What the Experts Say About Reading Comprehension
 

What the Experts Say About Reading Comprehension


Educational research suggests that proficient and highly skilled readers engage in very specific strategies when reading at a level of comprehension that goes beyond literal recall. Experts like Susan Zimmermann, Ellin Oliver Keene, Stephanie Harvey, Anne Goudvis, and Debbie Miller – all educators with many years of experience teaching in the classroom, and who now instruct other teachers – have studied the research and described those strategies in their books[listed below]. These strategies include (but are not limited to):

• Using relevant prior knowledge, sometimes called “schema,” to make sense of the new information being read;
• Asking meaningful questions about the ******* and author’s purpose before, during, and after reading;
• Visualizing, or evoking mental images, based on the author’s words;
• Inferring, or interpreting, the meanings of words, ideas, and concepts that are not explicitly stated in the text;
• Predicting outcomes, motives, or likely next steps; and
• Determining importance, or what the relevant key ideas, concepts, and themes are that the writer is trying to convey.

These core strategies, literacy experts agree, contribute to the ultimate goal in reading comprehension: synthesis.