6 Affective Aspects Improving the students’ comprehension in reading would have a lot work to
do. Making a comprehension learning session is often boring for students, and it is encouraged to use as creative as possible in a way of learning comprehension in
reading.
b. Reading Comprehension Skill Characteristics
1 Fluency Fluency is one of the required skills in comprehension. It is about the ability
to recognize the word meaning automatically in order to comprehend the sentence. However, fluency appears to be a larger influence in developing reading
comprehension skills for younger readers compared to older ones. Yovanoff et al in their study, proved that as text becomes more challenging with each grade
level, fluency becomes less predictive of reading comprehension and, instead, gives way to vocabulary.
2 Vocabulary and Semantic Processing Semantic processing is important in order to understand the meaning of the
text. It means, students must understand the word meaning before comprehending the whole sentence. In one study of children from kindergarten through second
grade, Roth, Speece, and Cooper discovered that vocabulary skills, such as oral definitions and word retrieval, were the best predictors of reading comprehension
development. A similar study conducted by Berninger et al at-risk second graders revealed that verbal IQ was a statistically significant predictor of reading
comprehension in both the beginning and end of school year assessments 3 Visualization.
Another key component of reading comprehension is the active construction of a mental image of the text. Woolley stated that the mental image helps the
reader understand the texts. The concept that readers process both visual representations of verbal information and of objects to create meaning. Pressley
and National Reading Panel referred this mental imagery, that skill contributes to comprehension and enhances memory of the text. In addition, Center et al and
Brown et al found statistically significant correlations between visualization training and reading comprehension scores of students when used as part of a
multiple-strategy instruction intervention. 4 Working Memory
Working memory has also been identified as an important part of reading comprehension. Rothlisberger et al stated that working memory is defined as an
executive function responsible for keeping and updating information in the mind. Further, working memory is responsible for managing the process of extracting
information from text and integrating it with prior knowledge to create meaning. Sequences of text-based information are held in working memory and integrated
with new incoming text and with prior knowledge held in long-term memory. 5 Reasoning and Inference.
Inferential reasoning is the ability to use information in the text to determine additional information that implied by the text. National Foundation for
Educational Research discovered that the ability to draw inferences is directly related to reading comprehension ability. The process of inferential reasoning
requires both short-term and long-term memory, as the provider of background knowledge combined with the text to arrive at the implicit information from the
text
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Amy L. Moore, M.A., A Research Review of Cognitive Skills, Strategies, and Interventions for Reading Comprehension, Retrieved from http: learningrx.comreading-
