Sentence by Sentence: Reading Comprehension in Grades 4–9 Students
A major shift in early reading instruction is underway throughout the United States. Guided by state legislation, professional organizations’ leadership, and public advocacy, better practices aligned with reading science are taking hold. These initiatives, however, have so far had less impact on instruction for intermediate and middle school students than early elementary, and have been more focused on teaching foundational reading skills than enhancing language, reading comprehension, and writing abilities. We know from science, however, that struggling readers are unlikely to achieve meaningful gains in literacy unless they receive instruction in all essential components delivered in an intensive, sustained, systematic program (The Reading League, in press).
How should we carry out instruction that is most likely to improve reading comprehension in grades 4–9 students? A recent Practice Guide from the Institute of Education Sciences summarizes existing research about intervention at these levels (Vaughn et al., 2022), but aside from information about teaching decoding of multisyllabic words, the review does not specify how to explicitly teach other aspects of language structure that contribute to language comprehension. Structured language teaching by implication should directly address the layers of language organization—phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and conventions of discourse.
I recently discussed the issue of comprehension instruction with Julie Van Dyke, senior scientist at the Haskins Laboratory at Yale University, who has spent several decades conducting high-tech studies of the human brain at work during reading. Dr. Van Dyke argues that reading comprehension relies on much more than background knowledge or listening comprehension (Van Dyke, 2021), and that text reading is uniquely challenging because it makes significant demands on executive functions, attention, goal-orientation, persistence, and motivation. Most importantly, she argues that the central linguistic process underlying successful reading comprehension is the ability to recognize and make sense of sentence structure (syntax) and to efficiently assign each new word we read to a syntactic “slot” in a sentence frame as we scan across a line. According to research evidence so far, familiarity with sentence structures found in written text, and rapid integration of words into those mental structures, distinguishes better from poorer readers. Thus, directly building syntactic awareness should have a prominent place in our instruction.
Written text has syntactic features that are not common in spoken, conversational language. Written sentences, especially in expository text, are often dense in ideas and meaning. They can be long and complex, with embedded clauses. The agent or subject can be distant from the main verb. Written sentences can be ambiguous and require flexible parsing or grouping words into phrases to resolve the ambiguity. The visual, social, and vocal cues available during live conversation are not available to a reader, who must impose the prosody of spoken language onto the printed words. Middle-grade poor comprehenders are often not proficient with this underlying linguistic skill of grouping words together to make meaning from sentences.
Our structured language approach with middle school students, LANGUAGE! Live®, works systematically to build students’ capacity to process and produce academic language at the word, sentence, and passage levels. Moreover, it is designed to bolster language subskills while engaging students with texts that are interesting and age appropriate. Older struggling students’ motivation to read is understandably low, so it is important to use readings on subject-matter important to their lives. To this end, we designed our language lessons around provocative texts and topics. If the topic hooks students’ attention, then the work on linguistic subskills involving words and sentences becomes more palatable and purposeful.
For example, the lead text of the seventh LANGUAGE! Live unit is about “Hurricanes!” Many students have had memorable experiences with hurricanes and severe weather events that propel their interest in knowing more. The text we chose is typical for nonfiction: Its sentences have compound subjects and verbs, embedded clauses, logical connectors (e.g., however, then, eventually, if, although), and unusual order of syntactic elements (“Called Huracán, or ‘evil wind,’ by the local people, these storms are now known as hurricanes.”) Not only do we need to scaffold the reading of the text with an introductory video, side notes, highlighted essential vocabulary, graphs, and strategic questioning, we reread the text for varied purposes. In between readings, we undertake a series of activities and exercises designed to strengthen a student’s facility with both vocabulary and syntax.
We deliberately build awareness of syntax with exercises such as proofreading for punctuation that marks phrases, clauses, and sentence types—questions, statements, exclamations. Students must impose sentence boundaries on word strings such as, “How will I get the word out to people I know the way.” They are asked as well to combine simple sentences by using specific conjunctions (and, but, or). They learn and identify the tense and function of all forms of the verb “to be,” and then write sentences with is, was, are, were, will be—a challenge for students whose home language variety may not include these forms. Sentence anagrams and other games involving word combinations are threaded throughout the program.
When we developed LANGUAGE! Live, we included direct practice with phrasing—recognizing which words are working together within the underlying structure of a sentence. The activity involves scooping under word groups that go together, and then rereading the sentence with prosody. (Will you/tell me again/why/he chose/the white pants?) Dr. Van Dyke now has developed a computer program that can reprint any text in its phrase constituents (to save the student this mental/linguistic work) and she has found that doing so improves her subjects’ ability to comprehend what they are reading ( https://cascadereading.com).
Syntax-strengthening exercises are not all that we ask students to do, of course. Additional work occurs around expression of critical understandings, using words such as evaluate, connect, and analyze; asking and answering inferential questions; finding evidence to support statements in the text; guided highlighting of passages to note main ideas and details, and writing responses to text that help students understand and remember all they have learned about the topic—Hurricanes!
As research about improving reading comprehension progresses, it is affirming the logic and value of structured language approaches like LANGUAGE! Live. Increasingly, the importance of syntactic awareness and sentence-level processing is being recognized. The new program review guidelines from The Reading League (in press), for example, draw needed attention to this essential language proficiency. Clearly, it’s time to move beyond sounds and words and to honor the almighty sentence in our teaching of language structure.
References
The Reading League (in press). The Reading League Compass: Adolescent Intervention Evaluation Guidelines. (Will be available online by October 2024 at https://www.thereadingleague.org/compass/).
Van Dyke, J. A. (2021). Introduction to the special issue: mechanisms of variation in reading comprehension: processes and products. Scientific Studies of Reading, 25(2), 93-103, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2021.1873347
Van Dyke, J. A. (2021). Introduction to the special issue: mechanisms of variation in reading comprehension: processes and products. Scientific Studies of Reading, 25(2), 93-103, DOI: 10.1080/10888438.2021.1873347
Vaughn, S., Gersten, R., Domino, J., Taylor, M.J., Newman-Gonchar, R., Krowka, S., Kieffer, M.J., McKeown, M., Reed, D., Sanchez, M., St.Martin, K., Wexler, J., Morgan, S., Yanez, A., Jayanthi, M. (2022). Providing reading interventions for students in grades 4-9 (WWCH 2022007). Washington, D.C., National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/29
