Emma Truelove

Ameliorating Children’s Reading-Comprehension Difficulties A Randomized Controlled Trial

Children with specific reading-comprehension difficulties can read accurately, but they have poor comprehension. In a randomized controlled trial, we examined the efficacy of three interventions designed to improve such children’s reading comprehension: text-comprehension (TC) training, oral-language (OL) training, and TC and OL training combined (COM). Children were assessed preintervention, midintervention, postintervention, and at an 11-month follow-up. All intervention groups made significant improvements in reading comprehension relative to an untreated control group. Although these gains were maintained at follow-up in the TC and COM groups, the OL group made greater gains than the other groups did between the end of the intervention and follow-up. The OL and COM groups also demonstrated significant improvements in expressive vocabulary compared with the control group, and this was a mediator of the improved reading comprehension of the OL and COM groups. We conclude that specific reading-comprehension difficulties reflect (at least partly) underlying oral-language weaknesses that can be effectively ameliorated by suitable teaching.

The poor comprehender profile: Understanding and supporting individuals who have difficulties extracting meaning from text

Publisher Summary This chapter illustrates the components of reading comprehension and how they can fractionate in reading disorders. The focus has been on providing a picture of current understanding of the poor comprehender profile, as well as introducing the issues and key questions pertinent to this field. It is recognized that the simple view is useful in distinguishing the dyslexic and poor comprehender profiles and capturing the basic skills fundamental to successful reading. The simple view, however, fails to explain the complexities in reading comprehension, and to do this, alternative models, such as the construction-integration model need to be considered.