I Can Read, But I Don't Understand

Description of Learner:
Annie was born in the U.S., and is now in her early 30s. She scored at 6th grade reading level on the TABE (Tests of Adult Basic Education: CTB/McGraw-Hill). She wants to get her high school diploma.

Challenge Faced:
Annie recently confided to me that she always had problems with reading in school, and that both her sons also have reading problems. She thought this strange, since all three have always read a lot at home. She said, "We can all READ, but we don't always understand it real well. We don't have a problem with the words. It's the understanding."

What We Did:
Recently, after a class reading activity, she told me she was really learning a lot about reading from the classes. In the reading activities, I always mention what "good readers" do when they read - such as, guess at what words mean, jump over what they don't understand and then go back and try to understand them, scan for key information, but NOT read slowly because reading slowly actually slows down comprehension. Before a reading activity, I always discussed these reading strategies with the class. I also employed pre-reading activities like brainstorming on the topic of the reading, and post-reading comprehension questions that require going beyond the text (such as synthesizing information, drawing conclusions, and making inferences). Annie told me she used to read everything very slowly, thinking that would help her understand better, but since she has been involved in our class, she has begun to see how much better it is to read a little faster. She also recently mentioned that she has learned to pay more attention to what she is reading, because she sometimes jumped to conclusions before letting everything sink in. She sometimes said, of basic comprehension questions, "That's a trick question!" Then she seemed to feel very proud when she could answer a question correctly.

Analysis:
It seemed Annie may have been concentrating too much on individual words, so the larger meaning of what she was reading was escaping her. By calling her attention to speeding up a little, she herself felt she understood more.

What I Learned:
Comprehension questions that require more than reading answers straight from the text seem to help students get a better idea of what reading is: it is not just knowing the words, but being able to do something with them. Comprehension questions beyond factual recall of what was read really help students think about what they read, and think more about what they have understood when they read.

Annie, Group Discussion:

If people can follow the dialogues, conversations and plots of TV shows, why can't they understand written text when they read it?
For struggling readers, it might be a matter of spending too much time, effort and short-term memory on decoding or pronouncing the words which leaves too little short-term memory available for meaning making.

It seems that some people do not understand what "reading" is, and we need to help them define it. Annie thought she was "reading" when she recognized the written words, and she thought her only problem was in understanding what she was reading.

Did you try to read aloud to her? This has worked well for some of my students.
That is a good idea. The class did read aloud when working on reading. I first read aloud (modeling) while the learners followed along silently, then they all read again to themselves. For a third reading, students chose to follow along silently, sat and listened without reading, or read along aloud. It is always interesting, as there was always a mix of selected strategies during the third reading! It proves that people do not learn or read in the same way.

Do you think Annie has a learning disability?
Not necessarily. She needed to learn some reading strategies. She also needed to know more about what "reading" really is. Sometimes, I think she did not expect to understand what she was reading. Perhaps she did not know that an expectation of understanding is part of what good readers do. It is very easy to label those with reading difficulties as learning-disabled and assume they can't learn, but that's not fair. Even if a person has a documented learning disability in reading, there are strategies that can be used to help that person learn to read. Our job may be to find the strategy that fits the person's needs.

Summary:

Director's Comments:

From the description, it is difficult to know which specific strategies you used with Annie other than describing the reading process; that alone may have been a big help. To address comprehension, you could teach a strategy called Read, See and Ask. The student is taught to stop after reading a sentence or two and close her eyes to mentally create an image of what the words just read mean to her. It is important that the student images sentence meaning and not the printed words read. Once she has an image, she then asks herself questions about the image. If she cannot answer her own questions, she continues to read by holding that particular question in mind. She could repeat this process every one to three sentences until it becomes automatic. Some good readers refer to this as 'making a movie in my head'. Once she images as she reads, she may read full paragraphs and build up to continuous reading.

While she may have some short-term memory deficits, it sounds like she may have greater difficulty with undivided attention to the reading task. Movement and sounds around her (and even internal thoughts and feelings) could divert her attention away from the content being read. It may be wise to ask Annie what pops into her mind when she is reading that is unrelated to the reading material. By helping her realize that distractions generally prevent comprehension, she could experiment with various ways to keep focused. Giving herself a short pep talk before reading and then reminding herself to think about what the author is saying are two easy strategies to consider.