Reading comprehension is making a connection, in a given context, environment, and condition, between what a reader knows and what an author presents, which is reconstructed and reorganized into a transformed knowledge to be used by the reader for a number of purposes.
An exercise to illustrate the importance of the construction of meaning between the reader's knowledge and the author's presentation is as follows.
What word fits in the blank ? How did you know ? Where is it printed in the sentence ?
Question Answer Relationships
Information is derived from the text in two ways: text explicit information, and text implicit information.
Text explicit information
"Right There" information, as it is called for classroom purposes, is that information which can be located directly in the text. A reader can even put their finger on the information "right there."
An example of a text explicit question follows the sample sentence.
The brown cow mooed.
What color was the cow?
The answer, brown, is "right there" in the sentence.
What did the cow do?
The answer, the cow mooed, is "right there" in the sentence. The reader could put a finger on the answers. The questions also mirror the structure of the key text.
Text explicit information can act as an essential building block for other higher forms of comprehension particularly text implicit and knowledge implicit information. Text explicit information tends to be literal, practical, useful and experiential. It is unfortunately the kind of question that too often forms the predominant content of many reading tests.
Text Implicit Information
"Put It Together" thinking, as it is called for classroom purposes, is that information or text experience which can only be constructed by taking one piece of text information and adding it to another separate piece of text information to create an idea, concept, experience or item of information that was not directly written in the text.
It is implied by connecting two or more text explicit items requiring the reader to infer, by making an educated experienced-based guess. It is much like a math addition problem:
A + B + C = D
An example of a text implicit question follows the sample sentence.
Tom went to the store and bought a softball, sneakers, a jersey and roller blades.
By connecting "store" and the items purchased, it can be inferred it was a sporting goods store. The answer was "Put together" by joining two distinct pieces of text, which happened to occur in this case in the same sentence. They could have been on different lines, paragraphs or pages. In Raphael's original work this level of questioning was called "think and search" - another description of the cognitive and behavioral task.
Text implicit information is good for supplying clues, hints, redundancies and clarifications and extensions of text explicit information. It provides information necessary to proceed with a text both in depth and breadth.
Reader centered cognitive based comprehension derives information in two ways: knowledge implicit, and knowledge explicit.
Knowledge Implicit Information
"Author and You" thinking, as it is called for classroom purposes, is constructed by taking information from the author or text and connecting it with a key piece of knowledge only the reader can supply.
Josef Stalin was responsible for killing millions of his own people for political, racial, and ethnic reasons.
The answer assumes and requires text knowledge of Stalin, and reader knowledge of the concept "tyrant."The answer is dependent upon the reader's concept of the word tyrant, not on what has been presented in the text.
This leads to two important comprehension considerations: the quantity and quality of the reader's knowledge. The concept of quantity asks, "Does the reader know or have a definition, concept, or experience of the word?" The concept of quality asks, "What is the reader's actual perception of the concept?"
A further elaboration on this idea would be to consider, for example, an Irish Catholic child in Chicago, and an Irish Catholic child in Belfast, Ireland. Both children, in all likelihood, know the word "policeman." Also in all likelihood, there would be a significant difference in each child's connotation of the word, as well as any conclusions and judgments the child might make in relation to that word.
Knowledge implicit information is often used in forming judgments, opinions and conclusion about text. It personalizes the text to the reader and allows for a contrast between author and reader and the reader and other comprehenders.
Knowledge Explicit Information
"On Your Own" thinking, as it is called for classroom purposes, is fairly easy to grasp, but important to practice. Knowledge explicit information does not necessarily require that the reader has read a text, but the reader may still be able to supply information about some key theme or concept or experience in a text. It is most valuable in post reading reflection, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, application, and extention of text. "On Your Own" questions can also be used to activate prior knowledge, build motivation and goal setting, and help preview a piece of text in pre-reading activities.
An example of this kind of question might be, after having read The Diary of Anne Frank,
Have you ever been, or witnessed someone being persecuted?
The reader may not need to read the text to answer, but the answer would certainly be shaped differently after reading such a text. Working with this kind of question-answer relationship often highlights important themes, and points toward personal application, accommodation or adaptation of the text.
Based on this discussion students are now ready to experience some exercises designed to illustrate and demonstrate four levels of comprehension, based on the relationship between questions and answers, and the text and the reader.
The four levels of comprehension / questioning are: text implicit ("right there"); text implicit ("put it together"); knowledge implicit ("author and you"); and knowledge explicit ("on your own").
If you would like more information on Critical Reading and Thinking, just click on this link and it will take you to the Student Resources Page where these issues are detailed. There you will find more links to more information.
Copyright © Joe Byrne, Northbrook, Illinois 1997
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