The 4 Most Common Reasons for Breakdowns in Comprehension
“Reading words without understanding is a string of meaningless noise.”
– Don Holdaway
The ultimate goal of reading is to make meaning or glean information from text to comprehend what has been read. For some students, reaching this level of the reading process can be quite difficult. It is important to understand the underlying causes of breakdowns in comprehension.
The 4 Most Common Reasons for Breakdowns in Comprehension
1 - Weak Decoding Skills
When a student is laboring over the process of decoding words, there simply isn’t the opportunity to begin understanding what is being read. Only once the student is able to read fluently, with word recognition being an automatic process, will they have the ability to focus their energy on understanding what the words are saying.
Improving decoding skills, however, is not enough to improve students’ comprehension abilities. While decoding is a big piece of the puzzle, understanding a text requires much more than just being able to read the words.
2 - Limited Background Knowledge
Students may lack knowledge of the concept being taught or lack experiences that help them understand the subject matter. It is a natural progression of reading strategies that are taught in our classrooms, as students progress from learning how to read, they move into the process of reading to learn. However, if students are still struggling with learning how to read they have likely missed out or not tapped into this instruction as it was being delivered in their classrooms.
If a student is struggling with cementing their sound-symbol knowledge, for example, they aren’t ready to understand instruction about how stories work or the difference between non-fiction and fiction text features. They are still grappling with the foundational pieces of reading and have missed out on this instruction. They may also be missing key instructional pieces presented in classes like history or English that they are expected to know later on. I often feel like our dyslexic or struggling readers can easily get lost in the shuffle or left behind as the class progresses through these stages of reading development and through class material.
3 - Inadequate Vocabulary Knowledge
Comprehension can be hindered if students do not understand the vocabulary or meaning of words in a text. This can relate directly to a lack of exposure to vocabulary words in print. It has often been my observation that dyslexic students possess a stronger spoken vocabulary than written vocabulary. While they may be able to use higher-level words in their day-to-day conversation, these words often go unrecognizable in texts due to the difficulty associated with decoding or due to the level of books these students can access.
Teachers will also note that dyslexic students shy away from using advanced vocabulary (even if it is part of their spoken vocabulary) in writing. This is due to the fact that spelling advanced vocabulary words is intimidating to a student who struggles with encoding or is dyslexic. They will instead opt to spell simpler words that are easier to spell or they have memorized.
4 - Poorly Developed Comprehension Strategies
Students may not have mastered strategies for monitoring their reading or understanding. This is another area that was likely out of reach for our struggling readers as it was being taught in their classrooms. These comprehension strategies are taught and then applied in texts. If a student is struggling with the process of decoding and reading, they are unable to practice or apply the comprehension strategy being taught, as they must first be able to simply and automatically read the words. This is rarely due to a lack of instruction and more because at-risk students aren’t able to tap into this instruction or access it as it is being presented.
Check out our blog: What Students Need for Effective Comprehension and Writing.
If you have a student who is struggling with comprehension, it is important to drill down further into their skill set to identify what the underlying cause of this breakdown might be. Once you have identified the root cause of their difficulties, you will be better able to target your instruction to meet their needs.
You can download this resource to help you begin to put together thoughts on this for parent-teacher conferences. We have taken the different breakdowns and made them into a checklist so you can easily narrow down your students' areas of struggle.
As you go through the checklist, it is important that you have examples and data to support what you are saying. For example, if you are going to check the box in the "Weak Decoding Skills" category that says "they are reading more than 5 words inaccurately in a paragraph" you should have some kind of data to support this.
If you are interested in learning how we incorporate data tracking and comprehension skills development in our reading intervention - we’d love to check out the 5CCL Activity Library. This library has tons of activities (and data tracking tools!) that you can use to target comprehension and the other core components of literacy. Click below to learn more!