Excellent article. We are homeschooling our two kids (ages 6 and 8) and have purchased several grades worth of the Core Knowledge books to start incorporating into our curriculum.
The next step for us will be doing book reports for the 8 year old.
Reading your book flipped a switch for me. While I'm extremely grateful, it's also very frustrating to look at the current state of elementary education with the lights on. Why is my highly literate, extremely curious 6-year old bored at school? Because they're not actually teaching her anything! Why do reading struggles persist in the district where I work, despite lots of literacy instruction? Because we were (a) not utilizing evidence-based word recognition instruction, and (b) not imparting knowledge. Thankfully we're on the path to fix (a), but remedying (b) is still a pipe dream. But the good news is - I'm doing a book study with teachers on your book, and there have already been a handful of administrators who have read it. I have hope.
As always, great job on telling truth and weaving together what we do know about comprehension vs. what we don't know about it. One thing is for certain: developing reading comprehension is complex and develops over many years. Parents: take heed of Dr. Wexler's wise words.
Thank you for all your work. Your name and efforts will be a cornerstone to the betterment of education. I only wish my ELA department was familiar with you.
Seems to me we need to reframe the idea of testing reading. If teaching content is teaching reading (assuming students are allowed to read and write about that content as they learn), then let’s test reading/content by asking students to read and write about that content presented in new but closely related texts in creative and analytic ways that go beyond the simple recall of facts.
Mortimer Adler pointed out in 1940 in his "How to Read a Book" that understanding is based on prior knowledge. It was probably noted hundreds of years before that. It should be obvious to anyone who reflects on his or her own personal reading experience. Yet we in education continue to ignore what is obvious.
Natalie, I am so glad you are working to reform the current state of reading instruction. I am retired now, but when I was teaching back in the pre-pandemic world, I praised the merits of your book and articles to every administrator who would listen. But I'm afraid that real reform will have to start at the level of the individual teacher who not only teaches reading but who happens to love it.
Adler defined a reader as someone for whom most information about the world was obtained through printed matter. In my experience, that would not define most administrators. I hope it would define most, if not all, teachers.
Thanks for the kind words, Jeff. I do think that the hearts and minds of individual teachers need to be won over for change to really take effect, but I also think there's a lot that administrators can do to help make that happen. In the podcast series I recently did, all three of the teachers I focused on were skeptical when they were told they had to adopt a new knowledge-building curriculum. But once they tried it, all three of them became enthusiastic about it. I also spoke with a couple of district leaders who led this kind of change.
If you haven't listened to the podcast and you're interested, you can find it here:
"Mortimer Adler pointed out in 1940 in his "How to Read a Book" that understanding is based on prior knowledge."
"Adler defined a reader as someone for whom most information about the world was obtained through printed matter."
Are these two statements contradictory? They remind me of the question Timothy Shanahan posed?
"If I’m always providing kids with the appropriate background knowledge to understand each text used for instruction, then how do students ever learn to take on a text on their own?"
Fluent readers, especially those who have lots of general academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax, can acquire knowledge about a new topic from their reading relatively easily. In fact, that's probably the most efficient way for them to acquire knowledge (although it's always going to be easier for them to understand texts on topics they're familiar with). But readers who don't fall into that category will struggle to read texts on topics they're not familiar with. For them, reading is almost certainly not the best way to acquire knowledge of new topics.
So how do THEY acquire background knowledge? Generally, in the first instance, through listening and talking about a topic -- and ideally through listening to an expert reader read text aloud and then lead discussion of the content. Listening and speaking in themselves don't impose a burden on working memory, whereas reading does -- especially if you're not yet a fluent reader. That opens up more capacity in working memory for comprehension. And that's why students' listening comprehension exceeds their reading comprehension through about age 13, on average.
I think even Tim Shanahan has come around on this issue to some extent. In a recent blog post, he acknowledged that "“none of these [reading comprehension] strategies pays off unless the reader possesses sufficient topical knowledge to make them work.” [https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/knowledge-or-comprehension-strategies-what-should-we-teach] Previously, he had argued that kids should practice strategies on topics they're NOT familiar with, because that's when they'll need to use the strategies. He cited himself and his wife as examples of readers who learn a lot about topics they're unfamiliar with through their reading. But he and (I believe) his wife have PhDs. Perhaps he's come to realize that third graders aren't in the same position!
"And that's why students' listening comprehension exceeds their reading comprehension through about age 13, on average."
I'm thinking about this statistic in relation to the Simple View of Reading: Decoding (word recognition) x Listening Comprehension = Reading Comprehension. If students have the foundational skills necessary to read multi-syllabic words, then what exactly is preventing a sixth-grader from comprehending the same reading passage that has been successfully listened to? If "listening and speaking in themselves don't impose a burden on working memory, whereas reading does -- especially if you're not yet a fluent reader", then shouldn't fluency be enough to carry students over the reading comprehension threshold--not general academic or topic knowledge, since the passage was understood during a listening session?
While it is true that the emergent reader has a listening comprehension ability well-above their reading level, I'm trying to piece together how foundational skills, fluency, and topic knowledge impact the older reader who is comprehending above their reading level. Presumably, a student who lacked topic knowledge would have the same trouble understanding a passage that they both listened to and read--hence, the need to scaffold both experiences to aid in comprehension.
I'm not a scientific researcher myself, of course, but here's what I think is going on, based on the reading and thinking I've done:
First, you're positing a sixth-grader who is a fluent reader of multi-syllabic words. We know that because of deficiencies in teacher-training, etc., many sixth-graders -- and many students at even higher grade levels -- are not. So they're factored into the mix in that finding.
Second, fluency itself isn't a pure skill, like bike-riding. Even if you're a good decoder, whether you can read a text fluently depends to some extent on the nature of the text. If it's a simple text, and especially one on a topic you're familiar with, your fluency may be greater than if it's a complex text on a subject you're not familiar with -- or if it's a narrative text rather than expository, etc. With certain texts, you may have to think more about where to put the emphasis in a sentence, or how a particular word is pronounced, and that creates cognitive load. If someone else is doing that work for you, by reading aloud fluently, it frees up more cognitive capacity for comprehension.
You ask why a fluent readers who LACKS topic knowledge would be able to understand something better through listening than through their own reading. One reason is that if the topic is unfamiliar, there are going to be more unfamiliar words, and it's helpful to have someone else doing the work of pronouncing them, etc.
But also, when you're reading a text on your own and you don't understand something, there's often no one to ask for clarification -- or no one making sure you've actually understood what you may think you've understood. Ideally, when a teacher reads a text aloud, she'll pause to see if there are questions and also ASK questions that assess comprehension and get kids thinking about what they've listened to. Just reading a text aloud isn't, of course, a guarantee that listeners will understand it.
But you can also have knowledge of a topic and STILL have trouble understanding a text about it. That's because written text is almost always more complex than spoken language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax. If you're not familiar with that kind of vocabulary and sentence structure, that will be a barrier to comprehension. The solution there is to gradually build students' academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax by immersing them in lots of topics, through read-alouds, independent reading connected to the topics of those read-alouds, and writing instruction grounded in the topics they're learning about.
Hope that's helpful.
You're probably familiar with the baseball study, showing that "poor readers" who were baseball experts were better comprehenders of a passage describing a baseball game than "good readers" who knew little about baseball. But those poor readers might not have done so well if they were given, say, a PhD dissertation on the topic of baseball.
Again, if someone else is reading the text aloud with appropriate expression, etc., it's going to help you understand that text and infer the meanings of unfamiliar words. The "Listening Comprehension" box in the Simple View of Reading equation really shouldn't be defined just as "the ability to understand spoken language," as it often is. It should be defined as "the ability to understand written language when read aloud," because written language is in many ways a kind of second language.
First, it bears repeating that we owe you the same gratitude we owe Emily Hanford because you are doing for comprehension what she did for foundational skills. So thank you. But it is precisely because there is this connection to foundational skills that I'm trying to prevent what Mark Seidenberg calls 'overcorrection' so that we aren't making widespread decisions (like devoting lots of time to oral-only phonemic awareness) that are not supported by research. I fully embrace exploiting the read-aloud, but I'm concerned about the following potential drawbacks:s
1) Opportunity costs from too much time spent on reading aloud (especially working with children whose foundational skills are severely impacted by lack of literacy experiences in the home).
2) Oral reading activities that don't invite full participation of the whole class so that only some students are benefiting.
3) Attempts to have students process with each other using 'think, pair, share' where student conversations are not rich and rewarding.
You say:
"Even if you're a good decoder, whether you can read a text fluently depends to some extent on the nature of the text. If it's a simple text, and especially one on a topic you're familiar with, your fluency may be greater than if it's a complex text on a subject you're not familiar with -- or if it's a narrative text rather than expository, etc. With certain texts, you may have to think more about where to put the emphasis in a sentence, or how a particular word is pronounced, and that creates cognitive load. If someone else is doing that work for you, by reading aloud fluently, it frees up more cognitive capacity for comprehension."
This is a good point which reflects the importance of vocabulary and syntactic knowledge in addition to topic knowledge.
"When you're reading a text on your own and you don't understand something, there's often no one to ask for clarification"
But this asking for clarification would not be allowed during a listening comprehension assessment. I'm trying to ascertain what paves the way to understanding a passage read to a student that precludes understanding it when reading it, assuming both decoding and topic knowledge have been developed.
"Ideally, when a teacher reads a text aloud, she'll pause to see if there are questions and also ASK questions that assess comprehension and get kids thinking about what they've listened to. Just reading a text aloud isn't, of course, a guarantee that listeners will understand it."
This is important as I describe at the beginning.
"But you can also have knowledge of a topic and STILL have trouble understanding a text about it. That's because written text is almost always more complex than spoken language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax."
This takes us back to the Simple View of Reading. The researchers are adamant that if you want to draw any conclusions about listening comprehension vs. reading comprehension, the passages need to be the same. So if one succeeds at listening vs. reading because the language is simpler, that doesn't count.
"If you're not familiar with that kind of vocabulary and sentence structure, that will be a barrier to comprehension. The solution there is to gradually build students' academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax by immersing them in lots of topics, through read-alouds, independent reading connected to the topics of those read-alouds, and writing instruction grounded in the topics they're learning about."
Agreed!
"The "Listening Comprehension" box in the Simple View of Reading equation really shouldn't be defined just as "the ability to understand spoken language," as it often is. It should be defined as "the ability to understand written language when read aloud," because written language is in many ways a kind of second language."
This is actually my point: If we say students have listening comprehension that is above their reading comprehension through about the age of 13, is this the case if the passages that they hear and read are exactly the same?
Excellent article. We are homeschooling our two kids (ages 6 and 8) and have purchased several grades worth of the Core Knowledge books to start incorporating into our curriculum.
The next step for us will be doing book reports for the 8 year old.
Reading your book flipped a switch for me. While I'm extremely grateful, it's also very frustrating to look at the current state of elementary education with the lights on. Why is my highly literate, extremely curious 6-year old bored at school? Because they're not actually teaching her anything! Why do reading struggles persist in the district where I work, despite lots of literacy instruction? Because we were (a) not utilizing evidence-based word recognition instruction, and (b) not imparting knowledge. Thankfully we're on the path to fix (a), but remedying (b) is still a pipe dream. But the good news is - I'm doing a book study with teachers on your book, and there have already been a handful of administrators who have read it. I have hope.
Keep up the good work, Natalie, and thanks again.
As always, great job on telling truth and weaving together what we do know about comprehension vs. what we don't know about it. One thing is for certain: developing reading comprehension is complex and develops over many years. Parents: take heed of Dr. Wexler's wise words.
Thank you for all your work. Your name and efforts will be a cornerstone to the betterment of education. I only wish my ELA department was familiar with you.
Seems to me we need to reframe the idea of testing reading. If teaching content is teaching reading (assuming students are allowed to read and write about that content as they learn), then let’s test reading/content by asking students to read and write about that content presented in new but closely related texts in creative and analytic ways that go beyond the simple recall of facts.
Mortimer Adler pointed out in 1940 in his "How to Read a Book" that understanding is based on prior knowledge. It was probably noted hundreds of years before that. It should be obvious to anyone who reflects on his or her own personal reading experience. Yet we in education continue to ignore what is obvious.
Natalie, I am so glad you are working to reform the current state of reading instruction. I am retired now, but when I was teaching back in the pre-pandemic world, I praised the merits of your book and articles to every administrator who would listen. But I'm afraid that real reform will have to start at the level of the individual teacher who not only teaches reading but who happens to love it.
Adler defined a reader as someone for whom most information about the world was obtained through printed matter. In my experience, that would not define most administrators. I hope it would define most, if not all, teachers.
Thanks for the kind words, Jeff. I do think that the hearts and minds of individual teachers need to be won over for change to really take effect, but I also think there's a lot that administrators can do to help make that happen. In the podcast series I recently did, all three of the teachers I focused on were skeptical when they were told they had to adopt a new knowledge-building curriculum. But once they tried it, all three of them became enthusiastic about it. I also spoke with a couple of district leaders who led this kind of change.
If you haven't listened to the podcast and you're interested, you can find it here:
https://knowledgematterscampaign.org/podcast/
"Mortimer Adler pointed out in 1940 in his "How to Read a Book" that understanding is based on prior knowledge."
"Adler defined a reader as someone for whom most information about the world was obtained through printed matter."
Are these two statements contradictory? They remind me of the question Timothy Shanahan posed?
"If I’m always providing kids with the appropriate background knowledge to understand each text used for instruction, then how do students ever learn to take on a text on their own?"
Fluent readers, especially those who have lots of general academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax, can acquire knowledge about a new topic from their reading relatively easily. In fact, that's probably the most efficient way for them to acquire knowledge (although it's always going to be easier for them to understand texts on topics they're familiar with). But readers who don't fall into that category will struggle to read texts on topics they're not familiar with. For them, reading is almost certainly not the best way to acquire knowledge of new topics.
So how do THEY acquire background knowledge? Generally, in the first instance, through listening and talking about a topic -- and ideally through listening to an expert reader read text aloud and then lead discussion of the content. Listening and speaking in themselves don't impose a burden on working memory, whereas reading does -- especially if you're not yet a fluent reader. That opens up more capacity in working memory for comprehension. And that's why students' listening comprehension exceeds their reading comprehension through about age 13, on average.
I think even Tim Shanahan has come around on this issue to some extent. In a recent blog post, he acknowledged that "“none of these [reading comprehension] strategies pays off unless the reader possesses sufficient topical knowledge to make them work.” [https://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/blog/knowledge-or-comprehension-strategies-what-should-we-teach] Previously, he had argued that kids should practice strategies on topics they're NOT familiar with, because that's when they'll need to use the strategies. He cited himself and his wife as examples of readers who learn a lot about topics they're unfamiliar with through their reading. But he and (I believe) his wife have PhDs. Perhaps he's come to realize that third graders aren't in the same position!
"And that's why students' listening comprehension exceeds their reading comprehension through about age 13, on average."
I'm thinking about this statistic in relation to the Simple View of Reading: Decoding (word recognition) x Listening Comprehension = Reading Comprehension. If students have the foundational skills necessary to read multi-syllabic words, then what exactly is preventing a sixth-grader from comprehending the same reading passage that has been successfully listened to? If "listening and speaking in themselves don't impose a burden on working memory, whereas reading does -- especially if you're not yet a fluent reader", then shouldn't fluency be enough to carry students over the reading comprehension threshold--not general academic or topic knowledge, since the passage was understood during a listening session?
While it is true that the emergent reader has a listening comprehension ability well-above their reading level, I'm trying to piece together how foundational skills, fluency, and topic knowledge impact the older reader who is comprehending above their reading level. Presumably, a student who lacked topic knowledge would have the same trouble understanding a passage that they both listened to and read--hence, the need to scaffold both experiences to aid in comprehension.
If this makes sense . . .
I'm not a scientific researcher myself, of course, but here's what I think is going on, based on the reading and thinking I've done:
First, you're positing a sixth-grader who is a fluent reader of multi-syllabic words. We know that because of deficiencies in teacher-training, etc., many sixth-graders -- and many students at even higher grade levels -- are not. So they're factored into the mix in that finding.
Second, fluency itself isn't a pure skill, like bike-riding. Even if you're a good decoder, whether you can read a text fluently depends to some extent on the nature of the text. If it's a simple text, and especially one on a topic you're familiar with, your fluency may be greater than if it's a complex text on a subject you're not familiar with -- or if it's a narrative text rather than expository, etc. With certain texts, you may have to think more about where to put the emphasis in a sentence, or how a particular word is pronounced, and that creates cognitive load. If someone else is doing that work for you, by reading aloud fluently, it frees up more cognitive capacity for comprehension.
You ask why a fluent readers who LACKS topic knowledge would be able to understand something better through listening than through their own reading. One reason is that if the topic is unfamiliar, there are going to be more unfamiliar words, and it's helpful to have someone else doing the work of pronouncing them, etc.
But also, when you're reading a text on your own and you don't understand something, there's often no one to ask for clarification -- or no one making sure you've actually understood what you may think you've understood. Ideally, when a teacher reads a text aloud, she'll pause to see if there are questions and also ASK questions that assess comprehension and get kids thinking about what they've listened to. Just reading a text aloud isn't, of course, a guarantee that listeners will understand it.
But you can also have knowledge of a topic and STILL have trouble understanding a text about it. That's because written text is almost always more complex than spoken language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax. If you're not familiar with that kind of vocabulary and sentence structure, that will be a barrier to comprehension. The solution there is to gradually build students' academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax by immersing them in lots of topics, through read-alouds, independent reading connected to the topics of those read-alouds, and writing instruction grounded in the topics they're learning about.
Hope that's helpful.
You're probably familiar with the baseball study, showing that "poor readers" who were baseball experts were better comprehenders of a passage describing a baseball game than "good readers" who knew little about baseball. But those poor readers might not have done so well if they were given, say, a PhD dissertation on the topic of baseball.
Again, if someone else is reading the text aloud with appropriate expression, etc., it's going to help you understand that text and infer the meanings of unfamiliar words. The "Listening Comprehension" box in the Simple View of Reading equation really shouldn't be defined just as "the ability to understand spoken language," as it often is. It should be defined as "the ability to understand written language when read aloud," because written language is in many ways a kind of second language.
First, it bears repeating that we owe you the same gratitude we owe Emily Hanford because you are doing for comprehension what she did for foundational skills. So thank you. But it is precisely because there is this connection to foundational skills that I'm trying to prevent what Mark Seidenberg calls 'overcorrection' so that we aren't making widespread decisions (like devoting lots of time to oral-only phonemic awareness) that are not supported by research. I fully embrace exploiting the read-aloud, but I'm concerned about the following potential drawbacks:s
1) Opportunity costs from too much time spent on reading aloud (especially working with children whose foundational skills are severely impacted by lack of literacy experiences in the home).
2) Oral reading activities that don't invite full participation of the whole class so that only some students are benefiting.
3) Attempts to have students process with each other using 'think, pair, share' where student conversations are not rich and rewarding.
You say:
"Even if you're a good decoder, whether you can read a text fluently depends to some extent on the nature of the text. If it's a simple text, and especially one on a topic you're familiar with, your fluency may be greater than if it's a complex text on a subject you're not familiar with -- or if it's a narrative text rather than expository, etc. With certain texts, you may have to think more about where to put the emphasis in a sentence, or how a particular word is pronounced, and that creates cognitive load. If someone else is doing that work for you, by reading aloud fluently, it frees up more cognitive capacity for comprehension."
This is a good point which reflects the importance of vocabulary and syntactic knowledge in addition to topic knowledge.
"When you're reading a text on your own and you don't understand something, there's often no one to ask for clarification"
But this asking for clarification would not be allowed during a listening comprehension assessment. I'm trying to ascertain what paves the way to understanding a passage read to a student that precludes understanding it when reading it, assuming both decoding and topic knowledge have been developed.
"Ideally, when a teacher reads a text aloud, she'll pause to see if there are questions and also ASK questions that assess comprehension and get kids thinking about what they've listened to. Just reading a text aloud isn't, of course, a guarantee that listeners will understand it."
This is important as I describe at the beginning.
"But you can also have knowledge of a topic and STILL have trouble understanding a text about it. That's because written text is almost always more complex than spoken language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax."
This takes us back to the Simple View of Reading. The researchers are adamant that if you want to draw any conclusions about listening comprehension vs. reading comprehension, the passages need to be the same. So if one succeeds at listening vs. reading because the language is simpler, that doesn't count.
"If you're not familiar with that kind of vocabulary and sentence structure, that will be a barrier to comprehension. The solution there is to gradually build students' academic knowledge and familiarity with complex syntax by immersing them in lots of topics, through read-alouds, independent reading connected to the topics of those read-alouds, and writing instruction grounded in the topics they're learning about."
Agreed!
"The "Listening Comprehension" box in the Simple View of Reading equation really shouldn't be defined just as "the ability to understand spoken language," as it often is. It should be defined as "the ability to understand written language when read aloud," because written language is in many ways a kind of second language."
This is actually my point: If we say students have listening comprehension that is above their reading comprehension through about the age of 13, is this the case if the passages that they hear and read are exactly the same?
Thanks for such a detailed response!