yeah . And theadvantage to having background
knowledge is when you'rethinking about the new
information you can retrieveknowledge that you have that's
(39:34):
chunked into bigger bits ofinformation. So, so it doesn't
take up as much room, if youwill, in your working memory.
Hmm . And you can use that tohelp, help you make sense of
that incoming me , uh,information and build a bigger
memory. Hmm . It's not the casethat you could just go look it
(39:54):
up on the internet and thenthink about it deeply and
you'll have an understanding ofit. Right. There's just not
enough mental reserve to beable to build that meaning that
quickly. So it helpstremendously. Helps that you
have some knowledge about itbeforehand. That knowledge
gives you a place to putinformation. So when you read
(40:15):
about something, it gives you a, a storage for the
information. It's kind of likea cubby hole that you put the
mail in in an office. Mm-Hmm .
, it gives you aslip for that. New bits of
information fits into that,that old schema, if you will,
or understanding of aparticular topic. Some people
refer to that as mental Velcro.
I think it was Marilyn Adamswho said that in a , and it ,
(40:38):
it just sticks better if youalready, you already know it.
The , the other thing that itit does for you is, is having
knowledge makes you want moreknowledge. We generally are
more interested in something wealready have some bit of
informa, some knowledge aboutto begin with. And the more
expertise we get in it, themore likely we are to be
(40:58):
interested in it. And we'llcreate a higher standard of
coherence. We'll wanna get moreinformation. The other thing it
does is it , uh, helps us withinferencing. Oh, right . So the
authors seldom tell useverything we need to know to
read, to understand a text.
It'd be boring if they told usevery single detail that, that
(41:20):
they have. They have to assumethat the reader knows
something. But if the readerdoesn't know it, then they're
not gonna be able to fill inthe blanks of, of what they're
reading. And that inferencinggets a lot of attention. But
what people often miss about itis that inferencing, most
inferencing is automatic. Hmm .
(41:42):
It's not inferences that wehave to think about. It's
because our language systemworks such that soon as we read
or hear a word, the , theactivation within the middle
model spreads to all relatedwords. Hmm . Right . And it
spreads to related words basedupon how related they've been
(42:03):
in the past. Hmm . An example Iuse is when you hear the word
bank, it spreads to everythingrelated to money, but it also
spreads the river. Mm . Eventhough river is a subordinate
meaning of it. Yeah. The ideais, it's, that's why we're so
good at language comprehensionis all this spreading
(42:24):
activation happens immediatelybased upon the reader's
experience or the listener'sexperience with language.
Interesting. Right . Soinferencing is automatic most
of the time, but there arethose situations when it's not
automatic 'cause you have tothink about it. Right . You
have to read that text andthink, alright , how does that
(42:45):
go with that? Hmm . Right . Soif your listeners can bear a
visual representation of , it'smy favorite example, it's a
Larson cartoon where it's a ,uh, it's a inside of a pet
store and over on one side ofthe room is a cat with two peg
legs. And on the other side ofthe room is a bowl with a
(43:08):
piranha in it. And it says,piranha $29. Right . You look
at that image right away, youdon't necessarily get it. Yeah
. , but you've gotentrance. Right.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
And, and that's the way reading is. It takes a few
minutes for you to kind of, youknow, you know, Gary Larson's
gonna have something in therethat's kind of absurd .
So if you're a Larson fan, youlook for it. If you're reading,
you know, that text may be kindof related to this, but you
have to think about it. But theimportant thing about
(43:40):
inferencing is you still gottaknow it. Mm-Hmm .
, you still have to know that apiranha could eat a cat's foot.
Yeah. And a cat like put theirfoot in there. If you don't
know that all the inferencingstrategy training in the world
won't help you.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
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, and I'veoften asked people, I've done
the same thing with cartoons,like, look at this cartoon. But
my question to people usuallyis what background knowledge do
(44:16):
he need to have to understandthis? Right. But I've never
made the connection thatthey're also automatically
making inferences because theyhave the background knowledge
to be able to do that quickly.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah. It , it just depends on how, 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. Mm-Hmm . Why?
Because you want your readersto think about what they're
reading. So a a little lesscoherence in a text where
(44:50):
you're not putting every littlesentence together so that the
reader can follow it all theway through , um, is not very
interesting. And it doesn'ttend to be remembered as well
as if the text has a little bitof lack of coherence. That is
that the , that the inferencethat you need to make, you
don't learn about until alittle bit later in the
(45:11):
passage. Hmm . That gets peopleto think more about that
passage and in doing so,remember it better.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Hmm . Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
But you still have to have the knowledge to be
able to do that. You, you , uh,uh, you can't make an inference
without the knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah. And that goes back to what we were talking
about early in the episode, theimportance of what knowledge or
experiences kids bring to us inschool in kindergarten. Because
it feels like broad backgroundknowledge is pretty important
to this comprehension 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? Yeah.
That's,
Speaker 1 (46:01):
That's a great, great issue. I mean, I mean I
I've, I've thought about that.
Uh , a lot of people ask aboutthat, but before we run out of
time, I'll, I'll talk about itin the context of the core
knowledge you mentioned thatprogram. Well, that's just one
of a number of different, whatwe call content rich literacy
programs. And so what they dois they teach literacy in the
(46:22):
context of knowledge. It'sknowledge that's spread out
over long periods of time thatbuild on each other. So there's
no chicken and egg situationhere. '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
(46:42):
extract that information from atext or how to write about that
information or how to talkabout that information in a
dialogue. Yeah. So you teachkids to read by talking about
it, reading about it, watchingYouTube videos about it,
documentaries about it and soforth. So it it puts literacy
(47:04):
instruction in the context ofknowledge. Yeah . And that's
what's the real, I think,benefit of the narrow view of
reading this . What thenarrower view of reading would
suggest is that we teach kidsto decode words within English
language arts. After thatEnglish language arts is over.
(47:25):
What we then do is we teachcomprehension, I fluency
fluency a little bit probablyin English language arts too.
We, we teach it within thesubject matters. Mm-Hmm .
. So at the sametime, kids are learning their
comprehend. They're learningabout social studies, science,
history, whatever it might bein a way that builds from one
(47:47):
instructional period to anotherinstructional period that what
I was telling you about,learning about the habitat of
dolphins helps you learn aboutthe habitat of something else.
What helps you learn this. Andpeople that write those
curricula have thought aboutwhat's the best way to teach
this. Yeah. And what strange tome is we , it's the same
teacher in K through thirdgrade or whatever. Why would
(48:10):
that teacher have to thinkabout teaching that within
English language arts? Whydon't we just have the block of
, we would have to havecurricula that are better
designed for that. Right?
Mm-Hmm . Most of the curriculanow that are these content rich
curricula are ones that arebuilt for English language
(48:31):
arts. But there's no reason wecouldn't go the other way. And
the last thing I'll say thatthat's good for is that the
focus changes to the purposeschool. And that's learning.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah. I
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Mean, if , if you want to see where we should be
going or my opinion or where weshould be going that far , I
don't , sorry to be so feel sostrongly about this, but
Speaker 2 (48:52):
No, that's great.
Getting
Speaker 1 (48:54):
To be the age to where I could do that is that
the content rich literacyprograms put the focus on the
real purpose of school, andthat's to learn or to , and
reading to enjoy literacy. And,and that move us into the
science of learning as opposedto the science of reading. Now
it would incorporate thescience of reading within that,
but that , that fits back tothe, the idea about purpose.
(49:17):
Yeah . And so kids would belearning science at the same
time. They're learning how toread science and write about
science.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah. That's amazing. That's great. Um, we
forget about that in when we'reteaching reading that the
purpose of reading is to learnsomething well or enjoyment.
But yes, learning is animportant thing of going to
school, isn't it? . Yep. Well, this has been a
fascinating conversation. Ijust wonder if you have any
thoughts, messages, or anythingyou'd like to leave with our
(49:47):
listeners before we close out?
Speaker 1 (49:49):
I , I, I just, you know, suggest that we have to
think a little bit more deeply in general about
comprehension and startdeveloping some models that
will allow us to, to do that.
To, to go beyond kind of theskill-based approach to, to
reading comprehension and, youknow, focus on purpose. Why are
we wanting kids to comprehendthis particular text so forth?
(50:14):
And I think we do that we'llrealize that, that we might go
about teaching differentlydepending upon that purpose and
that particular topic.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Well, Dr. Hugh Katz, thank you for the work that
you're doing. And again, thankyou for joining us on today's
episode. We really appreciateit. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I appreciate, appreciate you had me. That was
fun. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That was Dr. Hugh Katz, professor of the School
of Communication Science andDisorders at Florida State
University. Please check outthe show notes to read more
from Dr. Katz on comprehensionand the simple view of reading.
Next time on the show, literacyspecialist and educational
consultant, Lori Josephson willdiscuss her new book, calling
(50:59):
All Neurons How Reading andSpelling Happen. She will also
tackle some of our listenermailbag questions, including
how to remediate upperelementary kids that lack
foundational reading skills.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I firmly believe that no matter how old you are,
you still need to learn thesame information. Let's, let's,
let's let that sink in. Ifsomeone does not, if a , if an
individual in middle school orhigh school does not have the
foundational skills, yourmemory is only so big
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That's coming up next time. And submit your own
science of reading questions byvisiting amplify.com/soar
mailbag by submitting aquestion. You could also win a
visit from me to your school.
And if you're enjoying ourreading reboot, please consider
telling a friend or colleagueabout the show. We're grateful
(51:50):
for any help spreading theword. You can join the
conversation about this episodein our Facebook discussion
group, science of Reading. TheCommunity Science of Reading.
The podcast is brought to youby Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert.
Thank you so much forlistening.
So if I was going to define comprehension, it , it ,
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.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading the podcast fromAmplify where the Science of
Reading lives. We are now onepisode four in our season long
reading, reboot, reexamining,and Building on Foundational
Literacy Concepts. We'vealready received some fantastic
questions from listeners likeyou, and we're excited to
(00:36):
explore them over the course ofthis season. I was just reading
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
(00:58):
your own questions. Today I'mthrilled to revisit the simple
view of reading with renownedliteracy expert Hugh Katz,
professor of the School ofCommunication Science and
Disorders at Florida StateUniversity. Dr. Katz will
explain why he wants us torethink our understanding of
comprehension, and togetherwe'll explore what this might
(01:19):
mean for instruction andassessment. Without further
ado, here's Dr. Hugh Katz. Dr.
Hugh Katz. Thank you so muchfor joining us on today's
episode. Thanks.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Great to be here .
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Be here . So , um, we always love to just ask our
guests to give our listenersjust a little bit about your
journey and maybe how you gotinto the world of literacy.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, sure. Uh, I was originally trained in
speech and language sciencesand , and , uh, with my first
job, I taught courses likeacoustics and phonetics, but I
did teach a language disordersclass. And , and in reading
that , uh, the readings forthat, I ran across a paper on
the phonological basis ofdyslexia. So I have to
(02:06):
recognize this is in the earlyeighties, and , uh, it really
hit home because I have afamily 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 ? Mm-Hmm .
they were talking about inthose papers were problems
(02:29):
that, that I'd experienced allmy life, but just didn't know
were relevant to, to readingand dyslexia. So I completely
changed my program of study.
Um, and although I remained ina communication disorders , uh,
programs, I , uh, readeverything I could about
dyslexia and actually ended upchanging universities so I
(02:49):
could teach , uh, coursesrelated to dyslexia and reading
and so forth. And , and thatkind of led to, I don't know ,
uh, 30 some odd years ofstudying , um, early
identification of dyslexia ,uh, treatment related to
dyslexia, it's relationship tolanguage disorders. I've always
been interested and so forth.
(03:10):
So it was, it was a , aroundabout way, but it , uh,
fortunately I ran into it earlyin my career is rather than,
than
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Rather than later, rather
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Than later. I had plenty time. But think about
it, over the years,
Speaker 2 (03:22):
That must have been quite , um, an aha moment both
for you personally andprofessionally. Wow. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah . Yeah . Yeah.
That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
It really was. I mean, it's one of the things ,
whoa, that's, that's theproblems that I have
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Speaker 1 (03:37):
And , and my, my brother and I , uh, he's a
little bit younger than I, wealways talk about the
difficulties we have and, andlaugh about it and so forth. So
Speaker 2 (03:45):
That's good . That's good that you could also , um,
introduce him to what, youknow, you both were
experiencing as, as both ascholar and a researcher.
That's very interesting. Um ,and glad that you can laugh
about it because Yeah .
Sometimes it could befrustrating, right,
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah . Yeah . It was at the time.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Oh, I bet. I bet.
Um, so we're gonna actuallytalk about comprehension. So
how did you make it from sortof this world of phonics and,
and and phenology speechlanguage pathology into this
world of comprehension?
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Yeah. Well, well, initially of course, we were
interested in word readingbecause that's a primary
problem of kids with dyslexia.
It's problems I have, it's aproblems most directly related
to phonological difficulties.
But , um, in following kidsover a period of time, they got
older, we had a, we had awonderful study , uh, done out
(04:36):
of Iowa where we identifiedkids with , uh, language and
problems at kindergarten andfollowed them all the way
through , uh, their twenties.
Hmm . And as part of that, Iwas interested in the word
reading aspects of those kids,but we ended up giving
comprehension measures. Okay.
And so that got me interestedinto what's involved in, in
(04:56):
comprehension. And I had a bitof a background being in, in
speech and language tounderstand , uh, about
comprehension. But , uh, did anumber of studies there and,
and spent probably the last 10years involved in some studies
related to comprehension, buta, a good deal of reading and
thinking about comprehensionand what problems might be
(05:18):
there, what instruction wewould do so forth.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Hmm . So given all that thinking that you've done
about this, what are you seeingthen that has been new to you?
Or some, some maybe majorproblems in, in terms of our
approach to comprehension?
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah. I mean, when I first started, I, I thought
about comprehension just like,just about everybody else does.
And that is that it was anaspect of reading that you
could measure with astandardized test and get some
estimate of ability, and thenyou could instruct or intervene
and find some change in thatability. Yeah. You know, over a
(05:56):
shorter period of time youcould see change in that
ability. But, you know, overthe last 10 or more years, I've
kind of recognized that that'snot really the case. That, that
it's not something that you canmeasure with a standardized
test in the same way that wemeasure other aspects of
reading. And it's not somethingthat's easily changed through
instruction or intervention.
(06:17):
It's, we think about changeover a longer period of time,
changing comprehension occursover the lifetime as opposed to
these other , uh, aspects of,of reading. And I think a major
insight for me was that we'vebeen thinking about
comprehension as a component ofreading, and that's what most
people do. And we've got thefive, the big five or the five
(06:40):
pillars of reading. Butcomprehension's is really not a
component of reading it. It ,it doesn't really share
anything. And when I saycomprehension, I wanna put
vocabulary in there. Okay. Theygot separated in the, in the
NRP report because they, therewas research separately on
comprehension vocabulary, but Ikind of think about those as,
(07:02):
as the same thing. And in the ,those two are not like the
other three aspects of the bigfive in the sense that, that
they're , they're not skillsthat you could train and then
apply across the board. Youknow, kind of like, I always
use examples, swimming. If youlearn how to swim, you can swim
in a , a lake, a pool, anocean, whatever. Uh, but that's
(07:26):
not the case for comprehension.
You , you can't learn tocomprehend and then be, and
take that out into, intodifferent situations for
different purposes. You canlearn some things that will
help you, but in general, it'sthe topic and the purpose that
are gonna impact how well youunderstand something. Hmm . And
(07:47):
recognizing that it , it , it'sa big shift in the way that we
think about, aboutcomprehension. It's, it's more
like listening comprehension orMm-Hmm .
comprehension. When you watch amovie, you're actually engaged
in a, in building anunderstanding of what's going
on in that movie. And that'snot all that different than
(08:07):
when you read a book. Right .
Uh , so if you've got anarrative 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 insome important differences. But
they are, they are similar forthe most part.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Hmm . You know, that, that makes me think of
one , one of my big ahas withcomprehension was, you know,
comprehension isn't, you eithercomprehend it or you don't
comprehend it. It's not blackand white either or, 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
outta that movie and talk aboutmaybe some really different
things or get some reallydifferent , um, 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 , um, that's not what I
(09:08):
got from that. Is that a littlebit what you're talking about?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
Yeah, kind of . I mean, I didn't bring in the
individual differences in thatway, but, but comprehension's a
combination of what the readerbrings into the situation of
reading and the book andpurpose that they're, that
they're reading the text andthe purpose of it. Same way
with what you walk into themovie theater with. Mm-Hmm.
(09:34):
know, visual images, whatever'sin the , uh, movie. You know,
the other, the other comparisonthat works even better is, is
listening comprehension.
Mm-Hmm.
listening comprehension are,are very similar in that , uh,
the listener brings in certainknowledge about the topic and
certain interests in the topic.
(09:55):
And that impacts how well theyunderstand or what their , in
your words, what, what , uh,type of understanding they have
about the, about the particulartext.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
So we're gonna jump into this understanding about
language comprehension in justa minute because it's so, it's
so related to the simple viewof reading, which we talk about
all the time. But before we gothere, can I ask you this
question? You, you made a pointthat you 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 phonicsfluency?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yes. Um , you know, initially when the NRP panel
got together, they were gonnareview the literature, talking
about advances in, ininstruction and reading. So
they were coming at , what doesthe research tell us about
that? Well, they divided the ,all that literature up into
alphabetics fluency and, andcomprehension. Mm-Hmm .
(10:51):
mind. It just so happens thatthe research that had been done
had either isolatedcomprehension by teaching
comprehension explicitly, orthe research had worked on text
comprehension primarily bytesting , uh, or 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,
it's unfortunate thatvocabulary gets divided out
from comprehension. 'cause it'scentral to comprehension. It's
part of what you need to haveto be able to understand a , a
(11:36):
text. But I , uh, always haveto say it's part of
comprehension. 'cause a bigfive of course, has it listed
as another area of reading.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Right. Yeah. I think there's an article that you
wrote about that, that I, thatI often use in presentations
about the unintendedconsequences of especially the,
you know, the five pillarimages that we always see in
presentations and professionaldevelopment that phonemic
awareness, phonics fluency,vocabulary comprehension, are
(12:06):
all sort of the same sizepillars, or they're all pillars
underneath this big , bigumbrella.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Yeah. And , and even , even in the big five, you can
sometimes see wherecomprehension's a little box at
the top of the infographic, youknow? Oh . But it does give the
impression that they're , thatthey're independent and you
could actually work on each ofthose five. And there is now ,
uh, legislation in 34 differentstates that have the pillars
(12:34):
of, of , uh, readinginstruction is mentioned
explicitly in there Mm-Hmm .
impression that teachers oughtto work on, on phonemic a
phonics fluency, vocabulary andcomprehension. And again, the
reason they're , they appear asindependent , uh, categories is
'cause the researchers that didthe review wanted to look at
(12:56):
the independent contributionsof it. They never suggested
that those things should bedone independently of each
other. We would work onphonological awareness in this
context of learning phonics andboth of those in the , in the
context of becoming morefluent. Mm . And we work on
vocabulary and comprehension atthe same time. Uh, I think we
(13:18):
could even tie co vocabularyand comprehension more tightly
together. You would never workon vocabulary without working
on its meaning within a contextthat you're trying to
understand.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And , um, and
another aha had, we recentlydid an episode with Dr. Sharon
Vaughn, and she says, readingcomprehension can't be taught
it's an outcome. And that, thatwas something that was a , an
aha for me too, because howmany teachers in the classroom
right now are their lessonplans are all about teaching
(13:53):
comprehension. Yeah . And amisunderstanding.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
And it's a goal, right? It's a goal. Yeah .
Child will comprehend better.
Two things wrong with that,you're not gonna be able to
measure that difference intraditional measures. And the
other is that , that it, ittakes , uh, uh, I think Robert
, uh, Padio said thatcomprehension is not a skill,
it's a condition you create.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Hmm . That's a good one. I always
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Like that. Right.
It's, it's, it's a conditionyou create by providing the,
the background knowledge, thelanguage skills , um, and , uh,
the , the strategies come intothat as well. But that, that
happens over time. And, andover time, you, you create ,
uh, mental models and languageabilities and thinking routines
(14:41):
that allow you to do it betterthan you did several years
earlier.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Yeah. 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 as 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. Sowhen you think about language
comprehension, what, what isthis idea of language
comprehension in this world ofreading proficiency?
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah. Let's talk about it within the, within the
framework of the simple view.
Like, like you just introduced. And most people don't
understand where the simpleview came from. It was Philip
Goff and , and Bill Tomer cameup with that , uh, I don't know
, 80, 19 86 . The reason theycame up with it, where they
were both interested in wordreading and the fact that word
(15:44):
reading was not getting enoughattention in reading
instruction. Okay. Some dejavu, right? Yeah .
so what they wanted to do wasto illustrate how important
those skills are that allow youto decode new words and read
words fluently. And so they, intheir model, what they did was
divide that portion of readingout. Okay . And they called it
(16:07):
decoding or word reading.
Mm-Hmm.
of reading. And they, theytalked about what was involved
in that and , and so forth.
Everything else got put underthe rubric of language
comprehension. So that iseverything involved in
comprehension after you takeout word reading. Right . And
(16:29):
I'll talk about what that mightbe and so forth. But it's, it's
not just language in thatsense. It's, it's everything
that a reader does beyondrecognizing the words. So it's
gonna be a very complex , uh,uh, phenomenon. And in a, a
paper I talked about a numberof years ago, wrote on the
simple view was that wasanother case of where we can
(16:50):
get a false impression. We canassume when we see those two
boxes, that languagecomprehension is similar to
decoding in terms of itscomplexity in mal malleability.
We know that it's not Yeah. Butwhen you see that presented
that way, it makes us thinkthat those two things are, you
know, are things that you couldaddress in intervention and or
(17:11):
instruction and actually makechange fairly quickly.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah. And , and they equally contribute to reading
comprehension over time, right?
Yeah . Yeah . Yeah .
Speaker 1 (17:21):
And so it , it , it's inter , one way of dealing
with that was a way that, thatmy colleague Alan Kamai and I
kind of entertained back in ,uh, uh, 2007, eight, something
like that, we said, alright ,we can solve this problem if we
call decoding reading. Andthat's all reading is, is that
(17:41):
everything else iscomprehension. And by doing
that, we can then think aboutother situations in which you
comprehend, like listening,watching a movie, so forth, and
talk about more broadly what'sall, what's all involved in
that. And Alan talked about itas a narrow view of reading.
(18:02):
Now, at the time we introducedit, we did not expect everybody
in the field of literacy to nowredefine reading is only word
reading
thought exercise that we wantedto have people think about.
But, but it actually is comingnow to where with the types of
assessments we're doing and thetypes of instruction we're
(18:23):
doing it , it's a morerealistic way to think about
what's involved in, in reading.
'cause we are, today, we have amuch broader view or beginning
to have a much broader view ofwhat's, what's involved in
comprehension. Hmm .
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Can you talk a little bit about that? What's
in , what all is involved incomprehension?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Well, let's talk about the language
component, because that's,that's the modifier of
comprehension. Great. Andthat's what, that's what they
chose to use. I mean, I know ,uh, uh, bill Tomer pretty well,
and I, I don't know if I everasked him why he called it
language comprehension. Uh, Ithink at one time it was
linguistic comprehension. Uh,and of course everybody through
(19:04):
listening comprehension inthere Yeah . And have used
those terms interchangeably.
They have, they , they can meandifferent things. But if we
talk about the language part ofit, the language language
refers to a system of , ofsymbols that we use to
communicate. Mm-Hmm .
sounds that we put together toform words and the words that
(19:25):
we order in particular wayaccording to syntax to make
meaningful sentences. And thenthere's language rules, how you
put those sentences together towrite a text , um, so forth and
written language, of course,you got the letters, the
letters go together throughwords, and then the words
similar way go together to formsentences and so forth. And the
(19:46):
sign language. But , uh, thatalso has a vocabulary and a
syntax to it. But if we justthink about the listening and,
and , uh, reading, the languageskills are gonna be imp
important. Right. So kids have, have begun developing that
from birth , um, on they're ,they're acquiring their
(20:07):
language skills. And that's whyI said that reading
intervention or readinginstruction starts at birth. It
doesn't start at first orsecond grade, because those
preschool years are reallycritical in language
development. That's where kidsare learning all the , the
vocabulary. They're learningabout the, the knowledge of the
world and everything else. Andso having rich input and rich
(20:30):
dialogue with parents andfriends is an important step in
instructing readingcomprehension. You might think
that's , that's where thecondition of reading
comprehension starts . Yeah . Iknow Susan Newman's has always
been big on this . And , and itdoesn't get as much attention
as, as it needs to in , in ,uh, you know, our concerns
(20:51):
about why kids are doing sopoor and reading comprehension.
Well, it goes back a lotearlier than phonics and, and
readings instruction . Hmm . Sothere's that part, but then
when you get near school andyou start engaging in books,
you're learning a slightlydifferent language than what
parents or , or siblings might,or friends might interact with
(21:11):
in their earlier grades . Weuse a slightly different
language to write about. Right? Mm-Hmm .
the reason we do is we have tobe much more specific because
the in spoken language, the ,the , uh, speaker can generally
see the audience and can changetheir vocabulary or the way
that they're saying it to helpthe listener in reading
(21:33):
comprehension, that's notavailable. So as writers, we
tend to be much more specific.
We use vocabulary that isspecific to the particular
meaning we have in mind. Whenthere's a number of different
synonyms that we could possiblyuse. We choose the one that's
closer to the one meaning thatwe have in mind, and we pack
(21:54):
our sentences with, withgrammar that helps explain the
specific person. We're talkingabout the conditions under
which that person did whateverthey did. And those add to
clauses being added tosentences. And so kids have to
start to get experience withthe language or what's called
(22:15):
academic language. And, andthat comes from, from just
reading more. Uh, and when youget to school, it also comes
from writing more. Writingreally helps you with the
syntax of , of academic syntax.
And then , uh, the , uh, textis different than a spoken
(22:35):
dialogue. Even a lecture isgonna be somewhat different
than a, than a chapter on aparticular topic. Mm-Hmm.
grammar that occurs in a bookis the same basic story grammar
that I would use if I wastelling you a story orally.
Okay. Right ? Mm-Hmm.
(22:59):
language beyond the , thesentence, if you will. And so
you need to have that knowledgeto be able to understand text,
or at least you have to have acertain level of that to get
into whatever it is you're,you're , you're reading. And
what we we see is that somekids have difficulty learning
(23:20):
language. They're, they're slowto learn vocabulary. They , uh,
syntax trips 'em up. And that'soften the reason that they have
comprehension problems. Thosekids are referred to as having
a , a , uh, developmentallanguage impairment. Mm-Hmm.
disorders. And people are, arebecoming just as interested in
(23:44):
, uh, identifying those kidsearly on is they are
identifying kids with dyslexia.
Right. Because the impact ofhaving DLD is worse than having
dyslexia because DLD is highlyassociated with dyslexia, but
it's also associated withhaving difficulties
understanding what you'rereading. Got
Speaker 2 (24:05):
It.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So there's good reason to pay more attention to
it.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
So I'm gonna track back a little bit and , um, 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, it ,
it's quite broad sometimes ,um, even with monolingual
learners, right. So, so we havea , a really big impact of what
happens before kids come toschool. I think that's what I
heard you say. And I, I thinkkindergarten and teachers can
really relate to that. I nevertaught kindergarten, thank
(24:51):
goodness, but I can relate tothat one. The other thing that
I think I heard you say isthere's a difference in the
modes of language or theregisters, maybe we wanna call
it, of what you experienceoutside of schooling. And what
then you have to learn andexperience when you come to
school in the process ofschooling. So academic language
(25:11):
is different than the kind oflanguage that kids use outside
the schooling environment. DidI hear those two things
correctly? Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yes . Very true. Yep .
Speaker 2 (25:20):
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?
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Yeah. I mean, we can, we can move into there.
So, so if I was going to definecomprehension, is it , it ,
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. Some people say that the
purpose of reading iscomprehension. It's not the
purpose of reading. The purposeof reading is whatever you're
(25:57):
comprehending for. Ah . Sosometimes all you want to do is
find a fact within the textthat you're reading. Right? You
just want one little bit ofanother time. All you want is
the gist. You all only kind ofwanna know what's happening. So
when I read the, you know,newspaper feeds, the , the eco
that I, I get in the morning, I, most of the stories, I just
(26:20):
want a kind of a sense of it,right ? Yep . So I'm reading it
at a level of , of , uh, of thegist of it. And in other cases,
it's really important for you.
Right ? So I'll give you anexample when 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
(26:43):
comprehension there is gonna bemuch deeper, right? Right .
You're gonna , you're gonnaspend a , a , a much more time
trying to get at the meaning ofit, if you will comprehend it.
Mm-Hmm.
interaction of what you bringinto that reading situation and
what you already know about it,and your motivation and purpose
(27:08):
to comprehend it.
Speaker 2 (27:10):
love it.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
One of my colleagues calls it a , uh, what's it
standard of coherence , uh, iswhat's your standard of
coherence? That is, how muchsense do you wanna make of this
right. Right ? I mean , um,it's, it , most of life, it's
pretty superficial. 'cause weread so much on the internet
(27:33):
now, and most, and much ofthat's read to get the gist
out, right ? But in school,we're, we're trying to build an
understanding so that we learnsomething that we can later on
be able to apply. So we have toread it at a much deeper level.
So the understanding sometimescalled a mental model, the
mental model that you build isgonna be richer. Mm-Hmm.
(27:56):
Speaker 2 (28:00):
That's similar to listening comprehension though,
as well, right? Yes. Yep . Soyou very
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Similar listening comprehension
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yeah. That's great. I have ,um, a personal example that I
just had a big aha here. Sowhen I took my language
coursework and 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
and he now has expressive orbroke his aphasia. I'll tell
(28:29):
you what, I know a lot moreabout aphasia now than I did
from that college course whereI just sort of memorized the
definition. Yep .
Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah . Right .
That's why I use example,because most people can relate
to that situation to wherethere is something you really
wanna understand. So you're,you're motivated and you also
have this higher standard thatyou're working for. Yeah. Right
? You're trying to build a muchmore complete understanding of
it.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So in, 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, I hateto say the word levels of
(29:19):
comprehension 'cause that's notquite right, but you, you know
what I mean? Yeah ,
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah. I don't know .
I haven't thought too muchabout that. But I mean, there
are, there are situations whereif you talked about , uh,
purposes of reading varydepending upon what, what the
reading is for in, in class. Sofor example, if you go to
middle school and you're, youtalk about reading to write a
paper. Yep . Right ? That'sgonna require a different type
(29:45):
of thinking than it would toread a chapter because you're
gonna have a test on it thenext day. And that's something
we should point out to studentsthat what it is that they
should be doing in thosesituations to achieve that
purpose. Right? So if you'rewriting a paper, right , you're
gonna have multiple sources.
(30:06):
What are you gonna do first,right ? You're gonna look to
see if that's source you justfound you , you're gonna have
some idea of what your purposeis in the paper you're writing,
what its overall mission of itis so forth. Then you'll go
look at these papers and see ifthese papers fit into that
mission. Mm-Hmm.
(30:28):
change the way you think aboutthat mission. You might alter
your idea of what you're , whatyou're writing. Those types of
reading does not necessarilyrequire building an extensive
middle model at that moment intime. You'll come back and do
that at a later point whenyou've kind of got your story
down, and then you can reallyget down in the nitty gritties
(30:50):
about the different sourcesthat, that you're using. Right
? That might be the way that Iwould approach it. Uh, teachers
can think about the way thatthey would explain it to a, a
middle school student that'sbeginning to write, you know,
where they have multiplesources. But in the other case,
if it is , uh, something youhave to study for the next day,
(31:11):
then you can talk about what'sgoing, what are they gonna have
to think about when readingthat chapter that's gonna make
them best prepared to answerthe typical types of questions
that are on exams related tothat.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Mm-Hmm .
, I taught mostly third grade,but I remember using a strategy
and now I'm, I gotta go backand I'm questioning myself
whether it was right or not,but I guess it doesn't matter
anymore. Those kids are grownand gone. Right?
already ruined them. No, justkidding. Anyway, we used to use
a strategy to read this page,so read to find out, so
(31:49):
essentially look for a nuggetin this, in this page or pages
to find out this one thing,right? Yeah . So that's a type
of purpose for reading, right?
You
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Know, the , the , the , you know, the, the look
for the main idea gets such badpress sometimes, but sometimes
that's what one needs to do tobegin with, is try to figure
out what the passage is , isabout, but it's not near
enough. Then the next questionwas, what specifically is it
about? So it's about, let's sayit's about dolphins, right? And
(32:21):
the mm-Hmm . Ask the child thatWhat's about dolphins is what
the kid says, right ? But whatyou wanna know, what's
specifically is it aboutdolphins, right ? Is it about
their, their communication? Isit about their habitat , uh,
about , uh, what they eat theirlifecycle? Those are the ,
those are the types of thingsthat you would ask kids to
(32:42):
think about so that the nexttime they come to a passage
about bears, they will alsothink about what specifically
is it a is it about? And that'sa nice thing about, about doing
this within science orwhatever, whatever observations
you make about the habitat of ,uh, dolphins gonna be directly
(33:05):
relevant to habitat of a bear,even though one lives in water
and the other doesn't. Right?
They gotta eat. Mm-Hmm .
habitat of dolphins very much
the vocabulary you use is quitesimilar from, from one context
to the other. It, it's thosetypes of strategies if you, if
(33:27):
you will , um, that , uh, youwould would want to think
about. You know, you mentionedthe strategies, and let me talk
a little bit about strategieshere, because they get , they
got , yeah , they've got a lotof attention and we, we didn't
really talk about knowledge,but I, if you wanna come back
and ask some questions aboutit, but, you know, the best
predictor of whether you'regonna understand something or
not is whether you already knowsomething about it. Yeah . Yeah
(33:50):
. And so we sometimes forgetthat in our instruction, and
maybe we'll come back and talkabout that in a minute, but
Speaker 2 (33:56):
We should. Yep . Yep .
Speaker 1 (33:57):
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 it particular way to pinupon your, your , uh, purpose.
But thinking is not a reallyeasy thing to do. I mean, we're
not, we're not biologicallypredisposed to think deeply.
(34:20):
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Oh , thanks for saying that. I don't feel so
bad now,
Speaker 1 (34:24):
You're not, because it thinking deeply allows you
only to think deeply. So , uh,you can't do much else when
you're thinking deeply like youmight think reading a book,
trying to figure out, you know,the, the storyline in it, you
know, why that person did that.
What's gonna happen? You know,you lose yourself in the world.
And , and that type of thinkingis not good when you're driving
(34:45):
your car around or , you know,doing other types of, of
things. Um , and , you know, inearlier times, you know,
hunting for food or whatever.
So we're, we're predestined orpredisposed to think at a much
more shallow level. So we haveto turn on that level of
thinking. And I always ask ,well, how do we get kids to do
that? Well, we can't tell 'em ,think more deeply.
(35:08):
right ? You're a third gradeteacher. You can imagine
telling your students, alright, now what I want you to do is
think more deeply about whatyou just read, right? Yeah .
to think more deeply about it.
So we ask them , you know,what's the main, what's the
main idea? And that , uh, canyou paraphrase what that
chapter said? Can you , uh,think back to what you read
(35:31):
earlier and think what thatparticular sentence means in
terms of that, you know, makean inference based upon
something earlier. Uh , can you, uh, uh, just simply monitor ,
please think about whetheryou're understanding it as you
go through. So all thosestrategies are , are good
things for emerging readers tothink about, but they're not
(35:54):
what good readers consciouslythink about while they're
reading. Theirs tend to be morespecific to the purpose and the
topic they're reading. Theytailor it much, much closer to
what they're trying to achievethere. I mean , uh, some of
it's unconscious simply 'causewe've read so much, right? So
(36:15):
we, we've got our strategies weuse to help us think . But some
of it is pretty conscious. Youknow, you're constantly
thinking, you know, when you'rereading something that's really
tough, do I really understandthis? Or how is this fitting
into the middle model that Ihave about this particular
topic? Right ? Hmm . I , I,when I'm writing a paper, I'm
(36:38):
thinking, when I read thisarticle, where does this fit
into what I'm saying? It , doesit go along with it? Does it
challenge it so forth? And thattype of thinking is dependent
upon what it is and what yourtask is. So as kids get more
sophisticated instruction andstrategies need to be more
(37:00):
specific to the topic and thepurpose of it. You know,
depending on whether they're ,they're studying for a test,
you know, trying to learn aboutthis particular subject matter
is gonna require , uh,something different than if
you're trying to understand anargument. If you're trying to
understand an argument, youhave to think about, well ,
(37:21):
what's, what's the premise?
What's the , the evidence tosupport that? What's their
bias? What's my bias? That typeof thing.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah. So strategies in , so strategies are
important in service oflearning the content or the
purpose for the reading, right?
So ,
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Or yeah, enjoying too. We have to put in there,
you know, 'cause I'm, I'm, ohyeah . The strategy at night
when I'm trying to read areally tough book and trying to
figure out what's going onthere and so forth. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:50):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So let's
come back to knowledge, becauseI've always 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, I would say
listening and readingcomprehension
Speaker 1 (38:25):
And , and movie comprehension too, right? So
that's, that's so , uh, I mean,because it , it , it's central
to the building of theunderstanding. It's, it's very
difficult to build anunderstanding if you don't have
any background knowledge. Right. 'cause to, to build a
meaningful , um, memory ofsomething that you can hold on
(38:47):
and use, you have to thinkabout it, right ? Mm-Hmm.
Willingham, where he said thatmemory is the residue of
thought. Mm . I love that . Ifyou wanna remember something,
you have to think about it. Yep. So if you don't know very
much information, how do youthink about it while you read
about it in the text? But theproblem is you can only get so
(39:11):
much of the information in thattext into your memory. Mm-Hmm .
call working memory. Andworking memory is capacity
limited. You can only thinkabout a few things at a time,
right ? Yeah . And theadvantage to having background
knowledge is when you'rethinking about the new
information you can retrieveknowledge that you have that's
(39:34):
chunked into bigger bits ofinformation. So, so it doesn't
take up as much room, if youwill, in your working memory.
Hmm . And you can use that tohelp, help you make sense of
that incoming me , uh,information and build a bigger
memory. Hmm . It's not the casethat you could just go look it
(39:54):
up on the internet and thenthink about it deeply and
you'll have an understanding ofit. Right. There's just not
enough mental reserve to beable to build that meaning that
quickly. So it helpstremendously. Helps that you
have some knowledge about itbeforehand. That knowledge
gives you a place to putinformation. So when you read
(40:15):
about something, it gives you a, a storage for the
information. It's kind of likea cubby hole that you put the
mail in in an office. Mm-Hmm .
information fits into that,that old schema, if you will,
or understanding of aparticular topic. Some people
refer to that as mental Velcro.
I think it was Marilyn Adamswho said that in a , and it ,
(40:38):
it just sticks better if youalready, you already know it.
The , the other thing that itit does for you is, is having
knowledge makes you want moreknowledge. We generally are
more interested in something wealready have some bit of
informa, some knowledge aboutto begin with. And the more
expertise we get in it, themore likely we are to be
(40:58):
interested in it. And we'llcreate a higher standard of
coherence. We'll wanna get moreinformation. The other thing it
does is it , uh, helps us withinferencing. Oh, right . So the
authors seldom tell useverything we need to know to
read, to understand a text.
It'd be boring if they told usevery single detail that, that
(41:20):
they have. They have to assumethat the reader knows
something. But if the readerdoesn't know it, then they're
not gonna be able to fill inthe blanks of, of what they're
reading. And that inferencinggets a lot of attention. But
what people often miss about itis that inferencing, most
inferencing is automatic. Hmm .
(41:42):
It's not inferences that wehave to think about. It's
because our language systemworks such that soon as we read
or hear a word, the , theactivation within the middle
model spreads to all relatedwords. Hmm . Right . And it
spreads to related words basedupon how related they've been
(42:03):
in the past. Hmm . An example Iuse is when you hear the word
bank, it spreads to everythingrelated to money, but it also
spreads the river. Mm . Eventhough river is a subordinate
meaning of it. Yeah. The ideais, it's, that's why we're so
good at language comprehensionis all this spreading
(42:24):
activation happens immediatelybased upon the reader's
experience or the listener'sexperience with language.
Interesting. Right . Soinferencing is automatic most
of the time, but there arethose situations when it's not
automatic 'cause you have tothink about it. Right . You
have to read that text andthink, alright , how does that
(42:45):
go with that? Hmm . Right . Soif your listeners can bear a
visual representation of , it'smy favorite example, it's a
Larson cartoon where it's a ,uh, it's a inside of a pet
store and over on one side ofthe room is a cat with two peg
legs. And on the other side ofthe room is a bowl with a
(43:08):
piranha in it. And it says,piranha $29. Right . You look
at that image right away, youdon't necessarily get it. Yeah
.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Right.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
And, and that's the way reading is. It takes a few
minutes for you to kind of, youknow, you know, Gary Larson's
gonna have something in therethat's kind of absurd
So if you're a Larson fan, youlook for it. If you're reading,
you know, that text may be kindof related to this, but you
have to think about it. But theimportant thing about
(43:40):
inferencing is you still gottaknow it. Mm-Hmm .
, you still have to know that apiranha could eat a cat's foot.
Yeah. And a cat like put theirfoot in there. If you don't
know that all the inferencingstrategy training in the world
won't help you.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
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, and I'veoften asked people, I've done
the same thing with cartoons,like, look at this cartoon. But
my question to people usuallyis what background knowledge do
(44:16):
he need to have to understandthis? Right. But I've never
made the connection thatthey're also automatically
making inferences because theyhave the background knowledge
to be able to do that quickly.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah. It , it just depends on how, 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. Mm-Hmm . Why?
Because you want your readersto think about what they're
reading. So a a little lesscoherence in a text where
(44:50):
you're not putting every littlesentence together so that the
reader can follow it all theway through , um, is not very
interesting. And it doesn'ttend to be remembered as well
as if the text has a little bitof lack of coherence. That is
that the , that the inferencethat you need to make, you
don't learn about until alittle bit later in the
(45:11):
passage. Hmm . That gets peopleto think more about that
passage and in doing so,remember it better.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
Hmm . Yeah.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
But you still have to have the knowledge to be
able to do that. You, you , uh,uh, you can't make an inference
without the knowledge.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Yeah. And that goes back to what we were talking
about early in the episode, theimportance of what knowledge or
experiences kids bring to us inschool in kindergarten. Because
it feels like broad backgroundknowledge is pretty important
to this comprehension 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? Yeah.
That's,
Speaker 1 (46:01):
That's a great, great issue. I mean, I mean I
I've, I've thought about that.
Uh , a lot of people ask aboutthat, but before we run out of
time, I'll, I'll talk about itin the context of the core
knowledge you mentioned thatprogram. Well, that's just one
of a number of different, whatwe call content rich literacy
programs. And so what they dois they teach literacy in the
(46:22):
context of knowledge. It'sknowledge that's spread out
over long periods of time thatbuild on each other. So there's
no chicken and egg situationhere. '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
(46:42):
extract that information from atext or how to write about that
information or how to talkabout that information in a
dialogue. Yeah. So you teachkids to read by talking about
it, reading about it, watchingYouTube videos about it,
documentaries about it and soforth. So it it puts literacy
(47:04):
instruction in the context ofknowledge. Yeah . And that's
what's the real, I think,benefit of the narrow view of
reading this . What thenarrower view of reading would
suggest is that we teach kidsto decode words within English
language arts. After thatEnglish language arts is over.
(47:25):
What we then do is we teachcomprehension, I fluency
fluency a little bit probablyin English language arts too.
We, we teach it within thesubject matters. Mm-Hmm .
comprehend. They're learningabout social studies, science,
history, whatever it might bein a way that builds from one
(47:47):
instructional period to anotherinstructional period that what
I was telling you about,learning about the habitat of
dolphins helps you learn aboutthe habitat of something else.
What helps you learn this. Andpeople that write those
curricula have thought aboutwhat's the best way to teach
this. Yeah. And what strange tome is we , it's the same
teacher in K through thirdgrade or whatever. Why would
(48:10):
that teacher have to thinkabout teaching that within
English language arts? Whydon't we just have the block of
, we would have to havecurricula that are better
designed for that. Right?
Mm-Hmm . Most of the curriculanow that are these content rich
curricula are ones that arebuilt for English language
(48:31):
arts. But there's no reason wecouldn't go the other way. And
the last thing I'll say thatthat's good for is that the
focus changes to the purposeschool. And that's learning.
Speaker 2 (48:42):
Yeah. I
Speaker 1 (48:43):
Mean, if , if you want to see where we should be
going or my opinion or where weshould be going that far , I
don't , sorry to be so feel sostrongly about this, but
Speaker 2 (48:52):
No, that's great.
Getting
Speaker 1 (48:54):
To be the age to where I could do that is that
the content rich literacyprograms put the focus on the
real purpose of school, andthat's to learn or to , and
reading to enjoy literacy. And,and that move us into the
science of learning as opposedto the science of reading. Now
it would incorporate thescience of reading within that,
but that , that fits back tothe, the idea about purpose.
(49:17):
Yeah . And so kids would belearning science at the same
time. They're learning how toread science and write about
science.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah. That's amazing. That's great. Um, we
forget about that in when we'reteaching reading that the
purpose of reading is to learnsomething well or enjoyment.
But yes, learning is animportant thing of going to
school, isn't it?
fascinating conversation. Ijust wonder if you have any
thoughts, messages, or anythingyou'd like to leave with our
(49:47):
listeners before we close out?
Speaker 1 (49:49):
I , I, I just, you know, suggest that we have to
think a little bit more deeply
comprehension and startdeveloping some models that
will allow us to, to do that.
To, to go beyond kind of theskill-based approach to, to
reading comprehension and, youknow, focus on purpose. Why are
we wanting kids to comprehendthis particular text so forth?
(50:14):
And I think we do that we'llrealize that, that we might go
about teaching differentlydepending upon that purpose and
that particular topic.
Speaker 2 (50:26):
Well, Dr. Hugh Katz, thank you for the work that
you're doing. And again, thankyou for joining us on today's
episode. We really appreciateit. Yeah,
Speaker 1 (50:33):
I appreciate, appreciate you had me. That was
fun. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
That was Dr. Hugh Katz, professor of the School
of Communication Science andDisorders at Florida State
University. Please check outthe show notes to read more
from Dr. Katz on comprehensionand the simple view of reading.
Next time on the show, literacyspecialist and educational
consultant, Lori Josephson willdiscuss her new book, calling
(50:59):
All Neurons How Reading andSpelling Happen. She will also
tackle some of our listenermailbag questions, including
how to remediate upperelementary kids that lack
foundational reading skills.
Speaker 3 (51:12):
I firmly believe that no matter how old you are,
you still need to learn thesame information. Let's, let's,
let's let that sink in. Ifsomeone does not, if a , if an
individual in middle school orhigh school does not have the
foundational skills, yourmemory is only so big
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That's coming up next time. And submit your own
science of reading questions byvisiting amplify.com/soar
mailbag by submitting aquestion. You could also win a
visit from me to your school.
And if you're enjoying ourreading reboot, please consider
telling a friend or colleagueabout the show. We're grateful
(51:50):
for any help spreading theword. You can join the
conversation about this episodein our Facebook discussion
group, science of Reading. TheCommunity Science of Reading.
The podcast is brought to youby Amplify. I'm Susan Lambert.
Thank you so much forlistening.
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