Reading =/= Comprehending

Recently, the teachers at Englist read a research paper titled “Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert.” The authors of the paper give an interesting example of how necessary background knowledge is to reading comprehension. Using that example, I’d like to explore the complexities of reading and why the ability to read fluently doesn’t always mean the ability to comprehend completely.

A Problem Child from Birth

“Carol Harris was a problem child from birth. She was wild, stubborn, and violent. By the time Carol turned eight, she was still unmanageable. Her parents were very concerned about her mental health. There was no good institution for her problem in her State. Her parents finally decided to take some action. They hired a private teacher.”

After reading this, you most likely understood Carol to be the “problem child” she was labeled as. Clearly, she was a troubled kid that proved difficult to manage and educate, leading her parents to resort to searching for outside help. The act of reading and decoding that information was far more complicated than you likely realized, though.

Reading as a Complex Process

The very first step in reading the above paragraph started with your sensory system, your eyes and the connected parts of your brain, taking in the letters, known as graphemes. While fluent readers understand these letters as having meaning, the reality is that they are arbitrary symbols made up of curved and straight lines. Our evolved pattern-recognizing sections of our brains learn to pick up these lines and shapes nearly instantaneously before handing off the process to the next step.

After our sensory system and our working memory takes on those symbols, our brains connect the sounds to the letters, also known as the phonemes. Each letter has its own phoneme, but letters also combine to create phonemes, too. Similar to the grapheme recognition, this process happens impossibly fast in fluent readers.

Within another few milliseconds of the phonemes being processed, fluent readers’ brains turn to decoding the roots of the words along with their prefixes and suffixes, which are together known as morphemes. A good example of this is the word “unmanageable” in the above paragraph. The root is “manage”, the prefix is “un”, and the suffix is “able”. These smaller chunks of letter combinations imbued with meaning combine to begin the process of understanding the overall meaning of the text.

From there, our brains connect the decoded words to their meaning, also known as semantics. Since humans learn how to speak and understand spoken language first, we are often able to connect the decoded word to a previously known meaning at this point. If not, we rely on the next step: syntax.

Syntax relates to how those graphemes, phonemes, and morphemes are combined in order to create phrases and sentences that communicate meaning. Words often mean one thing when on their own but another when put into a specific context, be it a phrase or a complete sentence.

Fluent readers do all of the above steps in a few hundred milliseconds. This is especially impressive once you realize that connecting a written system of communication to meaning is not a naturally occurring phenomenon; in fact, cognitive scientists consider it “biologically secondary knowledge”. Basically, our brains were not made to automatically understand written language in the same way we understand and learn spoken language. We must learn it through continuous and deliberate practice as children.

(I’ve barely scratched the surface in explaining the reading process above. For more information, check out Maryanne Wolf’s book Proust and the Squid.)

All of this is incredible in and of itself, but the example paragraph can take on a completely different meaning and tone with just a small alteration: the name of the child.

Background Knowledge

“Hellen Keller was a problem child from birth. She was wild, stubborn, and violent. By the time Hellen turned eight, she was still unmanageable. Her parents were very concerned about her mental health. There was no good institution for her problem in her State. Her parents finally decided to take some action. They hired a private teacher.”

After seeing the revised paragraph above about Hellen Keller, you likely have a different reaction than you did when the young girl was named Carol. But why? 

For all intents and purposes, the paragraph has not changed. Outside of the name change, every letter, word, and sentence is exactly the same. Whether her name was Carol or Hellen, she was still a “problem child from birth.” Yet, those who recognize the name Hellen Keller now feel more empathy for the girl and her situation. That’s the power of background knowledge.

Before we move on, let’s bring everyone up to speed.

“Hellen Keller became blind and deaf following a severe illness at only 19 months old. After that, she was a problem child. Unable to properly express her vibrant inner-world, she was wild, stubborn, and violent. By the time Hellen turned eight, she was still unmanageable. Unable to communicate with her, her parents were very concerned about her mental health. There was no good institution for her problem in her State. Her parents finally decided to take some action. They hired a private teacher who taught her how to communicate and who became a life-long friend and companion.”

This is still far too sparse and simple a biography of the incredible woman that Hellen Keller grew to be, but you get the point. Now that I’ve added background information and punched up some of the syntax and wording, everyone can see how the entire tone and meaning of the paragraph has changed. Why?

What We Bring to Reading

Again, this exercise shows the importance of background knowledge when it comes to reading comprehension. Fluent readers could decode all three example paragraphs and understand them, at least superficially , within seconds. Yet, someone with background knowledge would have instantly understood the second paragraph in a completely different way simply because they brought a deeper level of understanding to the reading process. It wasn’t until the background was more explicitly laid out in the third paragraph that we all got on the same page. 

In other words, the knowledge readers bring with them affects their comprehension. As a result, it is of the utmost importance that teachers, and parents for that matter, have a deep understanding of the background knowledge students are bringing with them when we teach reading – and no, lexile scores do not measure background knowledge. Priming students before embarking on a story or a novel with background information doesn’t just get students ready to read, it actually helps them comprehend – and enjoy – what they are reading. As good teachers of reading, we at Englist understand that it’s of the utmost importance to understand the mechanics and science going on behind the scenes when students are reading so that we can set them up for success and make our students lifelong reading lovers.