The strands of skilled reading
· 2 min read
When a student struggles to understand a passage, the cause could be decoding, vocabulary, background knowledge or several things at once. Research on reading helps separate those strands.
What the research found
- Two strands, woven together. Scarborough described skilled reading as the intertwining of word recognition and language comprehension, with comprehension drawing on background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge.
- What you know shapes what you understand. Recht and Leslie found that junior high students who knew more about a topic recalled and summarized a passage about it better, whether they were stronger or weaker readers.
These studies are about how students learn to read, not about SubjectPath.
Why it matters for diagnosis
“Below grade level in reading” doesn’t say which strand is weak. Two students with the same score can need very different help: one with word recognition, another with the vocabulary or background knowledge a text assumes.
How SubjectPath will apply this idea
The ELA & Literacy Path is coming soon. It will be built on the Common Core English Language Arts and Literacy standards, mapped as a graph of which skills build on which, with answer choices written to reveal specific misconceptions, so practice can start where understanding breaks down.
Two readers, one score
Picture two students who get the same score on a reading test. One reads slowly and stumbles over unfamiliar words, so word recognition is getting in the way. The other reads fluently but knows little about the passage’s topic, so the meaning doesn’t come together. They need very different help, and a single score doesn’t say which is which.
Why background knowledge belongs in the picture
Recht and Leslie found that students who knew more about a topic recalled and summarized a passage about it better, whether they were stronger or weaker readers. A reading diagnostic that ignores background knowledge can mistake a knowledge gap for a reading gap.
Sources
- Scarborough, H. S. (2001). Connecting early language and literacy to later reading (dis)abilities: Evidence, theory, and practice. In S. B. Neuman & D. K. Dickinson (Eds.), Handbook of early literacy research (pp. 97–110). Guilford Press.
- Recht, D. R., & Leslie, L. (1988). Effect of prior knowledge on good and poor readers’ memory of text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80(1), 16–20.