Spanish primary school students find it difficult to understand what they read. It is the conclusion of the results of the latest report from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) on the progress of fourth grade students in reading comprehension. This study (called PIRLS for its acronym in English) evaluates the trends in the level of student learning, it has been carried out every five years since 2001 and Spain has participated since 2006.
Understanding a text is an academic task and forms the basis for learning other subjects. Precisely for this reason we ask ourselves what we are doing wrong and how this reading comprehension can be improved.
We can use, for example, prototype text schemes that allow us to know how the text is organized. Include numbers, underlining with different colors, etc., in order to help the reader identify the main ideas and the secondary ideas. Finally, ask ourselves questions about the content that has just been read.
Teachers have proven methods to improve comprehension. These methods are based on students using strategies that allow them to read more actively and deeply. We highlight some of them, proposed by the team of the American educational psychologist Roger H. Bruning, a reference in this field: promote collaboration and interaction between students to facilitate mutual learning and encourage an exchange of questions and answers, creating a dialogue between the teacher and the students. Take advantage of playful interactions with the aim of developing autonomous learning skills. As well as developing reading comprehension through the analysis and understanding of the key concepts present in the text.
The improvement of reading comprehension is developed through three stages: In the initial moments, before starting to read, we can apply strategies prior to reading. For example: recapitulate everything we already know about the topic we are going to read, that is, activate our prior knowledge; encourage us to make predictions –such as “what would happen if…”–, anticipate possible endings to a text, hypothesize about situations. Finally, ask ourselves questions about what we know about the text we are dealing with. For example, if I am going to read a text on climate change, what do I know about climate change?
Strategies during reading: identify relevant parts of the text (with underlining), use support and review strategies that help us understand and retain the information in the text. For example, preparing summaries, taking notes, creating diagrams or concept maps, generating questions about the content, looking for definitions of unknown words, among others.
Finally, when we finish reading a text it is possible to apply other strategies after reading. For example: identify the main idea, create a schematic summary, formulate new questions and answer those formulated at the beginning of the text.
Renowned American educational psychologist Richard Mayer recommends using advance organizers to increase reading comprehension, explicitly teach important strategies, and encourage your students to read, be active readers, and active vocabulary learners.
In this line, the psychologist Fernando Doménech Betoret proposes five basic strategies to promote reading comprehension:
Determine the importance of what is being read: underline the main idea and the secondary ideas with different colors, for example. Summarize the information: create a different new text that represents the original idea of the text. Make inferences: the texts leave things unsaid and understanding depends on us deducing the information that is not present.
Generating Questions: Proficient readers often ask questions about their understanding.
Constantly monitor comprehension, don't wait for the end: Proficient readers know when they understand and when they don't understand.
