Moving From Explicit to Implicit: A Case Study of Improving Inferential Comprehension

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Moving From Explicit to Implicit: ACase Study of Improving InferentialComprehensionYi-Fen Yeh a , Erin M. McTigue b & R. Malatesha Joshi ba National Taiwan Normal University , Taipei , Taiwanb Texas A&M University , College Station , Texas , USAPublished online: 14 Feb 2012.

To cite this article: Yi-Fen Yeh , Erin M. McTigue & R. Malatesha Joshi (2012) Moving From Explicitto Implicit: A Case Study of Improving Inferential Comprehension, Literacy Research and Instruction,51:2, 125-142, DOI: 10.1080/19388071.2010.546492

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Literacy Research and Instruction, 51: 125–142, 2012Copyright © Association of Literacy Educators and ResearchersISSN: 1938-8071 print / 1938-8063 onlineDOI: 10.1080/19388071.2010.546492

Moving From Explicit to Implicit: A Case Study ofImproving Inferential Comprehension

YI-FEN YEH

National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

ERIN M. MCTIGUE AND R. MALATESHA JOSHI

Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

The article describes a successful intervention program in developing inferential comprehensionin a sixth grader. Steve (pseudonym) was proficient in word reading, was able to detect explicitinformation while reading, but struggled with linking textual information to yield integral ideas.After 10 weeks of working with Steve on word analogies, reading/composing riddles, “solving”short mystery stories, and modeling think-alouds, there was a substantial progress of Steve’s log-ical reasoning, meta-cognitive thinking, and inferential reading skills. Practical information forteachers regarding selection of assessment instruments, assessment interpretation, as well as instruc-tional recommendations for students demonstrating difficulty with inferential comprehension is alsoprovided.

Keywords adolescent literacy, struggling readers, comprehension, assessment

During our initial screening at a university reading clinic, sixth grader Steve (pseudonym)displayed pride and enthusiasm of his highly accurate pronunciation and rapid oral readingperformance. However, when asked follow-up comprehension questions on the readings,his initial confidence quickly faded, with anxiety replacing enjoyment. If the questionswere explicit in nature, he was often able to provide text-dependent information, but usu-ally in fragmental recalls. If the questions required an overall understanding of texts orinferential thinking, he often answered with “I don’t know.” Even after receiving encour-agement to read with intonation and guidance for approaching implicit type of questions,his inferential comprehension was very low.

We initially considered Steve’s performance within the overall framework of Goughand Tunmer’s (1986) Simple View of Reading (Reading = Decoding × LanguageComprehension); Steve’s conception of reading was only half of the picture; he was skill-ful in word decoding but unable to weave together relevant pieces of information. Sucha decoding-based conception of reading is, unfortunately, not rare among older studentswho are presumed to be able to read independently for meaning (Leach, Scarborough,& Rescorla, 2003). This discrepancy may reflect the recent emphasis for fluent readingwhich is primarily defined by speed and accuracy. In the following sections we, his tutorand faculty supervisors, detail our work with Steve to help him become more successful atcomprehension, specifically at the inferential level. Through documenting Steve’s assess-ment and response to instruction, we are able to provide reading teachers with strategies

Address correspondence to Dr. Yi-Fen Yeh, Science Education Center, National Taiwan Normal University,#88, Sec. 4, Ting-Choc Rd. Taipei, 116, Taiwan. E-mail: [email protected]

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126 Y.-F. Yeh et al.

for conceptualizing reading difficulties; diagnosing strengths and weaknesses; and design-ing appropriate activities for improving overall inferential reading. Further, a summaryof tutoring sessions, based on recent research, and examples of Steve’s progress are alsoprovided.

Background

Remedial Reading Instruction in Classrooms

Reading difficulties are prevalent across all ages and grade levels (Shaywitz, Morris,& Shaywitz, 2008), and arise in many forms. According to National Assessment ofEducational Progress (NAEP) results, 67% of fourth-grade students and 75% of eighth-grade students had only basic (compared to proficient or advanced) reading skills (U.S.Department of Education, 2009). According to NAEP’s definitions, readers at a basic levelrefer to those who can interpret the meaning of words within their context, make neces-sary inferences, and support their claims regarding a conclusion with details from the text;whereas readers at a proficient level possess the ability to integrate relevant informationfrom the text and then make evaluations or judgments about those texts. The large per-centage of readers at the basic level indicates not only the indispensability of effectiveclassroom instruction in comprehension, but also the existence of students with readingdifficulties.

Unfortunately, many classroom educators may not receive the preparation necessaryfor identifying the specific patterns of reading difficulties (Sideridis, Mouzaki, Simons, &Protopapas, 2006) and instead tend to rely on more general terms to conceptualize readingdifficulties. According to McKenna and Stahl (2003) the term struggling reader is popular“precisely because it lacks precision” (p. 1). However, it must be recognized that strugglingreaders are not a homogeneous group, but a heterogeneous group containing many uniqueprofiles. Therefore, it is useful to consider specific case studies of children because, withinthe heterogeneities, there are different patterns of difficulty and success (Morris, 2005).

Additionally, reading interventions for struggling older readers frequently focus ondecoding skills rather than comprehension (Kintsch, 1998), which does not match withmany older readers’ needs. Good decoding skills are necessary, but clearly not sufficient,for insuring reading comprehension. For example, limited reading fluency and/or auto-maticity are potential factors leading to the “4th-grade slump” (Chall, 1983; Chall & Jacobs2003). Even after mastering decoding, the majority of struggling readers may still face dif-ficulties integrating meaningful information from sentences and contexts (Miller, 1988;Smith, 1988). These comprehension difficulties, due in part to the development of com-plex and abstract thinking, require substantial knowledge for classroom teachers to detect.This article provides valuable instructional ideas for teachers of upper-grade readers bydocumenting a struggling reader’s experiences, as well as his response to our instructionalefforts.

Models for Reading Development

Numerous researchers have developed stage models regarding the development of read-ing abilities, in order to accurately reflect the complex and lengthy path a student takesfrom emergent to proficient literacy skills (e.g., Chall, 1983; Hoover & Gough, 1990;Rupley, Willson, & Nichols, 1998; Seymour, 1997, 1999; Spear-Swerling & Sternberg,1996). Among these models, Spear-Swerling and Sternberg’s model of reading disabilities(1996) describes how readers may proceed off-track at multiple stages, which results in

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Moving From Explicit to Implicit 127

subtypes of struggling readers. It is important to note that the model predicts that all stu-dents follow the same type of development, rather than predicting that struggling readersdevelop in a manner unique from their higher-achieving peers. This model provides teach-ers with guidance regarding the required focus of instruction in order to put students back“on track.”

Although providing a good starting point from which teachers can diagnose readingproblems, Spear-Swerling and Sternberg’s Road Map does not detail the developmentalprocess of reading comprehension. For providing insight specifically into reading com-prehension, we considered Kintsch’s construction-integration (CI) model (1988, 1998) toexplain how readers comprehend texts, and what difficulties students may face when doingso. The model’s name reflects the underlying premise, which is that successful readingcomprehension is a cyclical and propositional processing activity involving knowledgeconstruction and knowledge integration. The initial phase is constructed through readers’understanding of a three-level, locally textual input made up of the surface level, the text-based level, and the situational model. Throughout the process, readers continually makeinferences in order to maintain coherent local and global mental models.

In support of the integral role of inference-making within reading comprehension,recent empirical findings demonstrate that inference-making ability helps readers’ com-prehension, beyond decoding, vocabulary, and verbal skills (Cain & Oakhill, 1999; Cain,Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001). In other words, inference-making appears to be a uniqueskill. As such, inference-making skills may not innately develop concurrently as a learner’sdecoding and vocabulary progress. Also, while it has been known that skilled young read-ers make more inferences than less skilled readers (Laing & Kamhi, 2002; Trabasso &Magliano, 1996), findings were unable to establish clearly whether inferences are a resultof good comprehension, or if they help comprehension. More recent findings indicatethat inference skills are likely precursors to facilitating comprehension (Cain, Oakhill, &Bryant, 2004).

Steve’s Challenges

Based on the initial assessments, we determined Steve to be a “suboptimal reader” inSpear-Swerling and Sternberg’s model. This classification means that Steve went off trackafter his acquisition of decoding skills but prior to becoming a reader with higher-orderlevels of comprehension. This determination concurred with Steve’s parents’ reports ofSteve’s fourth-grade slump pattern, in which he had been successful in early elementaryschool reading but then had difficulty with comprehending content-area reading. Basedon his mother’s observations, it was noted that Steve’s motivation for reading decreasedas his grade level advanced, which is also typical among older students (Leach et al.,2003; McKenna, Kear, & Ellsworth, 1995). Steve’s parents, who were both highly edu-cated, valued education and worked to create long-term enthusiasm for reading. Towardthat aim they provided many literacy opportunities for him, including visiting bookstores,and consistently modeled reading for him through regular family reading times. However,despite these efforts, Steve’s mother also noted that she had difficulty in engaging Steve indiscussions regarding what he had read.

Steve’s initial reading performance, indicating that he had sufficient knowledge inphonics and orthographic patterns, led us to suspect that Steve’s comprehension difficultieswere rooted in vocabulary difficulties or with strategies regarding how to weave informa-tion together logically (Kintsch, 1988, 1998). We determined that the best way to revealSteve’s reading comprehension difficulties was through formative feedback with an obser-vant tutor. In the sessions described below, we explain the testing batteries we employed;

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justify the diagnostic results by triangulating different scores; present how we designedand conducted appropriate interventions; and document Steve’s learning growth.

Summary of Steve’s Profile

The Selection of Assessments

In order to provide effective lessons, accurate diagnosises of students’ reading levels andtheir underlying language abilities, decoding ability, fluency, and attitudes towards read-ing is required. Much research has indicated that word knowledge, though functioning asa multidimensional construct, predicts students’ reading ability (e.g., Dixon, LeFevre, &Twilley, 1988; Hunt, Lunneborg, & Lewis, 1975; Thorndike, 1973). Furthermore, compre-hension level is also found partially determined by grammatical knowledge (i.e., syntaxknowledge), particularly for older readers (Cain, 2007). To this aim, both formal and infor-mal reading batteries, as well as criterion-referenced and norm-referenced assessmentswere selected in an effort to measure Steve’s literacy competence in a holistic manner.

In selecting a criterion referenced test, we decided on the Qualitative ReadingInventory (QRI-4) (Leslie & Caldwell, 2006). Like most Informal Reading Inventories(IRIs), the QRI-4, provides grade-level word lists as well as reading passages, followedby comprehension questions. IRIs’ use for identifying struggling readers (e.g., Morris,Ervin, & Conrad, 1996; Warrican, 2006) and for understanding unique profiles ofreading difficulties has been well established (Dewitz & Dewitz, 2003). Additionally,the QRI-4 has higher levels of reliability when compared to currently available IRIs(Spector, 2005) having, for example, interrater reliability of .99 for total miscues, .98 forexplicit comprehension, and .98 for implicit comprehension and alternate form reliability(different passages at the same grade level) of .88 (Leslie & Caldwell, 2006). While wefollowed the recommended administration procedure of the QRI-4, we concentrated ourattention on Steve’s performance at the sixth grade level. We did not explore how Stevedid with more difficult texts because the concern of both his family and his teachers wasto help him access information at his grade level.

For the purpose of triangulating and establishing more accurate diagnosis results withthe QRI-4, we also used a norm-referenced literacy assessment, the Woodcock LanguageProficiency Battery–Revised (WLPB–R) (Woodcock & Johnson, 1990). Additionally, spe-cific tests of the WLPB–R, such as Reading Vocabulary and Verbal Analogies, helped usunderstand how he handled deep word knowledge. The Test of Language Development–Intermediate: 3rd edition (TOLD–I:3), a norm-referenced assessment with test reliabilitycoefficients ranging from .92 to .98 (Hammill & Newcomer, 1997), provided additionalinsight into Steve’s command of semantics and his use of syntax. In order to make surethat his reading difficulties were not rooted in difficulties with decoding and orthographicprocessing, we used Words their Way–Intermediate Spelling Inventory (Bear, Invernizzi,Templeton, & Johnston, 2004) to reveal his understanding of spelling patterns and toprovide relevant instructional ideas.

In addition to direct reading assessments, we also measured how Steve actively usedlanguage and how he viewed reading. To this aim, we had him complete an open-endedwriting assignment from a prompt and analyzed his use of organization, syntax and vocab-ulary choice in written language. Furthermore, Steve also completed a reading “attitude”survey (McKenna & Stahl, 2003) to help us learn more about his reading preferences andhabits for the purpose of planning for instruction and insight about his daily reading behav-iors. The summary of the diagnostic results are presented in Table 1, accompanied byexamples and explanations.

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Tabl

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Diagnostic Interpretations

In total, through both the assessments and subsequent tutoring sessions, Steve demon-strated strengths included excellent decoding skills, adequate vocabulary and syntaxknowledge, and ability to recall explicit information from text. Informal conversationswith Steve made it clear that he also possessed extensive world knowledge for his age.However, despite these skills, he struggled with implicit comprehension tasks and showedlimited skills at applying his syntactical knowledge in writing. Based on these findings, wedeveloped a tutoring plan with the goal of giving Steve the tools needed to grapple withthe more inferential aspects of reading comprehension.

Planning and Implementing Tutoring

Returning to CI model (Kintsch, 1988, 1998), we conjectured that Steve may need assis-tance in both local connections (i.e., word level) and global connections (i.e., connectingideas within and beyond the text). Because our assessments revealed that Steve tendedto operate on the explicit or literal level of comprehension, we suspected that a difficultywith inference-making was limiting Steve’s ability to connect more deeply with the text.Therefore, we designed the tutorial lessons to help develop his inferential-thinking abil-ity at multiple levels of text. Toward this aim, we provided lessons on (a) word analogy,(b) short riddles, (c) short mystery stories, and (d) modeling with think-alouds, which aredescribed below. This approach helped us to practice weaving both local and global lev-els of information together to generate well-grounded relational inferences in a systematicmanner. Additionally, by starting at smaller units such as word pairs, Steve more quicklyexperienced success which built his confidence and interest in meeting larger challenges.As mentioned earlier, he was initially disengaged in the tutoring process, but became moreenthusiastic as he could see his growth.

Steve’s Tutorial Lessons

We present an overview of the lessons, and examples of the materials used in Tables 2and 3. In the following section we provide details on how we implemented the process aswell as notes regarding Steve’s progress. As for the time allocation, we spent 10 minutespracticing word analogies in the first five instructional lessons, 20 minutes on five con-secutive lessons working with riddle appreciation and composition, and two 25-minutebuddy readings of two mystery stories followed by take-home reading activities, withreview discussions in the following lessons. It is also important to note that the skill lessonsdevoted to inferential thinking were only a portion of his tutoring time. Within each meet-ing, Steve also read longer pieces of authentic text on topics of interest to him. Continuousmodeling, thinking-alouds, and discussing metaphoric words were also exercises employedthroughout the tutoring, whenever appropriate.

Word Analogy. By virtue of the format (e.g., turtle: reptile :: dog: ____), word analogyrequires readers to figure out the relationship between the first pair and then apply thatrelationship to a second pair of words. They move from concrete (a word pair), to abstract(a relationship type), and back to concrete (a second word pair). Among the eight types ofword analogies (Vacca & Vacca, 2007), Steve’s lessons focused on cause and effect (e.g.,green: go :: red: ____), synonym (e.g., clear: ____ :: blocked: obstructed), and antonym(e.g., come: go :: wet: ____). After working with the more common types, Steve also

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Tabl

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prov

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133

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Tabl

e3

The

ratio

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practiced less common analogy types, such as purpose (e.g., divide: cut :: part: ____)and function (e.g., axe: chop :: ____: ____). Through various sets of analogy patterns,students can scaffold their “mental models” to help them figure out complex concepts(Glynn, 2007). In the process of his word analogy learning, Steve demonstrated incre-mental improvement. Initially, he asked for help in approaching the whole task; next,he accessed words directly from their meanings but without using rationale connections;and finally, he ascertained the relationships through thinking abstractly. Through continu-ous modeling of “think-alouds” (Davey, 1983), Steve strengthened his deductive thinkinghelping him to see the association among words.

These word pair activities helped Steve’s ability to seek commonality among words.According to the structure-mapping theory (Gentner, 1983, 1988; Gentner & Markman,1977) and domain-mapping theory (Rumelhart & Abrahamson, 1973; Tourangeau &Sternberg, 1981, 1982), analogical thinking ability can help readers to organize relatedwords with multiple and figurative meanings of vocabulary more effectively. For exam-ple, by making connections between words, students can understand that while secure andarrogant are both synonyms for confident, their connotations differ. Such thinking abilityis critical when encountering figurative language. For example, when Steve read the phrase“calm pocket” in a news article entitled “‘Free Willy’ whale, Keiko dies” from CNN, hewas initially confused. His tutor had to first explain to Steve the phrase through the literalmeaning of “pocket of calm” first, and then guided Steve to apply that concept to the arti-cle. He had to use contextual clues to imagine where “Willy” lived; that it was not actuallya pocket, but a peaceful swimming area for whales.

Overall, though we practiced Steve’s analogical thinking at both the word and phraselevels, we observed that Steve began to apply his analogical thinking into organizing largerword groups and transferred his knowledge. When we began his tutoring, Steve soughtassistance in all steps of solving analogy pairs. By mid way through the tutoring sessions,he could easily generate a word map with at least six words related to a core conceptand verbalize the relationships. By the end of the tutoring sessions, he was able to makerelationships between two entire texts, for example by comparing Martin Luther King’sefforts to those of Biddy Mason.

Short Riddles. Riddles can be a transitional means enabling students’ progress from wordlevel puzzles to slightly longer texts in an enjoyable manner. Riddles can offer read-ers opportunities to practice integrating local information (e.g., clues) in a logical sense.Steinbergh (1999) pointed out that the figurative language in riddles develops along acontinuum in school curriculum, starting from the use of similes with a concrete object(the second grade), then moving to intuitive senses (the fourth grade), to abstract concepts(the sixth grade), and finally to the conscious mastering of abstract metaphors (the eighthgrade).

Our lessons involving riddles were designed not only to develop Steve’s inferentialthinking ability, but also his higher-order language skills through a series of short riddleexercises geared toward appreciation and composition. First, we guided Steve to appre-ciate riddles that would challenge him to understand “metaphors” in order to encourageSteve to make word-level meaning inferences and work on meta-cognitive skills of mon-itoring comprehension. On the first day, Steve showed great motivation for figuring outthe answers of a list of riddles. However, after spending a few minutes pondering theseriddles, he became disappointed that he could not solve any of them. Seizing the teachablemoment, the tutor modeled and asked Steve questions that would direct his thinking for thefollowing riddle. (The answer is wind.)

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Riddle 1

Voiceless it cries,

Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,

Mouthless mutters.

—J. R. R. Tolkien

Steve’s tutor rephrased the riddle in a more narrative format: “Ok, we know there issomething. You cannot hear it when it cries. It can fly without wings and cut other objectswithout teeth. Sometimes, it mutters but it doesn’t have a mouth.” Steve guessed “fish.”The tutor guided him by pointing out that “While yes, people can’t really hear if a fishcries but a fish does have a mouth.” She then encouraged him to think beyond an animaland to a “natural phenomena.” Steve was still stuck so she offered the explanation of wind.He was still puzzled and asked, “But how can wind cut things?” She explained to himthat the mountains can be marked with wind-cuts, and that strong winds can carry sandthat sweeps at surfaces all day long. However, Steve was dissatisfied by such an abstractanswer.

Second, in order to help Steve think outside the proverbial box, we decided to workon encoding riddles so that he would more explicitly understand their structure. Becausehe was challenged by how riddles would often pose an inanimate object as animated, webegan with a riddle on a concrete object. When asked what he wanted to compose riddlesabout, Steve enthusiastically replied, “Football!” (his favorite sport). Due to his familiaritywith the topic, he quickly produced a list of words related to the concept of “football,”such as “referees” and “side-lines,” and organized the key phrases onto a word map. Then,when requested to take the perspective of “thinking like you are a football,” he wrote downdescriptions like, “You see the stadium, fans of teams, or players.” However, while gettingcloser, he still described the football concretely, instead of like a riddle. The tutor suggestedthat he make the riddle trickier and provide fewer hints by substituting common wordswith synonyms and using more figurative language. After several rounds of rereading andrevisions, he created a “Football Riddle”:

Riddle 2

I get kicked and thrown around,

I feel wind on my skin and laces,

I see people and lights in front of me,

What am I?

After writing his own riddle, Steve approached abstract riddles with greater ease. The pro-cess of writing in more abstract language prepared him with greater understanding whenencountering similar language. Throughout the tutoring sessions, he became quite facile atsolving most types of riddles.

Steve also felt that he was playing fun word games. While we recommend the use ofriddles, it is important to note that when using them, teachers should model think-alouds

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with their students. Otherwise not all students may genuinely understand the logic andhumor of the moment, but simply laugh along with their peers (Zipke, 2008).

Short Mystery Stories. Like riddles and analogies, comprehension of the mystery genrerequires making logical inferences and weaving relevant clues into a multifaceted webof constructed meaning. Logical inferences (e.g., syllogism) can be made more concreteby teachers by purposely selecting texts that demand such thinking. Following criteria byStebick and Dain (2007), we selected text that offered clues for inferences, such as shortmystery stories that rely on the process of deduction. The clues in these texts are generallyexplicit and presented in an entertaining format.

The Encyclopedia Brown series (e.g., Sobol, 1971) centers on the adventures of aprecocious boy detective. Each chapter contains embedded clues and vivid characters thathold readers’ attention. The “answer section” explains the clues in the cases and providesreaders opportunity to self-check whether their inferences are correct in the manner ofimmediate feedback. These short mystery stories highly engaged Steve and provided uswith a means to explicitly practice inference skills within authentic, connected text. Theshort and finite length of each “case” was useful because it allowed for extended time todiscuss the comprehension process in a meta-cognitive manner. The use of short storiesalso helped transition Steve from short texts to longer, more challenging, grade-level texts.

Think-Aloud. We relied on the think-aloud technique (e.g., Davey, 1983) throughout tutor-ing to promote meta-cognitive thinking and help Steve focus on the comprehension aspectof reading rather than the decoding aspect. There is no single, standard operational pro-cedure for implementing think-aloud strategies; however, the process is driven by therationale of modeling and making the comprehension process explicit. The following sec-tion offers some examples of modeling a think-aloud exercise that guided Steve’s readingof Biddy Mason (Pinkney, 2000).

Steve’s tutor challenged him to produce support for his statements rather than remain-ing at a surface-level understanding. During a pre-reading activity, when Steve said that hehad never heard of Biddy Mason, his tutor encouraged him to examine an illustration fromthe story to provide a source for making predictions. She challenged Steve to consider,for example, why houses were featured prominently in the illustration (Biddy Mason wasthe first African-American woman to own land in Los Angeles). By a response “she wasfamous for building up houses around the world,” Steve showed his becoming more accus-tomed to this type of text scrutiny and learning about the cycle of predicting and readingfor confirmation.

Considering Steve’s difficulty with making relational inferences, Steve’s tutor guidedhim to make periodic summaries throughout his reading. This encouraged Steve to con-stantly interact with the text. His tutor modeled her thinking strategies when a connectionbetween complex ideas was needed.

Throughout this work, it became clear that Steve’s difficulties with comprehension didnot result from a lack of familiarity with textual structures; but instead, it stemmed from hisdifficulty with deriving key ideas. When summarizing at the paragraph level, Steve simplycopied down either the first or the last sentence, or pieced together sensational informationwithout integrating ideas. For example, when asked to describe the multiple jobs that Biddyhad held, Steve could only recall that Biddy was “given” as a wedding gift. While this wasa fact from the story, it was not directly connected to the question, and could be classifiedas a “seductive detail” (Harp & Mayer, 1997, 1998).

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In order to help Steve construct relational inferences and not only focus on a discreteevent (Dewitz & Dewitz, 2003), his tutor led him to list the events that occurred in Biddy’searly life and then find the commonalities among these events. After listing the specificfacts of Biddy’s life: being a slave, a mid-wife, and being given a piece of property asa wedding gift, Steve was better able holistically to see what Biddy actually had done.He could then give an inclusive summary of her early life: “as a slave, Biddy had to doall kinds of jobs, but her owners could still sell Biddy for more profits.” In summary, byengaging probing questions during think-alouds (rather than after reading a text), teacherscan enhance students’ different types of thinking strategies (e.g., predicting and makingconnections) and sophisticate their responses/reflections to readings (e.g., associating withrelated concepts).

Progress and Results

As noted in the descriptions of implementation and tutoring notes, there was substantialevidence of Steve’s progress with inferential thinking. As the tasks became more complexand Steve moved from word-level work to riddles to short stories and then to longer texts,he applied skills across situations. He also gained confidence and self-efficacy with tacklingimplicit comprehension questions and being less hesitant in his answers. On the final dayof the 12 tutoring sessions, Steve read two new passages selected from the sixth-grade levelof the Qualitative Reading Inventory (Leslie & Caldwell, 2006) orally (a narrative passage)and silently (an expository passage). He again was successful with the explicit questionsbut also demonstrated notable improvement on the implicit questions, as shown in Figure 1.On the two passages, he answered all explicit questions correctly (100% accuracy) andseven of the eight implicit questions correctly (88% accuracy). Even on the question thathe missed, his answer indicated that he was working to integrate text information and logic,rather than guessing based on his world knowledge. When asked “Why did it take so longto build a pyramid?” in the passage of “Building Pyramid,” (Leslie & Caldwell, 2006) heresponded “it needed a lot of steps. They have to cut the stones, move the stones, and stackthem neatly.” This response indicates that he took information from the text (many steps)and logic (it would take time to create these steps). In summary, although this was not alengthy assessment, the progress was notable, considering that he answered implicit ques-tions with approximately 30% accuracy on the initial assessment. Additionally, through

100.00%

90.00%

80.00%

70.00%

60.00%

50.00%

40.00%

30.00%

20.00%

10.00%

0.00%

Acc

urac

y R

ate

Pre-test Post-test

Explicit Questions

Implicit Questions

FIGURE 1 Progress of Steve’s comprehension ability on explicit and implicit questions.

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informal updates from Steve’s mother, Steve’s reading comprehension progress was evi-dent in school. During the semester of the tutoring, she noted improvement in both hiscomprehension skills in content classes and his increased interest for academics. Thispositive trajectory of grades continued after the intervention ended.

Final Thoughts

Students who demonstrate accuracy and fluency (as measured by speed) with reading butstruggle with comprehension are often able to navigate undetected through schools by, asTovani (2000) states, “fake reading.” Fake readers rely on class discussions and lecturesto glean information. However, this frequently invisible group of students is not actuallygaining the long term skills needed for success in life. This case study of Steve portrays aseemingly skilled reader, with many funds of knowledge, who demonstrated great difficultywith the inferential aspects of comprehension. In this study, we provide rationales regard-ing selecting proper assessment batteries to detect those students struggling with higherlevels of comprehension. Furthermore, we also offer ideas on how to facilitate the teachingof inferential skills in a scaffolded manner. Our finding is supported by research in compre-hension instruction which indicates that while strategy instruction is effective, the length ofinstruction does not create effectiveness. Meta-analyses indicate (e.g., Rosenshine, Meister,& Chapman, 1996) that short reading strategy programs of six lessons were commensuratewith longer programs which could include as many as 50 lessons.

We recommend starting inference instruction from relatively simple word-level activ-ities, such as analogies and word games, and quickly moving to more authentic texts. Theteacher can help students make the connections between the levels of text so that studentsunderstand that you can apply the same type of thinking strategy to analogies that you doin comprehending a long text. An important commonality among the four teaching ideaspresented in this study is the emphasis on explicit modeling of meta-cognitive strategiesby tutors and teachers to enable students to think logically while reading.

Although the curriculum was found effective for Steve, there are significant limitationsin this study. First, due to the nature of a highly integrated intervention, it is difficult todetermine what aspects, or extent, that each of the four main teaching activities contributedto Steve’s improvements. Second, additional non-instructional factors, particularly the one-on-one attention as a feature of tutoring, may have contributed to Steve’s improvement.Despite these limitations, all the activities in this study followed a logical progressionfor developing inference-making and adhered to the gradual release of a responsibilitiesmodel (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). Steve’s gradual development in inferential thinkingfrom each lesson implied that he was becoming a capable self-reader applying his skillsmore naturally.

The current study provides evidence that inferential reading comprehension is ateachable skill which should be explicitly modeled and guided in a logical manner. Theinstructional ideas presented here, while used in a one-on-one tutoring session, can also betranslated to a classroom setting, particularly the modeling component. In fact, the class-room setting provides a richness of experiences that cannot be replicated in a tutoringsituation. For example, the classroom setting would allow for powerful peer-modeling inwhich students can share, via think-alouds, the manner in which they construct meaning.Additionally, through the use of classroom discussions and literature circles, students canfurther practice skills of prediction and reflection, which will deepen and broaden students’comprehension of texts.

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Finally, this article reveals an important subtype of reading difficulty: inferential think-ing in reading comprehension. Through this study, we would like to illustrate for classroomteachers that a well-developed reading ability consists primarily of good decoding andcomprehension abilities. There are students who have excellent decoding skills, adequateknowledge of single words, and skills to locate explicit information, yet may still have dif-ficulty in organizing and weaving together the information they are able to retrieve froma text. Only by ensuring that our students are in possession of comprehensive readingabilities can we prepare them for “reading to learn.”

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Documents

Moving From Explicit to Implicit: A Case Study of Improving Inferential Comprehension