​​​​​​​Assessments

Reading comprehension is a complex intellectual process involving many skills. Reading experts argue that reading comprehension is primarily a matter of vocabulary knowledge and reasoning, rather than a long series of component sub-skills. As there are various levels in the hierarchy of thinking, so are there various levels of comprehension. Higher levels of comprehension include higher levels of thinking. Dechant & Smith (1977) lists the following subskills of comprehension: 

• Associate experience and meaning with the graphic symbol;

• React to the sensory images (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, taste, smell) suggested by words;

• Interpret verbal connotations and denotations;

• Understand words in context and selection of meaning that fits the context;

• Give meaning to units of increasing size: the phrase, clause, sentence; detection and understanding the main ideas;

• Detect and understand the main ideas;

• Recognize significant details;

• Interpret the organization;

• Answer questions about a printed passage;

• Follow directions;

• Perceive relationships: part-whole; cause-effect; general-specific; place, sequence, size and time;

• Interpret figurative expressions;

• Make inferences and draw conclusions;

• Supply implied details and evaluate what is read;

• Identify and evaluate character traits, reactions and motives;

• Anticipate outcomes;

• Recognize and understand the writer’s purpose;

• Recognize literacy and semantic devices and identify the tone, mood, and intent or purpose of the writer;

• Determine whether the text affirms, denies, or fails to express an opinion about a supposed fact or condition;

• Identify the antecedents of such words as who, some, or, they;

• Retain ideas;

• Apply ideas and integrate them with one’s past experience.

It is however emphasized that the learning of separate sub-skills is not a prerequisite for learning to read. John Downing (1986, 2000) defines reading as a skill. A skill is a complex set of processes - cognitive, attitudinal and manipulative - a total performance. This view is supported by Kenneth Goodman (in Harris & Sipay, 1972) who argues that reading is a holistic process. “There is no possible sequencing of skills in reading instruction, since all systems must be used independently in the reading process even in the first attempts at learning to read” (p. 56). Downing and Goodman emphasize that the key point of every skill is the integration of complex set of behaviors that make the total pattern. This view of reading as unitary skill or holistic process can be expressed in the following equation:

       Reading = Skills1 + Skills2 + Skills3 + Skillsn (Hermosa, 1996).

Interventions should therefore  treat individual materials as independent strategies leading to the development of reading comprehension. For example, being able to identify the sequence of events in a reading passage is an independent comprehension skill. However, said skill is supported by a knowledge of subject-verb agreement; and a number of basic grammar and writing rules. A successful reading comprehension intervention is based on the proper determination of difficulties in a comprehension subskill and the appropriate integration of all the subskills into the reading process.

[Source: Pe, R. (2005). The correlation between early reading exposure and the reading performance of college freshmen (Unpublished Thesis). University of the Cordilleras, Baguio City, Philippines.]