Reading with Comprehension Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Reading with Comprehension - Essay Example Learning Difficulties in Reading with comprehension According to Callella (2000), learning difficulties comprise of the inability to make clear connections between the text read and its actual meaning. Readers may be confronted with a number of difficulties in an attempt to understand and comprehend any piece of writing, which they read. Most of the difficulties in learning affect children and hinder their understanding of written texts. It becomes extremely challenging for school going children to understand what they read, when they have difficulties in learning. Some of the learning difficulties in reading with comprehension include challenges in decoding, linguistic comprehension, and poor phonological and semantic skills. Other difficulties may be related to problems with visual word recognition, fluency, and problems with inference making and working memory. These difficulties will now be analyzed on the basis of how they influence reading with comprehension. The lack of proper decoding skills can act as a constraint on reading with comprehension. This may happen when decoding is slow and effortful; in such a case, resources may be dedicated to word level processing. On the other hand, when decoding in the reader is automatic, then the task of comprehension may be possible. Reading comprehension can be compromised when decoding in the reader is poor (Westwood, 2004). Decoding relates to the speed of word reading; children who have poor reading comprehension skills can be slower at reading words than students with excellent reading comprehension skills. The relationship between reading comprehension and efficiency in decoding continues in a person’s lifetime. Poor reading skills and non word reading in early childhood may predict learning difficulties in reading with comprehension in secondary school years and adulthood. Linguistic comprehension can also be a source of poor reading comprehension. The simple model of reading holds that apart from def icits in decoding, poor comprehenders may also have deficits in linguistic comprehension. Readers may have difficulties in understanding the language used in a comprehension (Westwood, 2004). For example, they may not understand the actual meaning of the words used. This learning difficulty presents a challenge to the understanding of written text. In order to make meaning out of written texts, the reader should understand the language used. Thus, difficulties in understanding the actual meaning of words, phrases, and vocabulary used can be regarded as a learning difficulty in reading with comprehension. According to Allington & McGill-Franzen (2000), poor phonological skills also pose significant challenges in reading with comprehension. Phonological skills have a correlation with the development of literacy in children as well as adults. Phonological deficits may usually characterize individuals with poor reading comprehension skills. Comprehension problems on the basis of phonolo gical skills may emanate from the inability to sustain phonological representation of verbal information while reading. Phonological skills play an essential role in determining how the reader represents verbal information when reading. Thus, the inability of children to set up phonological representation leads to difficulties in reading with comprehension. Other difficulties related to phonology entail problems in word recognition.