research problem about reading comprehension

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Problem-Solving the Complexities of Reading Comprehension

Being able to comprehend written text is an essential life skill. Consider all the ways in which one uses reading comprehension skills in everyday life. Everything from reading the comics in the newspaper and social media online to reading the voter's pamphlet or a job application are impacted by one's comprehension skills. Because of its importance, school psychologists need to understand which reading and language skills are critical to the development of reading comprehension.

It probably won't come as a surprise that reading comprehension is a complex construct consisting of several component skills and processes that work together in an integrated, and often synergistic, fashion. As such, when it comes to understanding reading comprehension problems, we may need to untangle the variety of reasons why a student might struggle.

The Complex Nature of Reading Comprehension Problems

Some of the reasons students experience reading comprehension difficulties include poor basic skills in phonemic awareness and decoding. While these basic skills may impede reading development, students may exhibit reading comprehension problems for reasons beyond these basic skills, for example, vocabulary and higher order language skills (e.g., figurative language). In what follows, I describe how several skills beyond phonemic awareness and decoding contribute to comprehension development as well as difficulties with comprehension.

Reading fluency. A student's reading fluency must be sufficient to support comprehension and focus their attention on understanding the meaning of text, rather than on decoding words. Fluent readers not only read words accurately and effortlessly, they simultaneously integrate understanding of vocabulary and background knowledge and attend to prosodic cues (i.e., they read with expression) when reading connected text. As such, reading fluency is not merely about speed, but rather the quality of reading.

Vocabulary and word knowledge. Vocabulary impacts comprehension directly with respect to the understanding of text and indirectly because knowing a word's meaning impacts word recognition fluency. A strong vocabulary makes it easier for students to understand text and become fluent while reading. Breadth of vocabulary knowledge is related to background knowledge. Greater background knowledge helps students comprehend more challenging text. Notably, vocabulary is one of the largest contributors to reading comprehension skill. Work by Stahl and Nagy (2006) suggests that vocabulary knowledge contributes 50–60% of the variance in reading comprehension outcomes. Students with more poorly developed vocabulary show declining comprehension skills later on in elementary and middle school. Oral language is a fundamental building block for learning. Students who come from a rich spoken language environment often have less difficulty comprehending text.

Syntax and grammar. Students with comprehension difficulties tend to have more difficulty with word order (Mokhtari & Thompson, 2006) as well as difficulties in correcting sentences or grammatical errors (Cain & Oakhill, 2007). Knowledge of syntax and grammar aids student comprehension by providing greater ease with:

• chunking sentences into meaningful units,
• making sure decoding is accurate so they can fix decoding errors quickly and not disrupt the flow of their reading,
• verifying the meaning of unfamiliar words, and
• clarifying meaning of ambiguous words, or words with multiple meanings.

Morphological awareness. Ways in which knowledge of morphology aids student comprehension include:

• increased vocabulary as students make connections between root words and the new words created by adding prefixes and suffixes (e.g., act + ion = action; re + act = react; re + act + ion = reaction);
• increased knowledge of syntax and grammatical understanding; and
• increased fluency in reading connected text, which frees up cognitive resources that can then be allocated for comprehension.

Story coherence/text structure awareness. These elements involve a student's skill in following the organization of a passage, as well as identification of antecedents and referents in text. Story coherence is related to the quality of a story, the structural elements of it, and how these elements relate to one another in a meaningful way. This skill is logically connected to a student’s standard of coherence, which is related to the expectation that text should make sense (Perfetti & Adlof, 2012) and the extent to which the reader notices when it does not and makes efforts to maintain coherence (van den Broek, 2012). Students who struggle with comprehension tend to have difficulty producing a well-structured and integrated story, identifying the main event or main point (Yuill & Oakhill, 1991), as well as correctly sequencing stories (Cain & Oakhill, 2006). Inferences made about what will happens next in a story (i.e, prediction) also should support story coherence (Perfetti & Adlof, 2012).

Important Characteristics of Reading Comprehension Diagnostic Measures

So how might we pinpoint student difficulties in these critical component skill areas? One way to do so is by using diagnostic tools that directly assess them and can be linked to targeted intervention. Pinpointing instructional needs in these critical areas can provide students the keys to unlocking the power of reading comprehension. In addition, assessment should be as time efficient as possible, so that more time may be allocated to intervention. Furthermore, assessment is most informative when it provides an opportunity to directly observe the student performing the skill of interest and affords opportunities to examine what prompting and teaching procedures elicit correct responding. Finally, the assessment should be valid and reliable for the decisions that the results will be used to make. One example of an assessment that fits these characteristics is Acadience Reading Diagnostic Comprehension, Fluency, and Oral Language (CFOL). [1]

Resources for Reading Comprehension Instruction and Intervention

Several free resources address reading interventions by essential skill (e.g., phonemic awareness, phonics/decoding, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary). Examples of these sources include the Florida Center for Reading Research (see Student Center Activities ), Free Reading (see Find Activities ), Reading Rockets (see Target the Problem ), and the Vaughn Gross Center for Reading and Language Arts (see Materials ).

An additional free resource for improving language and reading comprehension is called Let's Know! , which is available from the Language and Reading Research Consortium (LARRC) at Ohio State University. This 25-week curriculum supplement is available for free download from their website and is available in both English and Spanish (see https://larrc.ehe.osu.edu/curriculum/ ).

Beyond these material resources, freely available webinars and trainings on these topics exist. Examples include the following:

• Video series containing from Nancy Lewis Hennessy on the Comprehension Construction Zone: A Blueprint for Instruction posted at Middle Tennessee State University, available here .
• IDA conference recording – Reading Comprehension Strategies for Students With Dyslexia , available here .
• IDA sponsored webinar on Supporting Comprehension Through Writing About Reading: Instructional Suggestions, available here .

Related Webinar:  Problem-Solving the Complexities of Reading Comprehension

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. (2006). Profiles of children with specific reading comprehension difficulties. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 76 (4), 683–696.

Cain, K., & Oakhill, J. (2007). Reading comprehension difficulties: Correlates, causes, and consequences. In K. Cain & J. Oakhill (Eds.), Children’s comprehension problems in oral and written language: A cognitive perspective (pp. 41–75). Guilford.

Mokhtari, K. & Thompson, H. B. (2006). How problems of reading fluency and comprehension are related to difficulties in syntactic awareness skills among fifth graders. Reading Research Quarterly, 46 (1), 73–94.

Perfetti, C. A., & Adlof, S. M. (2012). Reading comprehension: A conceptual framework from word meaning to text meaning. In J. P. Sabatini, E. Albro, & T. O’Reilly (Eds.), Measuring up: Advances in how we assess reading ability (pp. 3–20). Rowman & Littlefield Education.

Stahl, S. A., & Nagy, W. E. (2006). Teaching word meanings. Erlbaum.

van den Broek, P. (2012). Individual and developmental differences in reading comprehension: Assessing cognitive processes and outcomes. In J. P. Sabatini, E. R. Albro, & T. O’Reilly (Eds), Measuring up: Advances in how to assess reading ability (pp. 39–58). Rowman & Littlefield.

Yuill, N. M, & Oakhill, J. V. (1991). Children’s problems in text comprehension: An experimental invesitigation. Cambridge University Press.

[1] Information about Acadience Reading Diagnostic CFOL is available through emailing [email protected] or going to the Acadience Learning website: www.acadiencelearning.org

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Learning science might help kids read better

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A growing chorus of education researchers, pundits and “science of reading” advocates are calling for young children to be taught more about the world around them . It’s an indirect way of teaching reading comprehension. The theory is that what we grasp from what we read depends on whether we can hook it to concepts and topics that we already know. Natalie Wexler’s 2019 best-selling book, The Knowledge Gap , championed knowledge-building curricula and more schools around the country, from Baltimore to Michigan to Colorado , are adopting these content-filled lesson plans to teach geography, astronomy and even art history. 

Makers of knowledge-building curricula say their lessons are based on research, but the truth is that there is scant classroom evidence that building knowledge first increases future reading comprehension. 

In 2023, University of Virginia researchers promoted a study of Colorado charter schools that had adopted E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge curriculum . Children who had won lotteries to attend these charter schools had higher reading scores than students who lost the lotteries. But it was impossible to tell whether the Core Knowledge curriculum itself made the difference or if the boost to reading scores could be attributed to other things that these charter schools were doing, such as hiring great teachers and training them well. 

More importantly, the students at these charter schools were largely from middle and upper middle class families. And what we really want to know is whether knowledge building at school helps poorer children, who are less likely to be exposed to the world through travel, live performances and other experiences that money can buy.

A new study, published online on Feb. 26, 2024, in the peer-reviewed journal Developmental Psychology, now provides stronger causal evidence that building background knowledge can translate into higher reading achievement for low-income children . The study took place in an unnamed, large urban school district in North Carolina where most of the students are Black and Hispanic and 40% are from low-income families.

In 2019, a group of researchers, led by James Kim, a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, randomly selected 15 of the district’s 30 elementary schools to teach first graders special knowledge-building lessons for three years, through third grade. Kim, a reading specialist, and other researchers had developed two sets of multi-year lesson plans, one for science and one for social studies. Students were also given related books to read during the summer. ( This research was funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report. )

The remaining 15 elementary schools in the district continued to teach their students as usual, still delivering some social studies and science instruction, but not these special lessons. Regular reading class was untouched in the experiment. All 30 schools were using the same reading curriculum, Expeditionary Learning , which follows science of reading principles and teaches phonics. 

COVID-19 hit in the middle of the experiment. When schools shut down in the spring of 2020, the researchers scrapped the planned social studies units for second graders. In 2021, students were still not attending school in person. The researchers revised their science curriculum and decided to give an abridged online version to all 30 schools instead of just half. In the end, children in the original 15 schools received one year of social studies lessons and three years of science lessons compared to only one year of science in the comparison group. 

Still, approximately 1,000 students who had received the special science and social studies lessons in first and second grades outperformed the 1,000 students who got only the abbreviated online science in third grade. Their reading and math scores on the North Carolina state tests were higher not only in third grade, but also in fourth grade, more than a year after the knowledge-building experiment ended. 

It wasn’t a huge boost to reading achievement, but it was significant and long-lasting. It cost about $400 per student in instructional materials and teacher training.

Timothy Shanahan, a literacy expert and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was not involved in this research or the development of these science lessons, praised the study. “The study makes it very clear (as have a few others recently) that it is possible to combine reading with social studies and science curriculum in powerful ways that can improve both literacy and content knowledge,” he said by email. 

Connecting background knowledge to reading comprehension is not a new idea. A famous 1987 experiment documented that children who were weaker readers but knowledgeable about baseball understood a reading passage about baseball better than children who were stronger readers but didn’t know much about the sport. 

Obviously, it’s not realistic for schools to attempt to familiarize students with every topic they might encounter in a book. And there is disagreement among researchers about how general knowledge of the world translates into higher reading performance.

Kim thinks that a knowledge-building curriculum doesn’t need to teach many topics. Random facts, he says, are not important. He argues for depth instead of breadth. He says it’s important to construct a thoughtful sequence of lessons over the years, allowing students to see how the same patterns crop up in different ways. He calls these patterns “schemas.” In this experiment, for example, students learned about animal survival in first grade and dinosaur extinction in second grade. In third grade, that evolved into a more general understanding of how living systems function. By the end of third grade, many students were able to see how the idea of functioning systems can apply to inanimate objects, such as skyscrapers. 

It’s the patterns that can be analogized to new circumstances, Kim explained. Once a student is familiar with the template, a new text on an unfamiliar topic can be easier to grasp.

Kim and his team also paired the science lessons with clusters of vocabulary words that were likely to come up again in the future – almost like wine pairings with a meal. 

The full benefits of this kind of knowledge building didn’t materialize until after several years of coordinated instruction. In the first years, students were only able to transfer their ability to comprehend text on one topic to another if the topics were very similar. This study indicates that as their content knowledge deepened, their ability to generalize increased as well.

There’s a lot going on here: a spiraling curriculum that revisits and builds upon themes year after year; an explicit teaching of underlying patterns; new vocabulary words, and a progression from the simple to the complex. 

There are many versions of knowledge-rich curricula and this one isn’t about exposing students to a classical canon. It remains unclear if all knowledge-building curricula work as well. Other programs sometimes replace the main reading class with knowledge-building lessons. This one didn’t tinker with regular reading class. 

The biggest challenge with the approach used in the North Carolina experiment is that it requires schools to coordinate lessons across grades. That’s hard. Some teachers may want to keep their favorite units on, say, growing a bean plant, and may bristle at the idea of throwing away their old lesson plans.

It’s also worth noting that students’ math scores improved as much as their reading scores did in this North Carolina experiment. It might seem surprising that a literacy intervention would also boost math. But math also requires a lot of reading; the state’s math tests were full of word problems. Any successful effort to boost reading skills is also likely to have positive spillovers into math, researchers explained.

School leaders are under great pressure to boost test scores. To do that, they’ve often doubled time spent on reading and cut science and social studies classes. Studies like this one suggest that those cuts may have been costly, further undermining reading achievement instead of improving it. As researchers discover more about the science of reading, it may well turn out to be that more time on science itself is what kids need to become good readers.

This story about background knowledge was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Proof Points newsletter .

Reading print is better for comprehension, study finds

Leisure reading on paper helps with text comprehension better than reading on digital devices, according to a new study.

Driving the news: "The main conclusion is that leisure reading habits on screen are minimally related to reading comprehension," researchers at the University of Valencia found.

By the numbers: The researchers, who analyzed more than two dozen studies, said "the relationship between the frequency of reading printed texts and text comprehension is much higher (between 0.30 and 0.40) than what we found for leisure digital reading habits (0.05)."

• "This means, for example, that if a student spends 10 hours reading books on paper, their comprehension will probably be 6 to 8 times greater than if they read on digital devices for the same amount of time," study co-authors Cristina Vargas and Ladislao Salmerón said .

Of note: The study also found that as students get older, the relationship between recreational reading on digital devices and text comprehension improves.

Details: The researchers analyzed 25 studies on reading comprehension published between 2000 and 2022, with more than 450,000 participants.

• "One might have expected that reading for informational purposes (i.e., visiting Wikipedia or other educational websites; reading news, or reading e-books) would be much more positively related to comprehension, but this is not the case," one researcher said.
• The study was published earlier this week in the Review of Educational Research .

Go deeper: Attempts to ban books at public libraries surge at record levels

Get the rundown of the biggest stories of the day with Axios Daily Essentials.

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Reading Comprehension Deficits in Adolescents: Addressing Underlying Language Abilities

Marilyn a. nippold.

a University of Oregon, Eugene

The purpose of this article is to discuss reading comprehension deficits in adolescents in relation to their word reading skills and lexical and syntactic development. Although reading comprehension strategies (e.g., “Find the main idea”) are often recommended, it is argued that before these can be effective, students' underlying language deficits should be addressed.

Data from a longitudinal study are analyzed to determine the relationship between reading comprehension, word reading, and lexical and syntactic development in adolescents.

The findings indicate that poor reading comprehension in adolescents is predicted by concurrent deficits in word reading ability, lexical development, and syntactic development.

When poor comprehension is accompanied by deficits in word reading ability and/or lexical and syntactic development, intervention should target the underlying areas of deficiency. Studies designed to improve reading comprehension in adolescents are needed.

Many adolescents struggle to succeed in schools today because of underlying language impairments or weak language skills. This research note discusses the relationship between language development and academic success with respect to reading comprehension. Collaborative actions that could be taken to boost the level of reading comprehension in adolescents will be discussed, and an intervention study designed to evaluate those recommendations will be outlined.

Introduction

The ability to read and comprehend textbooks assigned in schools is essential for mastering the content of the curriculum in a wide range of subject areas. At the high school level, for example, adolescents are expected to read, analyze, and discuss challenging material in classes such as biology, chemistry, civics, economics, health, history, mathematics, and physics. Moreover, most textbooks at that level are written in the expository genre, often called the “language of the curriculum,” one of the most difficult genres for readers to comprehend ( Ehren, 2010 ; Nippold & Scott, 2010 ; Snyder & Caccamise, 2010 ; Ward-Lonergan, 2010 ).

The complexity of this task is apparent in the following expository passage that describes air pollution, drawn from a textbook used to teach Earth science to high school students, ages 14–18 years. To facilitate analysis of the passage, all sentences have been coded for main and subordinate clauses as follows: main = [MC]; adverbial [ADV], gerundive [GER], infinitive [INF], participial [PRT], and nominal [NOM] (see Nippold, 2014 ).

Pollution can change [MC] the chemical composition of the atmosphere and disrupt [MC] its natural cycles and functions. Fossil-fuel combustion is [MC] the major source of air pollution. Most of this pollution comes [MC] from motor vehicles and coal or oil-burning power plants. Motor vehicles, like those in Figure 18, release [MC] carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, soot, and other pollutants. Some of the pollutants react [MC] to form [INF] smog. Power plants release [MC] sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. These pollutants combine [MC] with water vapor in the air to create [INF] acid precipitation…. The burning [GER] of fossil fuels also produces [MC] carbon dioxide, an important greenhouse gas. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased [MC] since industrialization began [ADV] in the nineteenth century. This increase has altered [MC] the carbon cycle and contributed [MC] to unnatural warming [GER] of the lower atmosphere, known [PRT] as global warming…. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once used [PRT] in air conditioners and plastic foam production destroy [MC] ozone in the stratosphere layer of the atmosphere. Researchers say [MC] that a significant loss of ozone could result [NOM] in an increased incidence of health problems like cataracts and skin cancers because more of the sun's UV radiation would reach [ADV] Earth's surface. ( Tarbuck & Lutgens, 2011 , p. 110)

Word Reading Skills

To comprehend this passage independently, an adolescent would need to possess word reading skills sufficient to allow for accurate, efficient, and rapid recognition or decoding of numerous abstract and morphologically complex terms that occur in nearly every sentence (e.g., chemical composition, fossil-fuel combustion, industrialization, chlorofluorocarbons ). The ability to read words fluently relies upon specific linguistic and metalinguistic skills, including phonological awareness and knowledge of the relationship between speech sounds and letters, known as the alphabetic principle. Most children acquire basic competence in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle during the early school years ( Aarnoutse, Van Leeuwe, Voeten, & Oud, 2001 ; Kamhi & Catts, 2012 ). However, further refinements occur beyond this point, especially in the ability to decode morphologically complex words, a skill that requires morphological awareness ( Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010 ). An adolescent who struggles to read these types of words would have difficulty understanding the quoted science passage.

Lexical Development

In addition to being able to read the words in the science passage, the adolescent must know the meaning of those words or be able to discern their meanings through metalinguistic strategies ( Nippold & Sun, 2008 ). Knowledge of words and the ability to learn new words constitutes lexical development. Key strategies for word learning when reading include attending to context clues ( Carnine, Kameenui, & Coyle, 1984 ; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985 ; Sternberg, 1987 ) and performing a morphological analysis ( Anglin, 1993 ; Nagy, Diakidoy, & Anderson, 1993 ; White, Power, & White, 1989 ). Although knowledge of word learning strategies begins in the early school years, proficiency in using them increases as students grow older and have more experience with them ( Carnine et al., 1984 ; Nagy et al., 1993 ). Moreover, research has shown that explicit instruction in morphological analysis of words drawn from expository textbooks can improve the reading comprehension levels of adolescents who have poor reading skills ( Vaughn et al., 2015 ).

Syntactic Development

In addition to lexical development, syntactic development plays a key role in reading comprehension ( Poulsen & Gravgaard, 2016 ). Syntax is a system of rules governing the ways in which words can be combined into phrases, clauses, and sentences to express meaning ( Kamhi & Catts, 2012 ). Inspection of the science passage indicates that many of the sentences are long and complex, containing numerous words and clauses that are organized to convey specific meanings. Yet the role of syntax in reading comprehension is often overlooked ( Scott, 2009 ).

The importance of syntax becomes apparent upon realizing how each clause in the passage contributes unique information. In the final paragraph, for example, the sentence beginning with “Chlorofluorocarbons” contains a participial clause that tells why CFCs were used (to produce refrigerants and plastic foam), and the main clause tells why they are undesirable (they destroy ozone). In the sentence that follows, the main clause (“Researchers say that…”) contains a metalinguistic verb ( say ) that introduces a nominal clause that explains why the loss of ozone is undesirable (i.e., it leads to health problems such as cataracts and cancer). This sentence concludes with an adverbial clause that explains how this happens (it allows the sun's UV radiation to reach the Earth's surface, implying that it also reaches human beings). A reader who cannot interpret these clauses will have difficulty comprehending these explanations.

Topic Knowledge

In addition to having solid word reading skills and sufficient lexical and syntactic development, to fully understand this passage, the reader would need to have knowledge of topics that are mentioned but not explained (e.g., industrialization in the 19th century and its relationship to air quality). This point is supported by a number of studies that have shown that topic knowledge makes a substantial contribution to reading comprehension in school-age children, adolescents, and adults, especially in relation to expository texts (e.g., Caillies, Denhière, & Kintsch, 2002 ; Cromley & Azevedo, 2007 ; McKeown, Beck, Sinatra, & Loxterman, 1992 ; McNamara & Kintsch, 1996 ; Rydland, Aukrust, & Fulland, 2012 ). According to Kintsch (1994) , readers who are more knowledgeable about a topic can draw more inferences and create richer and more coherent mental representations, allowing better comprehension to occur.

Middle school and high school teachers expect their students to be able to read expository textbooks in order to learn the content of the curriculum and gain the necessary topic knowledge ( Ehren, 2010 ). Given that topic knowledge is acquired largely through reading ( Snyder & Caccamise, 2010 ), adolescents who avoid reading because they find it arduous and unrewarding are likely to know less about a range of topics. This limitation will compound their difficulties in comprehending books written in the expository genre, resulting in poor academic achievement.

Addressing Problems in Reading Comprehension

Educators frequently recommend that reading comprehension problems in adolescents be addressed by teaching students to use comprehension strategies. For an expository text, these strategies may include previewing the passage for its likely content, monitoring comprehension by asking oneself questions about the passage, finding the main idea, and summarizing the key points in one's own words ( Boardman, Scornavacco, & Klinger, 2013 ). According to Boardman et al., teachers are advised to introduce each strategy, one at a time, by modeling it for their students and providing guided practice in which the students, working in small groups, apply it to a passage of text they have just read. Students then engage in a discussion with their group members about the meaning of the passage. Although these strategies may be helpful to many adolescents, if some students have deficits in word reading ability or in lexical or syntactic development, it may be difficult for them to apply the strategies effectively. This is particularly the case with respect to finding the main idea or summarizing the key points because these two strategies assume the student can understand at the sentence level. However, the science passage on air pollution, discussed here, contains many long and complex sentences, dense with information, that would be difficult for students with language impairments to read and understand on an individual basis. Given that every word, clause, and sentence contributes to the overall meaning of the passage, it may be necessary to address the students' underlying word reading, lexical, and syntactic deficits before expecting them to use these strategies successfully.

The Iowa Project

What is the evidence for underlying deficits and their impact on reading comprehension in adolescents? To answer this question, I discuss the results of a longitudinal study of language development that was conducted with a large cohort of children who were living in the midwestern United States ( Tomblin & Nippold, 2014 ). Participants originally had been recruited for the study from classrooms located in urban, suburban, and rural public school districts of Iowa and Illinois using epidemiological sampling techniques designed to represent the population of monolingual English-speaking kindergarten children in the United States. Known as the Iowa Project, the study identified each participating child at kindergarten (age 6) as having typical language development (TLD), specific language impairment (SLI), or nonspecific language impairment (NLI) using norm-referenced standardized tests. By definition, in children with TLD, nonverbal cognition and language development are average or above average; in children with SLI, nonverbal cognition is average or above average but language development is below average; and in children with NLI, both nonverbal cognition and language development are below average ( Leonard, 2014 ; Tomblin & Nippold, 2014 ).

As a principal investigator on the Iowa Project, I was able to access and analyze data that had been collected on each participant over a 10-year period. In this longitudinal investigation, each child was reevaluated at Grades 2, 4, 8, and 10 (at ages 8, 10, 14, and 16 years, respectively) and given a battery of norm-referenced standardized tests that examined, among other things, language development and reading. Here I report on the results of statistical analyses that I conducted using data from Grade 8 (age 14) for the three groups (TLD, n = 247; SLI, n = 102; and NLI, n = 77). At that point in time, participants in the study were 56% male and 44% female; and 85% White, 12% Black, and 3% other ( Tomblin & Nippold, 2014 ).

The findings are examined for lexical (LEX) development, syntactic (SYN) development, word reading (WDR) ability, and reading comprehension (RDC). Each adolescent's performance in each area was based on a composite of standard scores from two norm-referenced measures. For LEX, those measures were the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Revised Edition (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981 ) and the Expressive subtest of the Comprehensive Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (CREVT; Wallace & Hammill, 1994 ); for SYN, they were the Concepts and Directions and Recalling Sentences subtests from the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Third Edition (CELF-III; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995 ); for WDR, the measures were the Word Identification and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests, Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987 ); and for RDC, they were the Passage Comprehension subtest of the WRMT-R and the Comprehension subtest of the Gray Oral Reading Tests, Third Edition (GORT-3; Wiederholt & Bryant, 1992 ). The results are reported in Table 1 .

Means (and standard deviations) for each language group (TLD, SLI, NLI) on the lexical (LEX), syntactic (SYN), word reading (WDR), and reading comprehension (RDC) composites a at Grade 8.

Note.  All differences between groups were statistically significant. From Later Language Development: School-Age Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults by M. A. Nippold. Austin, TX: P-Ed. Copyright © 2016 by PRO-ED, Inc. Adapted with permission.

Composites: LEX = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-–Revised Edition (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981 ) + Expressive subtest of the Comprehensive Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (CREVT; Wallace & Hammill, 1994 ); SYN = Concepts and Directions and Recalling Sentences subtests of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Third Edition (CELF-III; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995 ); WRD = Word Identification and Word Attack subtests of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests, Revised (WRMT-R; Woodcock, 1987 ); RDC = Passage Comprehension subtest of the WRMT-R and Comprehension subtest of the Gray Oral Reading Tests, Third Edition (GORT-3; Wiederholt & Bryant, 1992 ).

A series of one-way analyses of variance yielded statistically significant differences between groups for all four composites: LEX, F (2, 423) = 115.84, p < .0001, ŋ = .59; SYN, F (2, 423) = 138.52, p < .0001, ŋ = .63; WDR, F (2, 423) = 64.44, p < .0001, ŋ = .48; and RDC, F (2, 423) = 92.39, p < .0001, ŋ = .55, with large effect sizes ( Cohen, 1969 , p. 276). Tukey tests indicated that the TLD group outperformed the SLI and NLI groups and that the SLI group outperformed the NLI group on all four composites. Thus, both the SLI and NLI groups showed deficits in lexical and syntactic development, word reading, and reading comprehension. It was also found that the NLI group performed significantly below the SLI group in all four areas.

To determine the associations between composites, correlation coefficients were calculated using standard scores from all participants combined ( N = 426). The results were statistically significant, positive, and moderately strong in every case (see Table 2 ; Nippold, 2016 , p. 31). This indicates that adolescents who were weak (or strong) in one area tended to be weak (or strong) in all other areas. Then, to determine the extent to which lexical and syntactic development and word reading ability predicted reading comprehension, regression analyses were conducted. All three factors (LEX, SYN, and WDR) individually and in combination of two and three factors predicted RDC (see Table 3 ; also reported in Nippold, 2016 , p. 32).

Correlation coefficients calculated between word reading (WRD) ability, lexical (LEX) development, syntactic (SYN) development, and reading comprehension (RDC) at Grade 8 ( N = 426).

Note.  From Later Language Development: School-Age Children, Adolescents, and Young Adults by M. A. Nippold. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed. Copyright © 2016 by PRO-ED, Inc. Adapted with permission.

Multiple regression analysis for dependent variable Reading Comprehension (RDC) using R -square selection method at Grade 8 ( n = 426).

Table 4 provides data on each composite for each of the three language groups, indicating the percent of participants in each group who performed at different levels. Although these data corroborate the main findings of the study, the table also shows that exceptions occurred. For example, some adolescents in the SLI and NLI groups performed at average or above-average levels on some composites, not evidencing deficits in those areas. It also shows that some adolescents in the TLD group performed below average in some areas, evidencing deficits.

The percent of adolescents in each language group with above average (> 115), average (85–115), or below average (< 85) standard scores on each composite at Grade 8.

Note.  TLD, n = 247; SLI, n = 102; NLI, n = 77. Categories are based on M = 100 and SD = 15.

These patterns indicate that in addition to examining group findings, it is important to consider individual differences within groups and not to make assumptions about how students will perform on the basis of prior labels. It also emphasizes the importance of evaluating each student carefully to determine individual strengths and weaknesses in language and reading ability.

Nevertheless, the findings of this study indicate that in general, children identified as having SLI or NLI as 6-year-olds continued to show language and reading deficits as 14-year-old adolescents. These results are consistent with other longitudinal studies of adolescents with an early history of language impairments (e.g., Conti-Ramsden, Durkin, Simkin, & Knox, 2009 ; Snowling, Bishop, & Stothard, 2000 ; Stothard, Snowling, Bishop, Chipchase, & Kaplan, 1998 ). The study also shows that poor reading comprehension in adolescents is predicted by concurrent deficits in lexical development, syntactic development, and word reading ability. It is unfortunate that most participants in the Iowa Project with SLI or NLI did not receive the type of focused, intense, and explicit intervention that would be necessary to remediate their language and reading problems. A key message is that children whose language development is poor at age 6 (kindergarten) are at high risk for continuing to experience language deficits as they progress through school and are likely to struggle to become fluent readers who can comprehend challenging material. Moreover, it is unreasonable to expect that language deficits in a 6-year-old child will go away on their own or that they will not restrict the child's ability to become a proficient and independent reader. Thus, it is important to monitor children's progress as they grow older, become adolescents, and transition to high school ( Conti-Ramsden et al., 2009 ).

Future Research

Intervention studies that target reading comprehension deficits in adolescents are sorely needed. When reading comprehension deficits are accompanied by weaknesses in word reading ability and in lexical and syntactic development, treatment should be designed to target each student's area(s) of deficiency. For example, although many adolescents with poor reading comprehension also have deficits in syntactic development, as reported in this article, their syntactic deficits are rarely addressed during intervention ( Scott, 2009 ). Yet if a particular adolescent is struggling to comprehend at the sentence level and is unable to understand how clauses modify a sentence, how can we expect that student to grasp the main idea or to summarize the key points of an entire passage, or even the paragraph in which the sentence occurs?

In an ideal situation, each adolescent who demonstrates a reading comprehension deficit would receive a thorough evaluation, carried out by a speech-language pathologist (SLP) who examines all relevant areas, including word reading ability and lexical and syntactic development, using age-appropriate, norm-referenced, standardized measures. Then, when deficits are found, the SLP would design an intervention program, in collaboration with other school professionals, that targets the student's weaknesses while simultaneously helping to build the student's background knowledge in various subject areas. Intervention should be carried out in a systematic, intense, focused, and explicit manner that targets each student's underlying weaknesses, with the goal of improving the student's ability to read independently and comprehend expository textbooks.

Consider a hypothetical group of high school students who have deficits in all key areas and have been assigned to read the passage on air pollution in the Earth science textbook, described earlier. Working collaboratively with the science teacher, who bears most of the responsibility for building topic knowledge, the SLP could create a list of key terms that are essential for comprehending the passage. Students could be taught the meanings of those terms and also be taught to use strategies to figure out the meanings of other difficult words they encounter when reading. Indeed, there is evidence from research that students can be taught to use the strategies of attending to context clues ( Fukkink & de Glopper, 1998 ) and analyzing the morphological structure of words ( Baumann et al., 2002 ) to build their vocabularies.

To address syntax, the SLP could teach the students the functions of various clauses and how they modify the meaning of a sentence and could explain how certain types of words and clauses are connected. This would include, for example, the fact that metalinguistic ( say, argue, tell ) and metacognitive ( know, think, believe ) verbs commonly co-occur with nominal clauses to complete a statement or thought (e.g., Scientists know that fossil-fuel combustion causes air pollution ); that morphologically complex and abstract nouns (e.g., industrialization ) often are defined using relative clauses (e.g., …is a process that involves making goods with machines ); and that adverbial clauses provide information about time, manner, reason, or condition (e.g., When textile machines were invented, cloth could be made more quickly). There is evidence from research that metalinguistic activities that heighten students' awareness of different types of clauses and sentences can build their knowledge of complex syntax ( Hirschman, 2000 ).

Some adolescents will also require systematic instruction in word reading ability and its linguistic and metalinguistic underpinnings, including phonological awareness and letter–sound correspondences. To remediate deficits in these areas, the SLP may wish to collaborate with a reading specialist to ensure success. It is encouraging to know that research has shown that interventions designed to address students' underlying deficits in phonological awareness and letter–sound knowledge can improve their word reading skills ( Snowling & Hulme, 2012 ).

Once students demonstrate gains in these basic areas and can comprehend individual sentences, the next step is to assist the students to comprehend two, three, and four sentences in a passage. Once students are successful at this level, the SLP could introduce the use of traditional reading comprehension strategies (e.g., “find the main idea”) one at a time. Teaching students to use these strategies could potentially improve their reading comprehension even more. However, without building a strong foundation in the underlying language skills, including the linguistic and metalinguistic underpinnings of word reading ability, students are likely to experience frustration and discouragement if they are expected to use traditional comprehension strategies too soon.

To examine the effectiveness of intervention for reading comprehension that systematically addresses adolescents' underlying deficits in word reading ability, lexical development, and/or syntactic development, studies could be carried out that compare this approach to the more standard approach of teaching reading comprehension strategies without building the underlying language skills. The goal would be to determine which group makes greater progress over time. Studies of this nature would provide useful information for SLPs who work with adolescents, offering direction on how best to remediate reading comprehension deficits. The long-range goal would be to enhance students' chances of graduating from high school and completing the necessary postsecondary education to achieve success in life.

Acknowledgments

Grant 2P50DC02746-06A1 (awarded to the author) from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supported the Iowa Project. The author expresses sincere appreciation to the granting agency, the children who participated in the project, and numerous research assistants who collected and managed the data. Some results reported in this article were presented at the “International Conference on Specific Language Impairment: Diagnosis, Prognosis, Intervention,” organized by the Educational Research Institute, Warsaw, Poland, 2012, and at the “Speech Pathology Research Symposium,” John Hunter Medical Research Institute, Faculty of Education and Arts, University of Newcastle, Australia, 2013.

Funding Statement

Grant 2P50DC02746-06A1 (awarded to the author) from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders supported the Iowa Project.

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