DEVELOPING READING COMPREHENSION ABILITIES

Part III examines in detail the major components of reading that combine to build reading comprehension abilities. These components include (a) syntactic knowledge and processing skills; (b) reading strategies that support comprehension; (c) the integration of reading strategies and higher-level processing to develop the strategic reader; (d) the role of discourse knowledge; and (e) the centrality of vocabulary knowledge. Part I identified component cognitive skills that combine to form reading abilities; these included several skills and resources that either were not solely intended to support reading comprehension (e.g., goal setting, inferencing, working memory) or that directly influenced reading comprehension only at certain stages of development (and less directly at other stages) (e.g., phonological awareness, word-recognition efficiency). In contrast, the specific topics discussed in Part III all strongly influence reading comprehension and are central topics for reading instruction.