Re: [Phys-l] Students' READING abilities

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

> But I do agree that the concept of reading comprehension seems not to
> be much of a priority in schools. It happened many years ago now, but
> when my eldest was in the sixth grade, he was having great
> difficulties in class and the teachers were perplexed. We had him
> tested at a university reading center and they discovered that, while
> he read at about the 9th-grade level, he was comprehending at the
> second-grade level. He could say the words, but had no idea what they
> meant. The school system reading "specialists" were mystified. They
> didn't seem to understand that saying the words and understanding the
> words were two different things. This is, of course, a sample of one,
> so I can't say that all reading specialists are this ignorant, or
> that this group was even typical, but it did alert me to the
> existence of a problem that I had not realized existed.

Unfortunately this may be a consequence of rigid adherence to the phonics
method, and ignoring the lessons of whole word research.  This is a case
where the two methods actually compliment each other, but have been set up
as antagonistic opposites.  Unfortunately most schools do not adequately
monitor students for problems.  They would really prefer to not know.  Many
college reading teachers have worked with teens and have found that at that
age that strategies other than phonics work best.  Specialized intensive
phonics called Orton-Gillingham is needed for dyslexic students to activate
certain portions of the brain.

This type of problem can happen if reading is a cognitive task.  When this
is the situation the brain concentrates only on decoding the words and has
no capacity left over for comprehension.  Dyslexics have the opposite
problem that they often become good at comprehension but have low decoding
ability.  I know one fellow who is a demon speed reader and recognizes words
by shapes without knowing how to spell them.

I had a student who was so poor at understanding what he read, that he had
developed a superb coping strategy.  He read the book aloud into a tape
recorder.  Then when he played back the tape he could understand the
reading.  He obviously had the problem that reading was a cognitive task and
was not automatic.  The school already had the information that his verbal
and reading abilities were very far apart, yet they ignored it.  I tried to
get him help.  Some students have hearing as a cognitive task, so there is a
long delay between what you say and when it is comprehended.  These students
can not take notes and process any information at the same time.  Sometimes
they can not even take notes.

As I already mentioned before many standardized test strategies involve
skimming passages, and looking for important words.  This is now the
standard strategy by many students.  Instead of first reading, and then
looking for important things, they skip the first part.  This often works
well in novels, but is the kiss of death in word problems.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX