The reading that resonated with me was ‘The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in reading Comprehension Strategies’ because of Willingham’s approach the topic from a cognitive science perspective (Willingham, 2006). The cognitive framework incorporates interdisciplinary data from philosophy, neuroscience, anthropology, linguistics, and psychology to produce the most comprehensive instruction to teach students how to read. When readers select a book out of class and start reading the comprehension process becomes an individual task (Rasinski et al., 2011). Personal reading give pupils a chance to assess their own methods of enabling reading comprehension. To create a solution, the author sources information from multiple studies that explore a variety of teaching techniques with the objective of drawing the best instruction method. Through evaluation and application of multi-disciplinary approaches in the instruction process, students optimally achieve reading comprehension from prior instruction about reading strategies.
According to Willingham, the instructor need to not only identify and select existing strategies, but help the students to decode these methods (Willingham, 2006). I agree that pure strategy application indirectly affects the level of reading comprehension. Instead of focusing on the reading ability, instructors should assess the listening ability because these two skills complement each other. The correlation between reading, speaking, and listening enables learners to connect already known words to the process of comprehension (Rasinski, 2012). So teachers ask direct questions along the way as peers would in an informal conversation so as to evaluate the existing skills of the students. The teacher should not continue if they feel that the learner is lost in the words. Strategies like paraphrasing by the author is not physically possible therefore forcing the reader innovate a strategy for understanding the meaning of the words (Crovitz & Miller, 2008). Students that have undergone comprehension training apply background knowledge to infer meaning and get the connection between the sentences.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The concept of proficiency level plays a significant role in determining the effectiveness of comprehension strategies. The reader’s background on word knowledge makes them able to connect vocabularies to meaning and in the end comprehension. Willingham uses the situation model to explain how the text base alone cannot enable comprehension during the reading process (Willingham, 2006). According to Bromley, students brainstorm to relate words to another so as to increase their vocabulary and understanding (Bromley, 2007). However, interrelating sentences within a passage makes it easier for readers to get ideas that lead to comprehension. In the end, the reader can fully understand the concept that the author brings forward. Teachers that build the knowledge of their students achieve the best results because students apply the correlation of ideas into reality and can understand multiple readings.
Willingham provides the foundation of applying correlations as monitoring the students’ comprehension, creating a relationship between sentences, and relating the ideas into what the learner already knows (Wllingham, 2006). Combining clarification, predicting meanings, raising questions, and summarization employs the multiple strategy instruction approach. Consistency is important in comprehension strategy application during instruction (Rasinski et al., 2008). This is because different leaners possess different proficiency levels and the development of the comprehension ability may take more time for delayed learning. To evaluate the process, the teacher has to focus on the result of each child because making an average score does not necessarily capture the effectiveness of applying comprehension strategies for reading. And that is why the instructor needs to teach students how to monitor their abilities (Harrison, Dwyer & Castek 2014). Comprehension monitoring enables the learner to report identified problems in their comprehension and the instructor focus on removing this hurdle so that the learner can progress to the next step.
True readership comes not only from understanding the words but rather the meaning that the author intended (Lewi, & Thompson 2010). When reading most books, the reader is often unaware of the intentions of the writer. Teacher have a duty to recommend certain texts that are beneficial to the learners. The reader who is the student should therefore understand the purpose of reading before they embark on that journey. When teaches impact on how learners define the goals of reading different texts, they are most likely to instill reading comprehension skills. Therefore, it is important to include the reading comprehension topic along the way of academic pursuit for students so as to further enrich their experience in learning activities. When they know and understand the purpose of reading particular texts, they gain motivating to read. To make them good readers, learners need to know that they have to continually improve their decoding skills to the level of fluency (Meese, 2016). The strategies need to be clearly studied and credible so as to increase the positive educational outcomes. They also need to be simple so that learners maintain their interest and capture different dimensions of word and sentence structures using a non-complex formula (Padak, 2006).
Willingham’s article comprehensively covers the basic need by teachers to use the minds ability to consume and manufacture knowledge on reading comprehension. Once students are aware of the comprehension techniques available, they are able to communicate the challenges they face when reading and the teacher directly helps the learner based on the situation. Equipping readers with monitoring skills helps instructors to apply the various researched methods of teaching reading comprehension. This frameworks also allows students to achieve interest in their learning process because different subjects require different comprehension schemes. Therefore, apart from the use of student’s prior knowledge on words, sentences, meanings, and idea connections, teaching comprehension techniques uses cognitive science to deeply instill fluency in reading and understanding.
References
Bromley, K. (2007). Nine things every teacher should know about words and vocabulary instruction. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy , 50(7), 528-537.
Crovitz, D., & Miller, J. A. (2008). Register and charge: Using synonym maps to explore connotation. English Journal , 49-55.
Harrison, C., Dwyer, B., & Castek, J. (2014). Building peer collaboration: Developing the online reciprocal roles . Shell Education.
Lewi, A., & Thompson, A. (2010). Activating strategies for use in the classroom. Laurel School District and ape Henlopen School District.
Meese, R. L. (2016). We're not in Kansas anymore: The TOTO strategy for decoding vowel pairs. The Reading Teacher, 69(5), 549-552.
Padak, N. (2006). What's IN a word? Teaching vocabulary from the inside out. New England Reading Association Journal , 42(2), 8.
Rasinski, T. V. (2012). Why reading fluency should be hot!. The Reading Teacher, 65(8), 516-522.
Rasinski, T. V., Padak, N., Newton, J., & Newton, E. (2011). The Latin–Greek connection. The Reading Teacher , 65(2), 133-141.
Rasinski, T., Rupley, W. H., & Nichols, W. D. (2008). Two essential ingredients: Phonics and fluency getting to know each other. The Reading Teacher, 62(3), 257-260.
Willingham, D. T. (2006). The usefulness of brief instruction in reading comprehension strategies. American Educator , 30(4), 39-50.
